And so fucking evilly corrupt, it will take more than a little bit of virginal blood to quench her thirst for blood.
I don’t mind. I’ll give her everything she wants and more because if it weren’t for her, I’d still be my father’s puppet.
I may even give her my last name.
twenty-three
MEGAN
The flicking embers of a raging inferno stop dancing in my dilated eyes when Dexter grips the ankle tucked under my bottom and drags me to his side of the bench seat of the hotel clerk’s truck. After what we just did, my skin should be bubbling with blisters like it did when my mother made the bathwater too hot. I should be melting in the flames of hell, but for some silly reason, all I’m feeling is joy.
My body is aching, and my stomach hurts from how many times it clenched while trying to ignore the tingles bombarding me from all sides, but I feel more alive now than I did when my father told me he killed my mother so she couldn’t hurt me anymore.
Back then, I thought I was going to be free, but like almost all the lessons in my life, I soon discovered it was a lie. Not even after hanging my father from the rafters of my family ranch was I free. Up until thirty minutes ago, I was controlled and manipulated.
I didn’t kneel in front of Dexter because I wanted to sanction him to hell alongside me. I wanted to make his eyes light up like the sky did for me when he made me voicelessly scream like my mother did when her ‘friends’ came to visit. I wanted to make him feel good even with his skin hot and clammy, and from the way his nostrils flared when the clerk stuffed his penis into my mouth, I was certain I knew the perfect way.
Mine once did the same anytime Nick was withher.
They won’t anymore, though.
She can have Nick. She can keep him for eternity.
As we will Dexter.
“No,” Dexter snaps out in a groggy tone when he mistakes my head bob as me burying my head between his pecs to get comfortable. “No sleep. Not yet. Once we’ve put the steps into play, then you can rest but not before.”
My achy lips raise against his chest when he pats my bottom like he did at the cabin days ago. His tone would have you convinced he’s angry at me, but his nurturing gesture proves otherwise. Don’t get me wrong, he was angry that I parked the car he borrowed yesterday at the front of the motel we were planning to stay at, but his anger only lasted as long as it took for him to work out another way of getting rid of our DNA from the crime scene.
Fire destroys many things—even pesky genes that could expose the truth.
“Do you remember the plan?” After taking a moment to relish the possessiveness in his tone, I peer up at Dexter, then dip my chin. “You need to be faster this time, Megan. If you’re slow, you’ll—” When I drop my head, irked by the word forever tossed at me in my teens, Dexter’s foot slips from the gas pedal to the brake. I’m anticipating for him to comfort me or offer me some kind of apology, so you can imagine my surprise when he pulls me onto his lap then curls his hand around my throat. “Charles may look old and kind, but he is a murderer in every meaning of the word.” As I dig my nails into his hand in an endeavor to loosen his grip, he snarls, “He carried you into the woods knowing my father’s plan to hunt, desecrate, and kill you. He isnotwho you think he is. He could know you for years and still kill you on command.”
I realize not all his words are for me when I spot the direction of his gaze.
He is peering past me instead of at me.
Dexter’s grip loosens when I stop fighting against him. He still holds me firm enough for my lungs to scream in protest, but not with a firmness that will kill me anytime within the next two minutes. When I rub at the groove embedded deeply between his dark eyes, the torment in his eyes weakens. Within seconds, it goes from a raging tornado to a summer storm. Then, it switches to a sun shower.
“He knew her for years,” he murmurs more to himself than me. “But he didn’t even blink when he entered the room covered with splotches of her blood.” His laugh is as tormented as my insides feel when he mutters, “He just washed her blood off her as if she was a child, spoon-fed her, then tucked her into bed.” My heart squeezes painfully in my chest when he locks his eyes with mine. “He deserves to die.”
Since I wholeheartedly agree with him and also believe he’s asking a question more than stating a fact, I nod. Even if his recent confession wasn’t swaying my opinion in his favor, Charles deserves to die. I just wish Dexter would entrust me to serve his punishment on my own.
Oh well. At least we get to be a part of it.
I nod to the voices in my head that suddenly don’t seem as irrational as they once did before lowering my hand from Dexter’s brows to his lips. They’re still plump and red from how many times he kissed both my lips and the constantly hot area between my legs, and tasty enough for me to agree to massacre an entire village just to taste them again.
“Oww,” I whimper on a sob when Dexter makes his mouth look nowhere near as appealing by showing how savage it can be. He sinks his teeth into the delicate skin on my wrist firm enough to mark before he lowers them to my elbow.
When I attempt to yank away from him, he digs his teeth in firm enough my skin rips under his incisor teeth. After licking up the dribble of blood seeping from his recent bite mark, he mutters, “We have to make it look real. Charles will never believe you got away from my father without some battle wounds.” I bury my head into his chest to hide the tears threatening to spill down my face when he grips my thigh with enough strength to bruise. “But this type of pain can be good too, Megan. You can find pleasure in it if you stop wrongly thinking it hurts.”
I want to tell him that it does hurt. That I’m not making up the pain ripping through my body, but before I can, he steals the screams of the voices in my head demanding immediate retaliation by slipping his hand underneath the grubby shirt he stole from the clerk.
“See, you’re saturated. You wouldn’t be wet if you didn’t enjoy it.”
My quivering breaths rebound off his chest when he slips a finger inside my vagina. His fingers aren’t as thick and veiny as his penis, so my body doesn’t instantly protest the intrusion like it did when he stuck his penis inside me earlier. It encourages the gentle pumps of his fat digit before the swivel of my hips coerces his thumb to get in on the action as well.
“I knew you’d have a greedy cunt, Megan. That one snippet of attention would have it begging for another and another and another.” I shudder like I’m cold when the thumb he used to smear the murky white stuff that pumped onto my tongue earlier into my lip circles the little bud my father threatened to cut off when I learned of its ability to zap you with electricity when you touch it.
