AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Love Spook
Maggie stood there with her mouth hanging open in shock. She picked up the dice again and rolled. “Four!”
She hurried to the bathroom and re-dressed in her dirty clothes then shot out of the house. “Spook?” she yelled after she jumped from the porch. The sun was at the three o’clock mark it seemed.
She listened, closing her eyes then finally heard a whistle. She spun and ran in the direction of the sound.
A minute in, another noise brought her to a sudden stop. Not a whistle. She headed toward the noise then stopped, panting with indecision. She spun around and continued in her original direction.
****
Bishop had taken all the darkness looming over his head and crammed it in the test for his Petite. All that was left was surviving it. Because it would be as big a test for him as it would be for her. Not because he feared pain, but because he fuckinghatedbringing hers. And yet, there was no way around it, shehadto go through it. If the Fate Dice indeed had decided she was to serve as his right hand, then she needed tointimatelyunderstand what that could require of her.
He’d gone over everything, even wrote it all down. From the moment he’d met her to the moment he recorded the facts of the matter she’d been a weak link. And there could be no weak links in The Twelve. Her kindness blinded her to evils and her goodness endangered her, him,andtheir future family. Hell, it endangered every family in the swamp. The higher up you were the greater the consequences of your actions. She needed to understand that. If Fate decided she ruled with him, then he’d make damn sure she was capable of it no matter how painful it was for her and him. That washisresponsibility as The Eveque, the leader of the Hoard, the protector of the families in the swamps.
He placed the duct tape on the table and his knife. The directives were all written down in the jar next to the Gauntlet Dice. He’d chosen black and white methods. Simple and straight forward. And the name of his test for her was also simple and even cliché—No Pain, No Gain.
He waited in the chair with his shirt off in only jeans. He angled his head when the shower cut off. Another few minutes and the door opened.
“Are there…cameras here?”
“No, Ma Petite,” he said, softly.
She made her way over in the white terrycloth robe all the shacks had been stocked with.
“Sit,” he instructed.
She opened the only other chair and sat, eyeing him. He eyed her back, bracing to remove that sparkle from her pretty eyes. “You see that duct tape?”
She looked and nodded.
“You’ll use it to secure my lower legs to this chair. After you do that, I’ll tell you what’s next.”
“Oh boy,” she whispered, taking the tape from the table and kneeling next to his chair. Bishop waited quietly while she wrapped the tape several rounds.
“Like that?”
“More wraps,” he said.
She obeyed silently and he listened as that slim chance of rain in the forecast found their tiny tin roof.
“It’s raining,” she said quietly before asking, “Is that good?”
“It is,” he said, after testing the hold. “You can sit again.” She did and they stared at one another for many seconds. Her courage was already shaken. Good. “The name of your test is No Pain, No Gain. The test is straight forward. You’ll roll the Gauntlet Dice and pick the number you roll from the jar and follow what it says.”
The heat in her gaze and smile said she thought this was a marriage sex game. He fucking wished. She picked up the dice and rolled. “Seven.” Picking up the jar, she dug around for a paper with a number seven on it. He watched her open it and read. Then he watched her smile disappear and her brows pull together. “But…seven isn’t a low roll. This is a punishment. And…foryou.”
“I’m the Game Master in this test. I get to decide what the dice rolls mean. And as you can see, seven means pain. What does it say exactly?”
“That I have tocutyou with the knife on the table.”
He nodded. “Roll the dice to see how many times.”
She stared at him, confusion pinching her face. “What do you meancutyou?”
He nodded at the knife. “With that blade. You create about three inch slices on my skin with it. Roll to see how many you have to create.”
She stared at him for many seconds then stood, turning her back to him. She sucked in a huge breath and spun back around and rolled the dice.
