Terrorscape (32 page)

He cursed at her when she pulled away, and blew
on his damp skin. “Fine. We'll play it your way.”
She stroked his cheek with her nails. “We always
do.”

Then she was beneath him again, and he kicked
of his pants and yanked down her dress, closing his
mouth over one of the pink nipples as he worked the
silk off her small hips. Her skin was as pale as his was
dark, and had always vaguely reminded him of
cream. He lapped at her as if it were, suckling and
biting, and his hand slipped between her legs. “What
will your husband say when he finds out you're not a
good Catholic virgin?” he purred. “I imagine he'll be
disappointed.”

“I'll
think
of
something,”
Anna
breathed.
“Maybe…oh…maybe I'll tell him I was ra—aah—
ped.”

“Mm, it's a pity you won't let me teach you how
to play chess,
mi cariña
.” His lips moved back to her
mouth, fleetingly, before he returned his attention to
her other breast. “You're so cold-blooded, I imagine it
would come as naturally to you as breathing.”

“Well, that's no good, is it? Because I like a
challenge.”

 

His fingers probed deeper. “Oh, but think of the
countless men you'd destroy.”

 

“Tempting.”

 

“Think of…all the things I could do to you on that
chessboard.”

 

“Slightly more tempting.”

“Taking your king with my queen,” his fingers
continued their cruel assault, “Over and over. And
perhaps…if you're…very good…we'll try playing
with just the pieces.”
“
Very
tempting.”

God, just when she started to get bored, he
reminded her why she let him keep coming back. His
incredible body, his sinful mouth, those laughing
Moorish eyes, the way he could make her scream so
loud that she often marveled that her voice didn't just
snap like an overstretched rubber band.

Anna closed her eyes, arching her back, and she
dug her hands into his scalp, twisting the soft tufts of
black hair to keep him in place. “Harder,
Ragazzino
.”

He bit her hard, and his hand was replaced by his
cock. Which was exactly what she wanted. She
laughed, delightedly, like a little girl. “Little boy?” he
said, arching an eyebrow.

“Prove me wrong.”

He exhaled and braced his arms on either side of
her head. “If you were as poor of a lay as you are a
liar, I'd be out the door.”

She choked when he slipped partway inside her,
in one smooth single stroke that made her feel like she
were butter and he was a hot knife.

“So you admit I'm good,” she said, looking up at
him through her lashes with clashing shyness.
“I never said that. You're acceptab—
aah
.” She
bucked her hips, pushing him deeper inside.

She smiled at him in triumph; a smile that
disappeared when he said, raggedly but nonetheless
coldly, “I'll leave you like this, half-finished, if you
don't stop smirking at me like that.”

And then they both stopped speaking, except for
their moans and gasps of pleasure. She wrapped her
legs
around his
waist. Anna had always
loved
watching his face during coitus, the way his full lips
swelled from their violent kisses making them look
even fuller when parted with desire, his eyes closed,
the thick sweep of eyelashes smeared across his
cheekbones like black charcoal.

He was a dark angel. She wanted to sculpt him,
and then she wanted to smash him.
He laughed into her hair as he came, and
delivered a final thrust with a vibration that made her
bones quiver and melt. Anna couldn't have walked if
she tried—and he knew it, the smug bastard. He
grabbed the tie she'd discarded earlier and picked her
up, carrying her to his bed.

“What if I get pregnant?” she asked him, before
he lashed her to his bedposts for the second round.
He was allergic to latex and she hated anything that
deprived
her
of
sensation,
so
they
never
used
condoms. She knew it was foolish, but life wasn't
worth living without a few risks.

Damían thought it over. “Hmm.” He kissed her,
languorous and deep, as he dipped his fingers into a
glass of wine on the nightstand. “Better hope he takes
after me, not you.” He trailed the scarlet liquid over
her body, and both of them watched the liquid trail
across her skin like blood. Then he bent his head and
licked it all off before the wine could soak into his
sheets.

“Fool. It doesn't—oh that's nice—work like that.
Children inherit half both their parents' genes.”
Damían rested his forehead against hers, an ironic
twist to his mouth. “God have mercy on the world.”
Forward

This next story was the result of a lost bet. I forget
what the terms of the bet were, but it was with a very
evil woman who decided that I should be made to
write a story about incest.

