Playing with Monsters (4 page)

Chapter Four

I had expected Todd to be here, and I’d expected that slice of pain to rip me apart, and yet I felt nothing. I waited, expecting it to come. Any moment now I would feel that cold, gutted reaction that I’d felt when I’d caught him screwing Cassidy. Only it never came.

My eyes left him and settled on Lucian, who watched me intently. My heart skipped and restarted with an alarming beat that I was afraid he could hear from where I stood across the room from him. I felt his eyes as they slid over me without even bothering to hide the hungry look in their inky depths. His eyes reminded me of a wolf who was sizing up its prey.

A soft blush spread across my face as I realized my eyes had been doing the same as his, sizing him up and finding nothing lacking. He wore the suit perfectly; each well-defined curve of his body was visible even in the dimly lit room.

I was so caught up in this man that I didn’t realize Todd had moved until I felt his hand on my cheek, and turned to look at him. His mouth crushed against mine before I knew his intentions, and instinct—or self-preservation—kicked in and I pushed him away.

“What the hell?” I whispered angrily. I wiped my mouth off with the back of my hand and felt angry tears as they started to rise with the knowledge that half of the room was now watching our exchange. Including Lucian.

“I fucked up, Magdalena, I know it, but not a day has gone by since you left that I haven’t thought about you.”

I waited for my heart to ache, or shatter, but nothing happened. The only emotion I felt was anger, and that was because he’d kissed me. Here, in a crowded room with men I could potentially be paired up with at the ritual.

Before I could reply, he’d dragged me out onto the dance floor as hushed whispers went up at the sight of us together.

“This isn’t a good idea,” I hissed beneath my breath.

“I don’t care what they say,” Todd replied as he tried to lower his mouth to mine. I turned my head away from him.

“Kiss me again, Flanagan, and I’ll cut your lips off,” I warned.

“I’m a good choice for the ritual, Lena. Your mother will approve of me, and I am sure our ancestors will bless us as well,” he assured me.

“I don’t want you back,” I said after I’d managed to shut down the anger. I looked at him and shook my head. “You didn’t just screw up, Todd, you lost me forever. Doesn’t matter what the ancestors say—you and I? It’s never going to happen, ever. I think the ancestors will take that into consideration during the ritual; they wouldn’t be that cruel, I’m sure.”

“No, I’ll fight for you; you will be my wife.”

“You lost that chance when you screwed someone else on my bed. You’d be fighting me, Todd, because I’m the only thing that stands between us getting back together. It took me a long time to figure it out, but the truth is I don’t love you anymore. I thought if I faced you tonight, that it would hurt. It doesn’t, I feel nothing. The pain isn’t there anymore, so maybe you saved us both from making a big mistake.”

“We weren’t a mistake,” he growled as his fingers bit into my sides where he held me to dance around the floor. “I won’t give up on us, as you apparently already have.”

“I forgive you, Todd, but listen to me. I don’t want us back. You and me? We were done the moment you slept with Cassidy. You made a choice, and it is okay now. At first, I admit, it broke me apart. If you had loved me enough, you wouldn’t have slept with her, but you did. It’s in the past, so leave it there.”

I pulled away from him and headed to the doors that led into the garden. I could feel him watching me, and I needed to get fresh air, and distance from him. Whatever I had once felt for him was now gone; there were no butterflies when his lips touched mine, no overwhelming need to hold on to him. I felt relief. I almost felt sorry for him, and, in a weird way, thankful that he’d done what he had.

If he hadn’t slept with her, we probably would have married, only to discover that we were just stupid kids who thought we’d been in love and we probably would have separated once reality set in. I smiled as I pushed through the crowd and headed to the doors.

Outside was beautiful. The sky was clear, allowing the stars to shine brightly from their lofty perch in the midnight sky. The air was cool, but after being inside, it was welcome. My eyes found the overgrown hedge maze and misted at the memories of my brother that arose.

We’d spent an entire summer redoing it since we hadn’t been able to afford for it to be done by a real gardener. It was well over a mile long, and a mile wide, and was situated between our property and the abandoned mansion that belonged to the connecting property.

In the middle of the maze was a fountain, which had been beautiful once upon a time, but hadn’t been maintained since the other property was now empty, and we didn’t have the knowledge or money to have it refurbished. Josh and I had carried buckets of water from the lake to fill it, after we’d managed to clean it up. My arms had never hurt so bad in my entire life once we’d managed to fill the damn thing.

Slipping out of my heels, I walked to the high arch that signaled the beginning of the hedge maze, and ducked beneath an overgrown limb that cut off the entrance. The sides of the maze stood a lofty six and a half feet tall.

