Page 26 of Wicked Vile King
Why are there pretty scars on your wrists, pet? The ones you rub obsessively when you are nervous and peek out from beneath your sleeves when you lift your hands?
Tell. Me.
She continues giving me the stunned, doe-eyed expression, and I wonder if this is what she needs to see, that I'm not a monster.Aw, do I need to create the illusion of a bleeding heart?
Somewhere, I swear I hear Gabe laughing, and although I don't see the fucker, I know he and Kill are no doubt loving every minute of watching me work for it. They sense it too, the killers. She's not like the others. She won't accept a pretty smile and a well-paid compliment and give everything to me. God knows she's going to make me pay the price of obsession.
With another blink, she snaps out of whatever shock I put her in, and although I grip her tighter, not letting her get away, she says, "Whatever, weirdo. I can figure it out myself."
My fingers dig into her shoulder.
"Oh, pretty girl," I whisper over to her with a smile, my breath tickling the side of her face. Her pale skin flushes with my words, "that's not how this is going to work."
I snatch the schedule out of her hand and pocket it at the same time I turn us around, heading in the right direction this time. She makes a stuttering-gurgling sound like she's literally suffocating on her words and eyes me like she's debating going spelunking in my pockets to find her schedule before she thinks better of it.
Smart girl. If she starts digging around in my pants, I may take it as an invitation, not that I need one. Everything about her makes me want to fuck and rut and claim until I make her scream for me.
You could take her to the . . .
I curb-stomp the goddamn animal in my head and wear another smile for her.
"This way," I tell her, steering her forward with me. I like her warmth, her flowery smell, how her body curves to mine more than I should.
Maybe she'll keep the cold boredom at bay once and for all.
Or she'll end up just like her.
Shut the fuck up!
I shake the thought away and guide her into class. She throws aHelp me!look to the teacher at the front of the room and is promptly ignored. I expect it, but she frowns as I push her by the shoulders into a desk at the back of the room and then take my seat at the one beside her. The kid who used to sit where my pet does now looks up about halfway down the aisle, eyes me, stops walking, and chooses another seat. How smart and how fucking boring.
I hook my foot around one of the plastic legs of her desk and drag her closer. The desk screeches nastily against the linoleum that's peeling from the floor, but the professor doesn't seem to care.
Not that I expect him to, but Cadelle is looking at him, her mouth gaping open like she's trying to catch flies. She's going to learn the hard way that all of the staff are just like him, guards and teachers alike. They don't care about us, not really. We're just lost causes that they have to keep alive (for the most part) while they earn a paycheck. We are nothing more and nothing less than dollar signs.
Last I heard, it was well into the six figures to send a student to the Asylum. Of course, they promise a lot in exchange for those numbers—room, board, rehabilitative treatment, medication management, cognitive behavioral therapy, and more. No one sends their kid here by accident though, and we all know it. This is the last resort, the final chance to keep us from shitting on our surnames. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, right? Only, I think some of our benefactors hope this place will kill us because they know, as well as we do, that the world will never accept us.
But by the looks of it, Willow hasn't gotten the memo yet. She's still pining for the moment that will never come, when her father calls to say he's made a huge mistake. Finally, she shuts her mouth, as the teacher at the front of the room yawns and continues playing on his phone.
"Please," she says, and the word is so ugly coming out of her mouth, "leave me alone."
I lean across her desk, my elbow landing next to hers, and play with her smooth, straight hair. She swallows but doesn't look at me as I breathe my words across her jaw.
"Say it like you mean it, pet," I murmur.
"Please," she repeats through clenched teeth, and it irritates me, the begging. She's stronger than her weak words. She's not like the others.
"Come on," I scoff, winding her hair around my index finger tightly, until I know it's got to hurt, "you're better than that."
She closes her eyes and swallows hard again, and a bit of me panics, just a little, because maybe lockdown already got to her. Maybe it broke her, and that wouldn't be fun at all.
"Why won't you leave me alone?" she asks, her voice firmer this time, though she's still staring straight ahead at Professor Doesn't-Care-About-Us.
"You're interesting," I answer honestly.
Her gaze snaps to me so fast, I'm surprised she doesn't break her neck. I breathe her in, rose blossoms and salt, and my dick decides to brand itself with my zipper.
"You're crazy," she says, staring at me.
