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18

KALEB

T he last time my blood ran this hot was eleven years ago.

I resented and despised the way her dad shouted at her. His bullying and belittling of her.

Many nights, I’d lie in bed, fantasizing about killing him. Hands around his throat. Pushing his eyes back into his brain while he slept. Forcing my mother to defecate, then drowning him in her shit.

And every morning, I woke up different. I had a mission.

Killing him would’ve landed me in prison. Shiloh would’ve ended up in foster care.

So I had to stay. I had to protect her.

In the end, I couldn’t save her from this.

This scar, in the shape of a belt, is the proof. It reaches down her back where her clothes hide it.

So even though I’ve got a good fucking guess who’s responsible for it, I ask again .

“Answer me.” I’m doing everything in my power not to shake her. Not to force the words out of her. I’m a ticking time bomb. I don’t trust myself not to hurt her irreparably. “Answer me right the fuck now. Who did this to you?”

There are things to take care of. A body to hide. Fingerprints to wipe.

Nothing matters. Nothing.

That scar.

“Dad.” Tears rise to her eyes, stop there on her thick eyelashes. And here they are, cascading down her flushed cheeks. “I came home for the summer. That first year after you were gone. After you left me.”

The accusation is a slap to the face. I embrace it. I’ve earned it. “What did he do?”

“I kept asking about you. Over lunch. Dinner. Wouldn’t let it go.” Her lips pinch together. “My”— sniff —“fault.”

Pain slashes through my chest. Hearing how much she cared. How she was willing to face her dad for me.

She shouldn’t have.

I wasn’t there to protect her.

“It wasn’t your fault.” Pressing my thumb on her bottom lip, I order her, “Speak.”

“He lost it that evening. His chair fell to the floor when he got up.” She clings to me. I shouldn’t be turned on. Shouldn’t get off on being the fucked-up man she turns to—the man she wants. I am. “He pushed my cheek against my plate. Into the lasagna. He didn’t care that I cried and begged him to let me go. Your mom sat there and did nothing. ”

I could leave right now. Walk out of here with her over my shoulder. Barge into our parents’ home and mash their faces in the garbage disposal and turn it on.

Without losing my grip on Shiloh.

Without waiting to listen to her whole story.

She needs me to. I made her start, and I’ll be here to hear her out.

Besides, I have other people to kill before I get to them. And I will.

Her dad’s private investigator lurks outside her home. That lazy fuck was there when I left this morning. After Shiloh drove off to school.

He’s there while we’re here. When I get home tonight, I’ll kill him. Then I’ll play with Shiloh some more until Halloween comes. Until I kill the people who brought us together.

One of the darkest nights of the year. Two of the cruelest people I know will lose their lives.

By our hands.

Funniest thing, though? We’ll be able to slip in and out of their home wearing masks. How Shiloh’s dad hated mine. It’ll be the last thing he sees. Our masks will be what anyone on the street sees as well.

No one will suspect a goddamn thing since it’s Halloween.

“He’ll pay for this.” I’m not as calm as I would’ve liked. Electricity buzzes beneath my skin. It’s pushing emotion into my voice.

Despite my carefully laid-out plans. Despite knowing I’ll shred him to pieces for every fucking thing he’s ever done to her .

She’s my priority.

Getting out of here is, too.

Right after I make her talk to me.

I’ll show her how good it feels to be as vile as me. How hot she is for it.

My fingers bite into her chin, leaving indentations in her skin. “What happened after that?”

Her hand, so soft on my wrist, puts sickening images in my head. Like bending her over. Owning her so completely that she’ll know I’m her protector. That I won’t let anyone else ever hurt her again.

I do better than that. I pretend to be mildly human and listen to her.

“He belted me. Anywhere he could. My ass. My thighs. At first, it wasn’t horrible. Nothing he hadn’t done before.”

Pain concentrates in my chest. My ribs are about to crack. The guilt of being away while he beat her up, my God. The suffocating weight of it.

In a split second, a flash of anger pushes the guilt aside.

I see her and I see red. Rivers of it.

“I could tell this time was different when he ordered the staff out. Not your mom. She stayed. Still and quiet while the belt landed on my ass and the back of my thighs. While I cried in pain. While I choked on my food.”

That miserable fuck. That monster. His own daughter, whose only sin was caring about me.

Then there’s my mother. The useless piece of flesh that brought me into this world.

I’m going to fuck her up so bad for this.