I wiped at a tear as I entered the shadow-filled maze. Once, when I was about six, I’d gotten lost in the maze and at the time I’d been terrified of it. It had felt like forever that I’d been lost in the overgrown, unkempt thing. What felt like hours had merely been minutes, but the feeling of being lost and alone had made me thankful when Joshua had found me, not too far from the entrance, crying as if the world had just ended. He’d swept me up and carried me to the house, assuring me that he would never leave me and if I was ever lost again, he’d be here to find me and bring me home.

We finished the maze a week before he’d shipped off for boot camp, and I’d spent countless days afterwards planting flowers and herbs inside the maze to impress him when he returned home.

He’d never come home, though. Straight from boot camp he’d been stationed in Georgia, and from there he’d been shipped overseas. I wouldn’t see him again, until he was brought home in a casket for burial. I missed him, and everyone had said that with time, the pain would lessen. They lied; it didn’t get easier. In fact, some days I woke up missing him and went to bed still missing him. Time didn’t heal shit. I adapted, learned to handle the pain better, but it was always there. Occasionally it would become so suffocating that I thought it would consume me, but I didn’t let it. Time didn’t heal the loss of death; you either learned to manage it and accept it, or you didn’t. You either lived with it, or you didn’t. Life was about choices, and the big ones always sucked.

I swallowed past the memories and stopped to look around. How long had I been walking, lost in my head? I spun around, looking for any of the herbs or flowers I’d planted; since they were annuals, they’d return the next year. I couldn’t see any of them, and the maze was bathed in shadows that fueled my imagination.

I heard a twig snap close behind me and turned to see who had wandered in after me. My hair flew up as a gust of wind filled the maze and I felt a prick against my flesh and then pain. I cried out and moved my hand to where I could feel the drop of blood as it slid from my arm. I looked around slowly and then took off in the direction I’d come from, only to round the corner of the maze and slam into something hard.

My face ached, and I fumbled on the ground where I’d fallen in the collision. My hands lifted to feel whatever had smashed my face, and touched something thick and soft. I felt it and pushed my hand around it. My sight finally came back as the stars dimmed; I looked at what my hand was holding, and swallowed a gasp that was stuck in my throat.

“That’s mine,” a deep growl resonated, along with a familiar voice.

My eyes darted to the penis in question, which was making its presence known through his slacks, and it was favoring the right. It hadn’t felt like a dick; it felt more like a freaking snake! A
giant
one. I blushed as I backed up, still on the ground, aware that he was watching my clumsy effort to gain some semblance of dignity back.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to grab your…penis.”

Seriously, of everything I could have grabbed on to, it had to be his penis? This world was cruel. I slowly got to my feet and dusted my dress off as I looked up at him.

“You shouldn’t be alone out here; there are hungry wolves in the woods,” he purred, and as his lips curled into a smile, I shivered. It wasn’t a friendly smile, more like the Big Bad Wolf’s smile right before he ate poor Little Red Riding Hood in one swallow.

“Is that so?” I asked with a guarded look.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, his eyes raking over my bust line, which was doing little to hide the girls thanks to the fall I’d taken.

I could have fixed them, but I didn’t want to turn around and give this man my back. Something inside of me was terrified of him, and I wasn’t sure why, or what it meant.

“I own it; why are
you
here?” I countered.

“
I
own it,” he said with a narrowed glance at me.

“Don’t think so; the property line is split with the maze. Half is on our side. The other half is abandoned property,” I said, my voice trailing off as he started walking around me, forcing me to turn with him to keep my back away from him. “Like what you see?” I asked when he stopped and lifted his hand to my cheek, or I thought it was to my cheek; instead he pushed a stray tendril of hair away from my face and tucked it behind my ear.

“I assure you, Lena, that I do in fact own the maze,” he said with a confident smirk that I wanted to slap off his face as his words repeated in my head. “Are you as innocent as you look, or is that just an act for all the boys who want to plant their seed this year?”

“I never said or did anything to lead anyone to that conclusion. I’m not a virgin. Not that it’s any of your business,” I murmured angrily.
Seed
, who the hell called sperm
seed
in this day and age?

“Good,” he said with a look that squashed and devoured any objection or argument I might have had.

“Good?” I asked as I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him.

“Is the boy in line to pluck your petals?” he asked with a look that said he already knew the answer, but wanted to hear it anyway.

