Pray for Darkness (5 page)

It’s not. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I want to scream this at her. I want to just scream it. I want to break the person who didn’t think it was beautiful, who didn’t think it was worth protecting, who saw it and knew he couldn’t have it and so he took it because he knew that was the only way someone as ugly as himself could ever touch it. She wants to hurt someone, why couldn’t she ask me to hurt him? Why the fuck did she ask me to hurt her?

I just want to survive.

I just want to cry. I just don’t want this to be real. I can’t take it. I just can’t take it. I don’t want to be conscious anymore. I want to die.

Instead, I adjust my grip on her shoulders, making her wince. “If I don’t do this, are you going to go to someone else? Someone like that fucking hick back there in that seedy bar?”

“What I do doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, it fucking matters.”

“Why? It already happened. Who fucking cares if it happens again? Asking you was a mistake. It is better to go to a stranger.”

My rage spills out of me. “Oh, you think that’s fucking better? Some random asshole with his hands all over you? You think I can leave you alone if that’s the image you’re planting in my head, some thick, disgusting, hairy, crooked cock sliding in and out of your perfect pussy, his beer belly pushing up against your stomach, his grimy, rough hands on your tits, taking what it wants and giving you nothing in return, treating you like trash, treating you like you’re fucking nothing but a quick fuck, brutalizing you and not even fucking caring that you’re hurt, YOU THINK THAT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER?”

Her eyes are so wide they don’t look real. “It already happened.”

A weight falls over me. Crushing me. It hurts everywhere. “And you think it should happen again, then? Again and again and again and again…”

I’m choking. I can’t breathe. I can barely even fucking see. I shake her hard, knocking her head against the wall, and she doesn’t even try to get out of my grip, she doesn’t tell me to stop, she just falls against it like a rag-doll.

I stop and throw my forehead into the wall, resting my lips beside her ear. “What do you mean it doesn’t matter? How the fuck can you say that to me? How the fuck can you even begin to say something like that? I fucking love you.”

She inhales sharply. “I love you too, Trev. You’re like a brother to me.”

She doesn’t get it. Either that, or she’s trying not to get it. That last bit’s probably it.

“This is why I said you should go home,” she says.

“Why? So I don’t see you sneak back out again? Because that’s where you’re fucking going, isn’t it? Back out there to find some guy who is willing to hurt you because he doesn’t fucking care?”

“Eventually.”

For a second, I thought I didn’t hear her correctly. Surely, she couldn’t have just admit that point blank. But she did. She doesn’t even try to deny it.

I let go of her shoulders and plant my hands on either side of her head. I lean in real close so our noses are almost touching, so I can feel her sweet, Key Lime-flavored breath spilling out over my cheeks. She’s so beautiful. There’s nothing broken about her, no part of her that shouldn’t be worshiped and loved.

“I’m not gonna let you do that,” I tell her.

“Don’t say that,” she whispers. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because when you do, I want it to be you that hurts me.”

I go still. “What?”

She leans forward and places her palms on my chest. “When you talk like that, I can’t think of it being anyone but you. I shouldn’t have invited you over. I shouldn’t have asked. Because when you’re here, I can’t stop myself.”

My shoulders heave. “Stop yourself from what?”

“From taking what I want.”

All the blood in my body rushes to my cock. It’s aching. Agonizing. Pounding. And that same pounding throbs in my head. I’m so dizzy I’m going to fall.

“What do you want?” I ask dumbly.

“I know it’s wrong,” she continues, not answering. She arches her back and her stomach hits the bulge in my pants. I groan.

“What do you want?” I ask again.

Her lips are by my collarbone. Though only her breath touches me, my body reacts as if it were her mouth. I imagine her pink tongue slipping the inked patterns on my chest, her silky, dark hair catching in my fingers, her hands fumbling with the button on my jeans.

“I want you to fuck me hard,” she says in an deep, sultry whisper.

I let out another low sound in the back of my throat.

She continues, “So goddamn hard that I can’t feel anything anymore.”