Yes, it
was
inspired by
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
.
Right-o. Back to the cringing corner of shame.

 

En Prise

Anna
Mecozzi
sat
on
the
shaded
porch
of
Wolverton Manor, basking in the dying light of the
magnificent New England sunset. She charmed her
newest suitor with hard lemonade in tall, frosted
glasses while her children played in the yard.

“Predators and prey” was a popular favorite
among the Mecozzi children.

Eight-year-old
Celeste
was
running,
hand-inhand with her twin brother, Dorian. The two of them
giggled and screamed as their eldest brother chased
after them. The twins split up—Dorian shoving his
sister aside to make a break for the grove of willows
that surrounded the dried-up koi pond. “Cheater!”
she cried, which quickly dissolved into a wordless
shriek of terror.

Gavin pounced, pinning his younger sister to the
ground. His lips brushed her throat, over her jugular
vein, and he bit her lightly. “You're dead,” he
breathed, and her heart jumped. Then he leaned back
on his heels and patted her cheek, and the chase
started anew.

While
roles
were
frequently
tried
on
and
exchanged, like a bit of fancy dress, some were set in
stone. Fifteen-year-old Gavin, twelve-year-old Luca,
and thirteen-year-old Anna-Maria were always the
predators. Always.

Luca wasn't at all fast, but he was strong—
particularly for his age. He also had a temper and the
younger children liked to tease him, but it was like
poking a sleeping crocodile. Eventually he would lose
what patience he had and then grab the nearest
offender at hand, pinning them down with his
substantial bulk until they couldn't breathe. Groveling
was the price of freedom; the amount varied with the
degree
of
his
anger
and
the
intensity
of
the
provocation.

Anna-Maria wasn't all that strong at all, despite
what she liked to think, but she was fast. Sometimes
two
or
three
children
working
together
could
overpower her. A favorite trick was to have one child
grab Anna-Maria's legs to make her stumble. Then
two of them would sit on her. Retribution always
followed such attempts, though, and it was as swift as
it was cruel. Anna-Maria knew her brothers' and
sisters' weaknesses and secret fears, and had no
qualms
about
exploiting
them
on
the
slightest
pretense. She had once locked Celeste—then six—in
the hall closet with a couple of wolf spiders, for
embarrassing her in front of a boy she had fancied at
the time.

Wolf spiders weren't poisonous, but they did
enjoy a bit of a chase themselves. It wasn't until
Celeste's screaming stopped abruptly that AnnaMaria opened the door to let her out, only to discover
that her youngest sister had passed out from terror—
after wetting herself.

Gavin was both fast and strong, but not quite as
strong as Luca would someday become, nor as fast as
his
sister
already
was.
The
children
almost
unanimously agreed that he was the best predator,
however, because he was the only one who performed
his role “correctly.” He gave them a taste of fear,
accompanied by the seductive whispers of power and
death. He made them aware of their own fragile
mortality and, best of all, he made it appealing.

Luca was fun to annoy, and Anna-Maria was fun
to threaten each other with, but Gavin they took
seriously and approached with caution. He was not
incapable of being cruel—in fact, in many ways he
surpassed even Anna-Maria in his innovations—but it
was
not
a
weapon
he
wielded
high-handedly.
Ambiguous fear, he believed, was often far more
potent than the kind that is upfront.

Anna-Maria both loathed and respected her older
brother. She respected him because he was powerful
—intelligent, strong, and wildly handsome, and she
wanted those things for herself. She loathed him
because he had those things and she had no way of
taking them from him they way she could with more
tangible things like her mother's diamond jewelry.
She loathed him more because he was a man, which
automatically meant people took him more seriously.
She loathed him most of all, though, because she was
in love with him.

But he doesn't take me seriously
, she thought,
watching him rolling around with Leona like a young
panther, while Dorian and Celeste climbed all over
him.
The
sight
filled
her
with
a
dryness
that
demanded to be quenched. Anna-Maria walked over
to her four siblings and they looked up as she
approached. Gavin was on his knees, with a child
hanging off each arm, and Leona grabbing onto his
neck as if trying to ride him like a horse.