“Todd and I have history,” I whispered, unsure why I felt compelled to divulge anything to this man. He did as I was doing, and kept his back to the maze wall.  Where I probably looked small and insignificant against the wall, he ate up the space with his presence. Making it to where he dominated it with his presence.

“You fucked him,” he announced with a narrow-eyed look of annoyance.

“No,” I said as I shook my head. “I was going to marry him, but it never happened.”

“Because a woman like you needs a man who can control her?” he snorted.

“No one can control another human being,” I snorted right back.

His mouth curved into a sexy smirk and his eyes smiled as if I’d just presented him with a challenge that he thought funny. “No?”

“No,” I repeated. “No one can control someone else.”

“Control is easy to obtain,” he stated as he stepped closer to the spot where I forced myself to stand my ground.

Everything inside of me wanted to haul ass back to the party. To find safety inside the house cluttered with people. A sane person would have played it safe and run when faced with a man who was talking of control. Me? I remained rooted to the spot, knowing that if I gave an inch, he’d take a mile.

“Is that so?” I uttered as I adjusted my head to follow his eyes as he moved closer.

He took another step, and I tried to remind my legs that now would be a good time to beat feet and run home. Was I scared? Fucking terrified. My heart was beating hard; my chest would probably bear proof of it in the morning with bruises from the continual assault of it tonight. My body reacted, and he hadn’t even touched me! I felt a moan slip from my throat and I fought to hold it in, to never let him hear it escape from my lips.

His eyes demanded obedience and something else, something dark.

“I know what you need, little girl,” he said roughly, as if he’d swallowed gravel. 

“And what’s that?” I whispered.

“You need someone who isn’t afraid to give you what you need, what you crave. What you yourself are afraid to ask for. Any real man would have felt that need; I did. It’s why I took your lips without asking. It’s why I kissed you. You needed it, that subtle reminder that you’re a woman, and you’re confident, aren’t you, Lena? You let it slip, though, ever so slightly. You’re not looking for romance, are you? No, didn’t think so,” he said as his hands cupped my breasts and I looked down to watch him as his thumb deftly lowered the top to expose a nipple. I gasped as he rolled it between his fingers, and my eyes moved to his as his mouth lowered to press his hot breath against my ear. “Sometimes we don’t care about the romance; it’s the sex we are after. The feel of flesh against flesh, and the intense need to soothe the ache,” he hissed as his teeth bit my ear gently.

I moaned, unable to contain it. I felt the sensation in my stomach as it swirled to life, hot and untamed. My panties were getting wet from his words alone, but his touch, his touch made me wild with need, a need I had never felt before. I bent my neck, giving him more room to work with even though I knew I should stop him.

I wasn’t this girl, the one who came to the party and lost her morals. I’d been there, and done that. The moment his thumb trailed across my lips, I opened my eyes to find him watching my horrified reaction to his seduction. Still, I didn’t stop him. Not even when he started lifting my dress with a cocky smile on his face.

His hands on my legs turned them to boneless flesh, but a well-placed hand on my back seemed to work well enough to hold me up. I knew what he was about to do, right here in this maze. Anyone could catch us, and it excited me.

“You have a dark side, little witch; let it out to play,” he demanded in a deep growl of authority, and two things drew me back to reality. One, I didn’t even know him. Two, I wasn’t about to let my dark side out to play with anyone. It was like a splash of cold water.

“Stop,” I whispered as I struggled to get my bearings. I pushed away from him and he let me with a cocky smile, as if he knew I would. “I can’t do this.”

“That’s because you’re not ready for something like me yet. You’ll get there, Lena. No one else could handle the fire in your eyes. Unless I’m wrong about you,” he said, and his tone was almost insulting as his eyes trailed over my exposed nipple, which just happened to be hard and throbbing, as was my wet pussy. “Go back to the party; be young for a little while. Have pretty babies and live a boring life, as is the coven’s decree.”

His sudden change in attitude brought my anger to a rolling boil. “Screw you,” I whispered angrily as I righted myself and fixed my dress.

“I almost screwed you just now, little girl,” he growled back.

“Maybe, but you didn’t succeed, did you?” I said in challenge. I regretted it instantly when I caught the look in his eye. He had just become someone else; cold, detached, and confident.

“If I wanted to fuck you, I would have. You’re ripe for the taking; this body? It’s pent up from being denied what it needs the most, which is to be fucked hard and relentlessly for hours until you’re nothing but a quivering mess. Right now your mind may not like the idea of fucking me, but your pussy does. Judging from how wet it just was, it seems to like the idea of being fucked by me a lot.”

“Go to hell,” I said through clenched teeth.