It is the most fucked-up, stupid, lame pickup line I’d ever heard, and to my infinite mortification it’s working. My cock aches as it pushes against my zipper. “Shit.”

“I want you Trev,” she slurs. Her pupils are dilated, her eyes black. For a moment I think she’s drunk, but I know she isn’t. Her eyes are just filled with that passion I’d always dreamed of but never seen before.

I shut my eyes. “I can’t do this.”

She stands on her tiptoes and brushes her lips against mine. It’s not a kiss. It’s more like she’s just touching me to make sure I’m still here. “Then don’t. But I want it to be you.”

Every muscle in my body tightens. Aches. “This is so fucked up.”

“I know.” She reaches for my face, her fingers soft and delicate over my stubble. “I don’t care. I want you.”

It doesn’t take much coaxing after that. I have a feeling this is the stupidest idea I’ve ever had and I’ll regret it for the rest of my life, but I can’t not give her what she wants. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, and I’m too intoxicated to fully think of the cost to her or myself.

Her tits are smashed against my chest. She’s still in that slutty, low-cut outfit that shows off way too much skin. The kind of thing designed to ignite fantasies. She runs her tongue over my Adam’s apple.

I gulp. “What do you want me to do?”

She’s doesn’t stop licking—doesn’t stop undoing me. “You shouldn’t do this.”

“Like I’m going to let someone else do it.”

She steps back. Eyes me warily. “Maybe this is best. Maybe you have something to purge, too.”

“No. Don’t make this about me.”

“Are you sure? You said you loved me.”

I inhale sharply.

She pulls at the front of my shirt. There’s a splash of gesso near the hem; I guess it wasn’t as clean as I’d originally thought.

“I’m not worthy of your love, Trev. I’m not as beautiful as you think I am.”

“That’s not true,” I whisper.

“How can you say that when I’ve asked you to do this?”

I catch her hands and move us both back until she’s pressed against the wall again and the hard length of me is pressed into her soft stomach. I pin her hands above her head. “You trying to scare me away, sweetheart?”

Fear flickers in her eyes, but it disappears so fast it’s like I imagined it. “I feel like it’s our anniversary,” she says in a husky voice. “You’re supposed to hurt me.”

My grip on her wrists tightens.

“Harder,” she whimpers.

I can’t do this.

She’s shaking. Moving her head back and forth almost imperceptibly, like she’s trying to unsee something. Her hands flex until her fingernails scrape my hand, then unflex. She’ grinds her teeth in a tick-slide-tick-slide rhythm that bleeds into the subtle knocking of the overhead fan’s chain.

I can’t grip her harder than this.

She hones in on my hesitance. “If you’re not going to do this, then leave.”

I try to keep my voice and face impassive. “Oh, so now I have a choice?”

“You always have a choice, Trev. It’s me who doesn’t.”

She’s wrong. I don’t have a choice either. I never had any choice in whether or not I loved her. It just happened, and after that one moment of happening it just kept happening every fucking day of my life. I’ve tried to forget it. I’ve tried to stop it. Something like this sure as hell isn’t gonna break it.

I won’t look away. I can’t look away. I tried to leave and my body wouldn’t let me. If she wants to descend into hell, I’ll go with her. I’ll burn as she burns, cry out in pain as she cries out in pain. If she wants to be tortured, I will be her warden.

Her skin is as cold as metal bars. In my mind, I hear the door of the bird cage closing. I hear the lock clicking into place.
She wants to bind you to her pain. She wants to destroy you and herself
.

I don’t fight. I don’t try to free myself. Because love isn’t about improving yourself or the other person. It can be pure or it can be twisted. It can be your salvation or it can be poison. It can give you wings or it can be your prison. I look at her in all her broken, distraught, fragile entirety, and still think she’s beautiful. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

Chapter 5

Sasha

I know the moment I break him. He tilts his head to the side and the darkness he’s so admirably tried to restrain floods his eyes. Terror spikes through my veins, making me more aware of every panicked cell in my body. It won’t be like how it was in the car. I can’t flee this time. This time, I know he’ll come after me. Take me. Fill me with that the violent, dark passion that haunts me.

