Page 37 of Wicked Vile King
My heart rate slows as I am immobilized.
Something skitters in the darkness.
Get up, Willow! Get up!
How long have I been here, alone in the dark? Minutes, hours, days?
Drip, drip, drippppp.
Get up!
Drip.
GET UP!
The door opens, and I'm plucked from the floor carefully and cradled against a solid, warm chest. I'm carried out of the darkness and into a small, dimly lit room.
"Pet," Saint murmurs, holding me as he sinks to his knees, taking me with him. He reaches for the side of my cheek and turns my face to make me look at him. "Come back to me."
He runs a palm across my cheek, slowly, carefully, and the warmth of his hand and those eyes, like two bolts of blue lightning, scare away the dark. I feel the space between the two halves of me, past and present, pulling together again.
I start to shake—or maybe I've been shaking this whole time—but all of me quivers as the phantom wetness recedes from my skin, and the trickster and the liar brings me back to the present.
My fingers twitch, craving his warmth, and when they come alive, I dig them into the thin fabric of his dress shirt and cinch tight.
He smells like cigarettes and patchouli, like he always does.
"Shh," he says down to me, his lips pursed in a frown. "You're safe now. You survived. I told you that you'd come back stronger."
Did I make a noise?
I must have as my throat learned to work again.
His words and his tone are the perfect approximation of comforting. I doubt his sincerity though.
My legs dangle off the side of his forearm as he starts to rock me back and forth against him. My fingers grip a little harder into his shirt as the memory fades, and I am brought back to the present.
Back and forth, he rocks me in the warmth. Back and forth, until I am pulled out of the darkness to be with him.
"I will always protect you, pet," he tells me. "I will always do what's best for you."
His voice and that damned nickname I never wanted to own shatter the illusion of safety, and I thrash, once and hard, against him, but he holds me tighter, squeezing me and wrenching me like a wet sponge in his hands.
"Shh," he says again, flattening a palm to my cheek and making me look at him. He dips his head, and I freeze. I think for a moment he might kiss me again, but he doesn't. He hoists me up as he leans in, flattening his tongue to my cheek and licking away my tears. He is slow and methodical about it. First my eyes and then down my cheeks, one side of my face and then the other.
His gaze shutters on the taste before his eyes open again and he catches my bottom lip between his teeth, tugging me in close. I shouldn't let him, I know I shouldn't let him, but I am so tired—as I always am when I remember her. He nips at my bottom lip before he finally releases me.
"You are perfect," he tells me, before he kisses me, his lips brutal and bruising as he thrusts his tongue into my mouth and I taste my own tears.
Finally, when I can't breathe and everything burns, he finally pulls away and murmurs across my lips, "Good pets get rewarded, pretty girl."
10
WILLOW
Idon't go to class for the rest of the day. I skip, but no one seems to care. Or, at least, no one comes to check on me. Not the Headmistress, not the people supposed to be teaching me, not the guards, no one.
The truth is that I can't go to class. I don't know if I ever can. I can't see him and remember what he put me through or how he held me afterward and made me finally feel safe. And when was the last time I felt safe anyway? Months ago? No, that's not right. Years ago, long before Mama started drinking and Papa was always angry—at her, at me, at the world—when he screamed every time he came home until the tiny veins across the bridge of his nose and cheeks flared bright red and spittle flew from his mouth.