“After a while, he announced that he was done. That he hoped I’d learned my lesson. He straightened, moved away. I was miserable, and I missed you. I couldn’t stay silent. I told him to go fuck himself.” Black dots line my vision. I blink them away. Shiloh. Shiloh. I have to focus on Shiloh. Can’t go on a murder spree and be taken from her again. “That last blow knocked me back into the table. My entire body. That’s when he stopped. When I felt the warm sticky blood running down my back.”

“Never again,” I hiss. “I swear on my life. No one will ever hit you.”

“I know.” She presses her body to mine, sliding a hand up to curl around my neck. Her knife is still pressed to my chest. “Kaleb.”

“Little sister.” The simple touch of her fingers on the back of my neck has precum leaking from my cock. I lower my face to hers. “They won’t come snooping here for a while. Tell me what it is you want. From me.”

“You shouldn’t be here, damn it.”

“Not going away until you talk to me.”

“You asked me what I wanted,” she snarls, the weight of her flashback long gone. I carry it for her now. “I want you to leave. I want you to meet me at home.”

“Try again. The truth this time.”

“Go. Away.” But she pulls me closer. Her nails sink into my flesh as her body thrums against mine. “I want you to go away. I need you to listen to me. You have to hide. We’ll come up with a plan and live together forever, I swear. Where Dad can’t find us. Where I can keep studying, then work. That is what I want.”

“You’re a fucking liar, Shiloh.” I release her chin, only to pry the knife out of her hand. “You keep forgetting that I see you. Better than anyone else has. Better than anyone ever will. I bet you’re soaking. The blood turns you on, doesn’t it? You need me to relieve the pressure in your cunt after I murdered a man for you. You know he won’t be the last man I kill for you, and it turns you on that much more. I see you. I feel your body talking to me. Now. Be good for me. Try again. Tell me what you want.”

“You’re the liar.” Her gaze cuts to the knife. Back to my face. “Leave, you stubborn bastard. Just leave.”

“Stop pretending that you don’t want to be fucked. Maybe then I’ll consider leaving.”

“Please—” Her whisper gets lost in our kiss.

I pull her up against me, my hands touching her. My teeth biting her. It’s my way of telling her over and over that I’m never letting go.

“Tell me what you want from me.” I lick her, tasting her moans on my tongue.

I’d take a bite out of her if I could. Eat her flesh. Savor it. Except then, I wouldn’t be able to kiss those pretty lips again.

“You,” she cries out, yanking on my hair. “It’s always been you. But I won’t have you if you don’t leave right this minute before anyone comes. I keep telling you that and you won’t listen to me.”

“That’s it. You’re getting there. Use your words. ”

She’s right. I really don’t listen to her. I hear her. I look into her blue eyes between one nip at her lip and the other. I see the secrets she’s hiding. The lifetime of suppressed needs.

“You have to leave.” Her sigh is weak. It’s a plea for me to stay.

I wrap an arm around her, and the knife presses her back. She melts into me when I curl my free hand around the side of her neck and kiss her deeper than before. While I’m stealing glances out the broken window.

No one passes by.

Just in case, I drag us to the door where the light switch is and flip it off. I’m a sick bastard, so I pull her back to where her professor lies dead in a puddle of his own blood. Without stepping into it, of course. We won’t be leaving footprints.

“What are you doing?” she demands.

“Tell me, or I’ll edge you worse than before. I won’t let you come this time. For weeks. You’ll be dripping with need. It’ll be nothing to shove myself inside your pussy. What will hurt is pulling out.” It’s either my threats or the knife pressing into her back that makes her shiver. Maybe both. “I’ll do it, anyway. Over and over, I’ll bring you close to the edge, then pull out and jerk off until I come all over you. You’ll cry. You’ll beg. It won’t help you. You know I’m a sadist, Shiloh. I’ll only remind you how you didn’t trust me, then do it some more.”

“I hate you.” Her gaze is pure agony and fear. She can tell I’m being honest. “I hate you. You’re doing this on purpose. Trying to get caught. It’s like you’re asking to be sent back to that place. Is that it? Is that fucking it? You want someone to come and carry you out of here because—what? I’m too much? Because you’re too obsessed to leave me alone, though you wish you could?”

“Fuck no.” I hold her through her tantrum. I’ll always hold her. “I don’t want that.”

She looks out the window, at the empty gardens. Then she looks at the door to Dempsey’s office. She must hear it as much as I do. The silence outside.

“Eyes on me,” I growl, licking her salty cheek.

She gives me what I’m after. Her blue eyes shine at me through the darkness. She parts her swollen, wet lips to speak. To finally tell me what she needs.