And I want him to.

Trevor clamps his hand over my throat, choking me. My vision goes dark for a second as he presses the heel of his hand into the sensitive hollow of my throat just above my chest.

It’s starting.

Instinct takes over. I twist my body as his free hand forces my legs apart. I kick his shins. He bites back a curse and pushes me harder against the wall, his knee digging into my inner thigh. The end table near the door, where I keep my keys and wallet, rattles. Something slides off and hits the floor.

My keys fall to the ground and he kicks them under the car. Later, I’ll have to crawl on all fours to get them. I’ll have to push this bruised, broken body over the pavement. I’ll have to crawl forward as gravel cuts into my skin and imprints my palms. I’ll relish the feeling because it is not him. I’ll relish the pain because it is not his. I’ll touch these marks that evening before I go to sleep and they’ll comfort me, because they are marks I gave myself.

But God is cruel. Those marks are also the first to fade. The marks that he left that I can see will take months to fully disappear. And the ones I can’t see never go away. They’re always there, waiting for me to fuck up and let them in so they can overtake me.

He slams my face into the wall. I turn my cheek as his mouth comes down on my jaw, teeth grazing my skin in a mockery of a kiss, and scream.

He slams my head into the car. Pain radiates from my cheekbone. I’m screaming. It’s daylight and I’m screaming. The sky is blue and I’m screaming. I’m screaming so loud but no one hears. No one comes.

“Sasha.”

I blink. I can barely make Trevor out in the darkness. We’re closer than we’ve ever been—than we should ever be. His face is a mask of shadows and strong, angular bones that don’t quite look human in this lighting.

“Why did you stop?” My voice doesn’t sound like my voice. I sound pathetic and helpless, like a child.

He grits his jaw before answering. “You don’t look like…”

“I’m not supposed to enjoy this, if that’s what you’re asking. This isn’t about me enjoying something.” I lower my lashes, then look up at him. “It’s about you taking what you want.”

“I don’t want this.”

His soft voice undoes me. Some part deep inside of me starts to break. I hate that it does; I hate that there’s anything left of me that isn’t broken.
Leave then! Leave me the fuck alone! I don’t want this either. I hate this. I hate this more than anything. But I can’t leave. I’m stuck in this fucking body that won’t stop hurting and I just want to fucking break it apart.

A part of me wants to pull him down with me, to break him too. I think I was willing to do just that until I heard his voice.

He’s a year younger than me. The difference doesn’t seem so great now, but it used to. I remember when I could run faster than him. I always teased him about it, and he said one day he’d beat me, and I told him that would never happen. He asked if I’d like to make a bet, and I said sure, the day you beat me I’ll do anything you want, just ask.

I remember how happy he was when he finally did beat me. He didn’t rub it in. He just looked back and smiled and held out his hand like he’d achieved something, like he’d become a man.

He never made me make good on that bet, and I never really saw him as a man. He was always the younger brother of the man I adored. I never really looked at him until now.

He’s beautiful. Every part of him is beautiful. His body, covered with careful and delicate designs and images he created, is as much of a work of art as his paintings. And he doesn’t deserve this.

“Go,” I tell him.

“No. I’ll hold you all night if I have to.”

I laugh. “You really don’t understand me.”

“You’re right. I don’t.”

“Well, let me clue you in on something. You holding me like that all night would be worse.”

He cringes. “Do you really want this?” Trevor’s voice is trembling.

“Don’t ask me again.” I bite my lip. The underside is scuffed. Funny, I didn’t even feel that happening. “And don’t hold back. If you can’t do that, then leave.”

Trevor’s eyes grow dark, so dark I don’t recognize him for a moment. It’s like everything I know of him slips into an abyss.

And then what happens next confirms it. This isn’t Trevor. This is some other dark creature that has inhabited his body. A demon I’ve summoned into this familiar, beautiful form. He’s going to try to frighten me—to try to get me to beg him to stop.