“Off,” Anna-Maria said to her ten-year-old sister
imperiously. The little girl released her brother with a
sulky
pout.
“You
two—hold
him
still.”
Celeste
hesitated, glancing at Dorian, and the two of them
tightened their respective grips on their brother's
arms, keeping them behind his back.

Anna-Maria dropped to her knees, so her face
was level with her brother's. She looked him dead in
the eye and then began to unbutton his shirt, quickly
and precisely. He had already started to get hair on
his chest and a line of it trailed down from his navel,
disappearing into his slacks. His body was far better
than any boy she'd dated so far. She raked her hands
nails over his exposed belly, tracing the grooves and
ridges of his emerging abs.

It wasn't fair.

Gavin watched her impassively and that annoyed
her. Though she was only thirteen, men were already
aware of her. With her long legs, tanned skin, and
thick blonde hair, she turned heads. And Anna-Maria
liked the feel of their eyes on her, desperately
grasping for purchase. It made her feel powerful
knowing that they were stripping away her clothing,
layer by layer, trying to picture what lay beneath. She
liked that she could play them like pawns by using
her body as collateral. She liked the fact that the law
was on her side, as a minor, which meant she didn't
have to pay.

Gavin just looked bored, and a little annoyed.
“What do you think you're doing?”

 

“Just getting a better look at my darling big
brother,” she purred, leaning her forehead against his.

“You can look just as well from afar. I'm not one
of your devoted denizens,” he sneered.
“No, that you're not,” Anna-Maria agreed. She
rubbed his nipple between her thumb and forefinger,
slow
and
teasingly
seductive.
“I'm
not
sure
I
understand why, though.”
“Because I see right through you,” he said softly,
“And you're a vain, silly creature who thinks she's a
hunter but really, dear sister, you're just a harlot. Your
so-called prowess is superficial.”
Anna-Maria pinched him hard. He didn't flinch.
“You should talk. I know things about you, Gavin.
Things about your father. Mother says he was a sick
son of a bitch.” She pressed her lips against his neck,
determined to elicit a reaction from him. The skin of
his throat was supple and yielded to her pearly teeth
as she caught his vein between them. “You take after
him, supposedly.”
“I wouldn't know.”

“No,
you
wouldn't, would you? But mother tells
me things she would never dream of telling you.
Apparently he was like a tiger in the sack.” Her hand
dropped from his chest and she squeezed him
roughly between his legs, causing his jaw to clench.
“Hung like one, too. You are sick, aren't you, Gavin?
Getting turned on by your own sister? Your
thirteen
-
year-old sister.” She squeezed him again, in a long,
fluid jerk that made him gasp. “You're such a twisted
fuck.”

Growling, Gavin batted Celeste and Dorian aside
and tackled her, pinning her down as he had Celeste
when he had been chasing her in the garden. AnnaMaria laughed delightedly. “You know you want me,”
she purred, smiling into her livid brother's face. “All
men do. But you, especially.”

“Wrong,” he said coolly.

She laughed again, and it tinkled like ice. “Then
why are you hard for me, dear brother?”
He slapped her. It was a casual slap, not meant to
hurt so much as to humiliate. “You shouldn't be
talking like that,” he snarled. “Thirteen is too young
to be a slatternly whore.”
“Oh, don't worry,
big
brother. My virtue is still
intact. In case you want that pleasure for yourself.”

“I don't want any woman even remotely similar
to you or mother. But especially not you.”

 

“Ooh, could it be that big brother afraid of
meeting his match?”

“Even if that were the case, you would still be
exempt. Look at you. Hardly a challenge.”
Her saucy look vanished, making her face look
cold and hard. “Really. Do your tastes run younger,
then, Gavin? Have you got your eye on Leona and
Celeste?” she added, gesturing at the blonde-haired
eight-year-old
and
the
dark-haired
ten-year-old
watching wide-eyed nearby.
“Don't be ridiculous,” he scoffed. “There's no
pleasure to be had in taking a child. I want someone
innocent. Somebody passive whom I can control, and
teach how to pleasure me. Not somebody who
already thinks she does know, and will fight me every
step of the way for control.”