“Make me bleed,” she whispers as if she’s ashamed of it. As if it’s the wrong thing to ask. “I wish you’d make me bleed for you, Kaleb. When he hit me that day, when I patched myself up in the bathroom, I pretended it was you who did it. It was sick, but it made me feel better. Imagining you hurt me. It was comforting . But if you stay here…Fuck. You’ll get caught. You have to hide.”

“There she is.” Satisfied and throbbing in my jeans, I run my fingertips along her jawline, then snap them back to her chin. “My girl.”

One last kiss and I step back, out of her reach. I whip my hoodie off and flatten it on the floor behind me.

“Come here.”

My impatience gets the better of me. I don’t wait for her to actually do it, grabbing her by the waist, manhandling her on her hands and knees on top of it.

Once we’re done, there’ll be no sign of what we’ve done here .

She notices how carefully I’m setting the scene. From her place on the floor, she’s silent, waiting. Her resistance has been drained out of her.

I bunch her dress up her thighs. Kick her knees apart. With one swift movement, I hook my fingers into her fishnet leggings and tear them down to her knees.

“You want to bleed for me?” I stop and stare at that dark spot on her panties. I get down behind her, breathing in the temptation that she is. “Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck.” I’m unable to tear my eyes from the soaked material. “You ruined your panties. You stood here”— spank , because she’s been such a bad girl—“lied to me”—her other cheek gets the same attention—“told me to leave when you desperately needed to be fucked.”

“Saving you is more important than anything.” I rip her panties off her, and she gasps. In my pocket they go. “I’ll never fail you again.”

I have my hand in her hair, hauling her up to me. Twisting her so her wide, frantic eyes meet mine. “You never failed me. Of all people, Shiloh Josephine Talbot, you. Never. Failed. Me.”

“Now who’s the liar?” A tear rolls out of the corner of her eye. I catch it with my mouth.

“I love you.” These words. Three abominable words that I can’t believe just slipped past my lips. “I love you. You’re my savior. My demise. My endgame. You’re the only person who did everything they could for me. Do you hear? Do you hear it in my voice? I. Love. You. ”

Her whimper is as sweet and as sad as she is. With her body leaning into mine, her hands go to her heart. “I love you. You’re going to get caught. Then you’ll ruin me for real. But I love you, you bastard.”

The other day, telling her I loved her was so out of character for me. It fucked with my head, saying those words to another person.

Hearing her say it back? I’m fucking dying over here.

Except I need to stay alive.

For her.

“Back on your hands and knees.” I shove her down.

Her fingers scramble to grasp my hoodie on the floor. Treating her like my doll sends a sense of urgency through me. I shove her dress up, staring at her swollen pussy. At the wetness coating her inner thighs.

“Hurry,” she whispers.

“Shut up.” Her ass hasn’t been spanked enough, I see. I crack my palm on it.

Three times on each cheek. Shiloh is being so good, suppressing her moans. Her body isn’t as quiet. It speaks, shuddering beneath me. More arousal trickles out of her pretty cunt.

“You’re beautiful.” With the tip of her knife, I trace the curve of her ass. I let her try to escape, only to grab her hip and drag her back to me. “Smooth skin and all. You’ll be even more beautiful when I fuck you up. Me .”

Air whooshes out of her lungs at the first cut on her ass. I break her skin a second time, running a thin line parallel to the first .

“Such a good girl.” I bend to lick both gashes, to suck on her blood. The taste of iron and her would’ve brought me to my knees if I weren’t already on them. “I could go on and on.” Needing the other cheek to be just as pretty, I slice two parallel lines there, too. “Weave endless cuts into your ass. Your thighs.”

Her blood runs down her thighs, and I devour those fresh wounds.

“Oh God.” She’s crying, her voice choked. She isn’t mourning her professor that’s right there next to us. Not her friend that I murdered without a hint of remorse. She’s crying for me. For what I’m doing to her. “Kaleb. I…I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t know how I feel. Help me.”

This incoherent blabbering. Her trembling thighs. Her clenching ass. She needs to come. Bad.

“You see.” I flip the knife closed. Shove it into my jeans pocket. Push her face to the floor.

She blinks, staring right at me, though a part of her isn’t fully present. Floating looks so good on her. “See what?”

“That you lied.” When I look at her, I see pain and lust. Blood and need. She’s a work of art. A filthy angel made for me. Mine. All mine. “You don’t want me to leave. You never did.”

Her eyelashes flutter. She’s in too deep. Aches for me too badly. “Yes.”

“Yes, you do. Just as much as I need you.” I sit up, my mouth opening to latch onto the gash that bleeds the most. I gather her blood in my mouth, only this time, I don’t swallow .