It won’t work. I’ve already experienced worse than anything he could do to me. And even if I hadn’t, I’d welcome a new and greater pain. I want to replace the memory living inside me—this fiery, horrific thing that threatens to drag me back down into my mind as I claw and bite and scream and beg for it to stop.

Trevor moves fast. The second he lets go of my hands, his are on my waist, picking me up. The throws me over his shoulder and my stomach hits hard bone. My ass is in the air. He holds down my thighs with one hand, grip powerful and impersonal.

I start to roll back and forth on his shoulder, pushing the bone deeper into my stomach, scratching his back, kicking at his torso.

I arch my back against the car and throw my torso forward. My hair gets caught in my mouth, in between my teeth, on my cheeks. I keep whipping my entire body back and forth, but each time I do I move a little less until soon I can only move my head. I keep struggling. I knock my head forwards and back. Pain shoots through my skull as my forehead hits his shoulder, and again when the back of my head hits the metal car, but I keep going as if I can’t feel the throbbing, sharp pain even though I can feel every second of it. Metallic tasting bubbles drip down my lips. I swallow, trying to force them back down—to get rid of that disgusting taste—and I end up swallowing my own hair. It itches the back of my throat. It makes me feel like I can’t breathe. It itches so much that for a second I stop fighting, I just try raise my hands so I can wipe my wet, hot, sticky hair from my face, and then I remember I can’t move my hands at all. I remember I can’t move anything.

I’m not strong. I’m nothing. It isn’t even hard for him to subdue me. I’m trying so hard and yet it’s nothing for him to overpower me.

Trevor throws me down onto the bed. He plants his arms on either side of my body. His face is enclosed in shadows, his chest rises and falls fast but it has nothing to do with him losing his endurance. It’s anger. It’s fear. It’s so strong I can almost taste it on my tongue, metallic and sharp like acid.

I push against him and he pushes me back down, hard. I cry out again. It hurts. It’s so familiar.
It hurts.

He pushes himself back onto his feet. “You’re not gonna try to run again?”

My hands shake as I bring my knees to my chest. I clamp them down and rock back and forth.

He lowers himself onto his knees. “Why not, Sasha? Why don’t you run from me?”

I shudder and my kneecaps hit my throat. He stays there, watching. “Why did you stop fighting?”

His fingers stab into me as they pry me open. My entire body tries to push him out. My stomach muscles and legs cramp as I try to push him out. I think if I just squeeze my cunt hard enough I’ll be able to block him from entering. My throat, hoarse from screaming, goes silent. My fighting limbs go still and tense. I stop everything and squeeze and squeeze. Even though he’s already torn through all of my defenses, I still think that last one can keep him out—that if I think hard enough and squeeze hard enough and wish hard enough he won’t make it past.

It doesn’t work.

And his fingers feel like the biggest thing I’ve ever had in me.

“God damn Sasha, talk to me.”

“I don’t want you to talk,” I whisper. “Keep going. Keep going or get out.”

“Sasha…”

“Hit me.”

He goes still.

“Hit me or get the fuck out!” I feel my eyes roll around wildly. I probably look crazy but I’m so far past caring.

He grits his jaw one last time, then moves over me, on top of me, smothering me with his strength—with his his lithe, beautiful, strong body. A hand whips out of the darkness to slap my cheek.

“You want this,” he whispers. “I’m only doing this because you want this.”

“
I know you fucking want this,” he says, smashing his mouth over my clit, his teeth into my clit. I scream against him. I arch up my hips and my pelvis hits further back into his mouth. His tongue moves over me, slow, slick, as I tear at his hair and beat down on his head. As I kick his shoulders and writhe against his face.

When he’s had enough of my fighting, he pushes me back up again, pinning my arms above my head. “I know you want this. Don’t tell me you haven’t fucking dreamed of this every moment of your goddamn life.”

He pushes up my dress. The fabric is so thin that it feels like his bare hands are touching my stomach as they run up my torso. He tears down the front of the dress. I’m not wearing a bra. One hand squeezes my breasts as he takes a nipple in his mouth, biting hard, subduing my arms with his other hand as I try to push him off again. I kick my legs, bucking, hitting my wall, hitting the bed on the floor. He’s on top of me, stopping me from moving, his hard body impenetrable, immobile, a terrifying stone.

