Page 22 of Wicked Vile King
What feels like an eternity ago, with . . .her.
Whatever. I don't give a shit what my not-a-conscience thinks. This one's different. She fights back even when she's scared shitless. She doesn't just give up and beg for mercy when she's cornered, her back against a wall . . . or againstme,as the case may be. No, this one's going to fight until the moment I finally subdue her. And then I'm going to fuck her in more than just the literal way. I'm not a pretty face to bring home and disappoint her parents with or a broken charity case she thinks she can fix, starting with a GoFundMe to buy me a soul. She sees me for what I am . . . a threat to her existence. Yet, she hasn't backed down.
It's impressive, really.
A smile tips the corners of my lips, reminding me of the dull ache that's taken up residence at my jawline. Her claw mark hurts, and every time I move my mouth, the pain reminds me of my pet. Willow Cadelle is a kitty that had enough and finally scratched back. Maybe she thought it would stop me, that I'd move on and find an easier target.
She was wrong.
Little does she know, I like the pain. Icraveit, and I want her to do it again and again before I slice her up so we both bleed. The image hits like intravenous porn, shooting straight to my dick.
Me. Her. Blood. Pain. Fucking like goddamned animals.
Gabe, the asshole, rudely interrupts my making of plans.
"Which one messed up your face?" he asks at my side, his words low and slow like the freak is savoring the question.
Killian snorts next to me in a wordless response.
I ignore them both for a moment and look across the dining hall, letting the assholes I guess I call friends wonder a second longer. I look past the students eating and chatting, pretending that their existence matters, like they haven't already been cast away and imprisoned with the outcasts, the fuckups, and the deviants. I look at the white plastic tables, stained and pitted from the countless fights that have broken out between these walls and the chairs attached to them half-filled with bodies.
Some of the students need a zap of adrenaline and a solid slap to the face. They are the ones that drool onto their untouched plates, barely upright and leaning like the Tower of Pisa about to hit the floor, the overmedicated bastards. Others have adjusted. Maybe it's the medication, benzos and antipsychotics, that keep them in their lanes or the shit that passes for therapy around here. Regardless, they ignore their neighbors, eat their food, and keep their heads down, just like the guards prefer.
I stop my assessment for a moment when I get to Jenkins, aka Jenks, who, by the looks of it, is off his meds again and about to earn a one-way ticket to the hole, the poor bastard. He rocks back-and-forth at a table by himself, muttering and his plate scrambled, like he's been digging through it again, looking for poison or tracking devices or whatever his mind has convinced himself is in there today. If I could feel, I think I'd feel sorry for him. His type has it worse than the rest of us at the Academy, the paranoid schizophrenics who don't respond to treatment. The dude's been in the hole more than I have, and that's fucking saying something.
I keep going. I skip over the freaks who worship Gabe like he's some sort of fire-creating deity with flames for a dick and the girls at the table beside them, staring at the three of us with coquettish smiles like they are playing,Fuck, Marry, Kill, and can't decide which one of us gets the axe.
Then I land where I started and find my pet, already staring at me.
"Her," I tell them with a smile, and I can feel them at my side, sizing her up.
Beneath the light of the dining hall, her dark hair looks more chestnut-colored than plain brown and her skin glows an ethereal pale, the color of vampires and fog and dead bodies. Her red lips, I think, would look even redder if I bit one and painted it with her blood. Still, she's gorgeous, even if she looks like she's about to upchuck her breakfast at the sight of me.
There are plenty of pretty girls at the Academy, the natural consequence of wealthy families and dermatologists on retainer since birth, but she is special, and I know they can see it too. Gabe grunts his approval, and I almost say something and tell him she's more than beauty and the marks she left on my face. She's that undefinable thing that pulled me to her, unanswered questions and curiosity.
Why does the pretty cheerleader, popular and beloved, go kamikaze and cut her wrists down the lane like she fucking means it?
I intend to find out.
She is my pet.
Mine.
I step forward, ready to go to her, to stake my claim in front of all of these fuckers, when Jenks—with the worst mental-health-crisis timing on planet freaking Earth—stands, grabs his tray, andWham!
Down goes the unsuspecting bastard at the table behind him, his nose audibly popping with the hit. That sound makes me smile even wider. The victim—a freshman, I think—falls to the floor, squealing like a stuck pig. Annoyance momentarily flits through my head, but it snuffs out quickly when the count starts up, like it always does.
One last fuck to give.
Two last fucks to give.
Annnnnddddd . . . three.
The guards at the far end of the room decide to give a fuck, and the alarms blare at a decibel that makes dogs and half the animals in this room howl at the heavens.
"Down on the ground!" one of them shouts as another student—a sophomore, fuck if I know for sure—uses the opportunity to jump his seated neighbor and start bludgeoning his head against the table, over and over andoveragain. Teeth, blood, and spit splatter across the floor beneath the screaming alarm as more salivating guards run into the fray like starving dogs after a bone, batons drawn and at the ready.
Wee-ooo, wee-ooo, wee.