“Oh. Oh,” she groans. I bury my fingers in her hips, pushing them up. Spreading her ass cheeks to have better access to her pussy. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

She starts making feral sounds when I have my lips on her cunt. Groans and moans fill my ears as I lick her hole, painting it red with her blood. I shove her ass up even higher, spreading her lips and finding her clit.

“Pretty little thing. Such a pretty slut for me,” I hum, sending Shiloh into another round of soft curses and needy sounds.

Her clit is taut against my tongue. She’s the first one I’ve licked, and I study her. I remember what my fingers did to make her come, and I repeat the motions with my tongue. Taste her. Flick it on her clit. Flatten my tongue and run it over her pussy, over and over and over and over again.

It’s pure bliss to elicit such visceral reactions from her.

My heart is in my goddamn throat.

From being this close to her, having my mouth on her, and pleasing her. Getting off on those little sounds and her arousal on my lips.

It’s bliss I don’t deserve. One I’m taking, anyway.

I’m hard to the point of pain. Of agony. This is the worst torture. The sweetest one.

“Kaleb.” She bangs her fist on my hoodie. “Kaleb. Please. More.”

My fantasies are sick and fucked-up. I’m done holding back on them. “Tell me you’re my slut.”

Her hesitation earns her a punishment. I remove my lips from where she needs me the most .

“I’m your slut.” Rage bleeds through her voice.

“And?” I grab her ass, teasing her cunt with my thumbs. A gentle touch that does nothing for her, nothing at all.

Tears of frustration flow down her cheeks as she presses her ass to me. “I want you here. I want you to fuck me. I want you to make me filthy and ruin me. I?—”

She doesn’t get to finish because I’m already between her thighs, sucking her clit. Since I’ve never done that before, I’m working on pure instinct.

I know, I just know that she’s into it.

Because she’s my person.

Because she wants me to hurt her. She gets off on pain. On humiliation.

With my mouth pressed to her cunt and my mouth making her cry out in pain, I’m giving it to her.

I even add teeth. Blindly, I dip a finger into an open cut, then sink it into her ass. I finger-fuck her there, stretching her and using her blood as lube.

“I’m taking your ass.” I go deeper into her ass, faster as I breathe the words against her pussy. “Gonna mark you everywhere, little sister.”

Shiloh is delirious, repeating my name and panting. I can’t see her face when mine is pressed to her pussy, when I return to sucking and biting and licking her. But I hear her. I hear how the pleasure agonizes her.

After a few short minutes, I get her there. It’s a high like no other, to have her clench around me. Her muffled screams are meant for my ears only. Her pussy pulsates, and her hips push into my face, and Jesus fuck .

She’s drenching my chin. Trembling and helpless and mine.

No riding it out with her. No waiting out her shivers and watching her pussy weep for me.

Not today.

“I need inside you.” I sit up, holding her upright while I free my throbbing cock. “Need to fill that pretty”—this slap goes to her pussy for being so fucking tempting—“cunt. I’ll save your ass for another day.”

Her anguished moan makes my dick jump in my hand. My barbell is soaked with my precum.

“Don’t stop.”

“Greedy little slut.”

Between her blood, orgasm, and her body arching toward me, she’s the most beautiful thing ever to exist. No matter where I go, Shiloh will be the most entrancing person in the room.

She turns even more beautiful with my cock shoved inside her cunt.

“Oh, fuck ,” I groan the moment I’m balls deep inside her. The moment she whispers my name.

My fingers are buried in her hips, marking her. My cock rams into her tight pussy.

“You’re so big.” Her words are laced with pain. I could come from listening to her alone. “It hurts. Please. Slower.”

“Not happening.” I slap her ass, getting blood on my hand. “Your pussy belongs to me. You don’t get to tell me no.”

My stepsister is as sick as I am, moaning at my words. She fucking soaks me. “What’s wrong with me? ”

“Nothing’s wrong with you.” Her ass is painted in every shade of red. From my hand marks to the cuts. She’s hurt. Bruised. I ride her like a beast. Like a starved man, I watch my cock dragging out and slamming back into her. “Nothing’s wrong with being a slut for pain and your big stepbrother.”

“Please. Please, Kaleb.”

“Baby.”

While I’ve been using my cock to beat her pretty cunt, her hair has fallen over her face. I lean in, tucking it away and securing it in place. Her pulse is fast under my fingers, her nape fragile. Breakable.

The desire to snap it is derailed by the need to make her come. To keep her close to me, always. As I stare at her eye, her red cheek, and parted lips, I snake my free hand to her clit. Rub, twist, and flick it the way she likes.