He lets go to push my legs apart again. He gets on top of me. His rough stubble scratches me as he bites my neck, kissing me, wet and slippery. His knees press down on my inner thighs, pinning me, hurting, giving me more bruises to hide. His hard cock slides over my stomach, leaving a trail of precum. It feels like a blot of ink, like he’s writing something on me, branding me with something far more intimate than his name.

His thumbs slide into my cunt and he stops.

I’m wet.

Wet for him.

Wet like I want it like he said I did.

He gives me a slick, slow smile.

Trevor’s surprised I’m so wet. He’s disgusted by it. He has to be. I’m so fucking disgusted by it.

“Finish it,” I hiss between clenched teeth.

His hands are shaking between me, holding me open. He’s come this far. Why would he stop now? I feel my own wetness on his fingers as he adjusts his grip on my thighs.

“
You want this, don’t you? You want this as much as I do. You want this. Don’t act like you don’t.”

He hangs his head. He won’t look at me. And I think, he’s going to take his sticky hands and push me away and wash them clean. He’s going to leave me with this disgusting wetness I can’t wash away.

My upper lip curls up. “Finish it.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“Finish it.”

“I can’t, Sasha. I just can’t.”

I shut my eyes. The overhead fan sifts the stale air in my apartment, cooling the shame between my legs but not drying it. His voice is so sweet, so soft. It should comfort me, but all I feel is a hatred for him that immediately turns inward. What the hell is wrong with me? Why do I need this so much, especially when I hate it?

“Go.” My throat is so full I’m amazed I can speak.
Go so I can smash my head into the wall until I can’t think. Go so I can get in the shower and try, again, to wash away all this filth. Go so I can pretend I don’t feel anything, that I can’t be affected by anything, again.

He shifts, and the head of his cock hits my clit. He’s still rock fucking hard.

“I’m making you hate yourself, aren’t I?” I tell the dark. “You hate this, and yet you can’t control your body’s response. Isn’t it disgusting, how it makes these decisions for you? Isn’t it so fucking disgusting?”

His wet fingers slide further up my thighs as he pushes my legs apart. “I’m sorry.”

I fist the sheets. Now my face is wet. My neck is wet. More shame to be cooled by the air circulating form the overhead fan.

He situates himself between my legs. “I know you say this is what you want, but I’ll stop if you ask me to.”

He’s not telling me this, he’s begging. I don’t understand why he’s still doing it. He said he couldn’t. I should tell him to stop. I should stop it this time. I can stop it this time.

The wiry hairs surrounding his cock, wet from my cunt, stick to my legs. His sweat leaks through his shirt onto mine. I’m not here, I tell myself. I’m somewhere else. I’m not here. This isn’t happening. This never happened. I’m just imagining it. It isn’t real. It can’t be real.

My pulse quickens until it matches the tick-tick-ticking of the chain on the overhead fan.

Trevor is a mixture of dark blue smears in the darkness. He’s an artist, so he’d be able to name the colors. He’d create them with bold, strong strokes of his brush. This night is his painting, not mine. I can only watch.

I feel him at my entrance. The fan tick-tick-ticks, and I wait.

He inhales, and then takes me with one stroke.

The head pushes into me as I push back out with everything I have, but it isn’t enough. I already know I’m conquered. It slips in, inch after inch, claiming me real slow, groaning with pleasure. I hate the sound of his voice as he softly whispers sweet, dirty things—how tight I am, how much he loves this cunt. I hate the low, grunting sound he makes as he thrusts. I hate his smoky breath, crawling into my mouth, filling my nostrils with the taste of ash and him
.

I look up at the sky, past his hair. It’s still blue. It’s such a bright, sunny day. So beautiful.

“
Look at me,” the low, gruff voice demands. “Don’t you dare stop fucking looking at me.”

I shut my eyes.

“
Look at me.”