She’s goddamn high on it, writhing against me, mouthing please and I need you . My vixen. My sex addict.

My beautiful Shiloh.

Fucking, so I’ve heard, is about racing to reach your own orgasm. Getting what you want out of your partner.

Bullshit.

The moment that my stepsister’s pussy clamps on my dick and sucks me in, I know better.

This is about making the other person come.

That’s what I’m chasing here. That’s my opiate. My heroin.

I’ll never get enough of her pleasure.

Fucking ever .

“Going to come inside you, Shi.” I have my teeth on her shoulder where her dad beat her. I sink them into her, watching her eyes and every ounce of lust dripping from them. “Going to fill you up with babies. Our babies. Fuck. Yes. Just milk me— God —like that.”

My balls tighten and my release is earth-shattering. Mind-numbing. A white-hot light like the gates of heaven that I’ll never reach flashes before my eyes.

Fuck heaven. This is it. My version of eternal bliss.

Her.

I say her name over and over until there’s nothing left in me, my teeth clamping harder onto her.

Nothing left for me in this world.

Only her and me and her soon-to-be swollen belly.

“Since when did you want kids?” she asks as I help put her back together, her voice floaty.

“Since you became my everything. Can’t stop thinking about it.” Her clothes are smoothed down. Hair tucked behind her ears. I stare at her in awe. At her eyes that slowly focus. I cup the cheeks that’ll always be mine. “Want to mark you from the inside out. I’ll do it. I am already doing it. Now let’s go home.”

“I’m not going with you.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Kaleb!” she whisper-shouts.

I tilt my head, daring her to tell me no. “What?”

“You’re infuriating,” she snaps, the sound affectionate, even when her cute nose scrunches. I would’ve lost all of that if I snapped her neck. Good thing I didn’t. “First, you tell me you love me as if, I don’t know. Just like that. Like it’s a fact.”

My eyebrows knit. “It is.”

Her lungs expand. Her eyelashes flutter and her hands are on my waist. “I?—”

“Quiet.” In her home, while I head to mine, so we can continue this conversation.

“Fine, we’ll talk later.” She huffs, my precious little thing. “About babies and other stuff.”

“When I decide it’s time.” I steal another kiss, and my cock is thickening again.

She nods. Blinks up at me. “Hey, Kaleb?”

“What?”

Her fingers dig into my bare chest. “I love you too.”

Electricity crackles inside my heart. The black organ races fast, hard, and determined.

I’ll never recover from it.

“Home,” I growl as I bend to the floor and pick up the DNA-soaked hoodie. Next are my mask and hammer. I talk to her while using a wipe I have in my jeans pocket to wipe away her fingerprints from Dempsey’s face. “I won’t ask you twice. I have my car here. Let’s go.”

“ Your car.” Her lips purse. “ Your car. Whose car is it, really?”

Since the people who owned it are dead, yes, it’s my car. I keep that information from Shiloh. Keep her guessing while I shrug.

“You know what?” Even in the dark, she’s adorable when she’s pissed. Scrunched nose and all. “Never mind. We’ll talk. You bet we will. Later. Right now, you have to get out of here. Alone. I can’t join you.”

I pull my mask on, towering over her. I’m taller, a menace.

She doesn’t flinch.

“They saw me coming back here with him.” She jerks her head toward the dead piece of shit on the floor. “They’ll be suspicious if they find the body when no one saw me leave here. They have cameras in the hallway, not outside the window. You can run through there. I can’t. They’ll place me here at the time of the murder. It would look suspicious as fuck. I have to stay. I have to be the one to call the cops.”

Every instinct in my body tells me to fight her on this. Throw her over my shoulder and get the hell out of this place. Away from this poor excuse of a man.

Except she’s right.

We have more fun waiting for us here until Halloween.

Plus, I owe Jerome a favor and he hasn’t contacted me yet.

“I’ll be fine.” When she takes a step back, I’ve never hated anything more. No, that’s a lie. I hate the change in her eyes that I can’t understand. She’s plotting something. “I promise. Just leave. I’ll deal with this, then I’ll head home.”

I grumble.

“Alone,” she adds. The only person who’s ever given me orders. To ever get me to listen to them.

“Okay.” I pull the hood of my hoodie over my head, careful not to touch her and leave traces from my soaked clothes on her skin. That distance is also at the top of my list of most hated things. “Straight home, you hear me?”

“Straight home. ”

Her eyes take another dark turn. I’ll force whatever it is out of her later.

Later, I’ll do a lot worse.