“We don’t have much time left.”
He lifted me up onto the table opposite of our dissection project, mouth crashing into mine.
His bloodied hands moved over the fabric of nightgown to grip my legs and spread them apart, I reached for his pants, unbuttoning and unzipping them.
Wasting not a single second, he gripped his base and guided the head of his cock to my entrance, forcing his way inside my pussy. The pain of his brutal intrusion brought on an immediate rush of wetness.
He grabbed either side of my throat to keep us both grounded. I locked my legs beneath his ass, holding onto him as tightly as I could.
I delayed opening my eyes due to the pounding in my head and the pain between my legs.
It took a moment for me to realize I was no longer in my bed. Something smooth and solid was beneath my back. I could feel the sun on my face.
Popping one eye open, I swiveled my head to the right. Why the hell was I in the tub? I blinked and used my forearms to push myself up. As images assaulted my brain, I scanned over my body trying to make sense of them.
I was in the same nightgown Alaric had put on me the previous evening.
There was not a speck of blood in sight, but one look at my thighs told a different story. My stomach dipped as I examined myself. My skin was bruised, nearly blue. The lips of my pussy were swollen as if it’d been pounded into for hours on end. There was no way I could have done this to myself…right?
Lifting myself over the side of the tub, I winced as I lowered my legs down to the floor. Something about this wasn’t right. I’d never spiraled so severely in all my life.
There was one constant at the center of my chaos.
Alaric.
None of this started until I’d slept beneath his roof.
Shuffling from the bathroom, I saw his side of the bed was made but mine wasn’t.
I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and checked the time. It was already noon. How had I slept so long?
Stepping forward, a vivid image of a brown mass bleeding in my hands floated to the top of my subconscious.
I eased myself down onto the bed and cradled my head. What the fuck was going on? It couldn’t be real. I knew it wasn’t. So why could I remember what it’d felt like?
I debated all day what to do.
Call my mother?
No.
Involving her would be a last resort. She was over dramatic enough about my small issues I couldn’t imagine how she’d react to this.
Chloe? She would probably hop on a plane and fly here herself. I wasn’t ready to drag her into whatever this was.
There was only one person in which I could discuss the madhouse that was my head, and he was the one responsible for waking the madness within it.
Probably.
I showered, diligent in how I touched the space between my thighs. When I was done, I slipped in my daisy sundress, not wanting anything to rub against me.
Alaric still wasn’t back yet.
Food having no appeal to me, I ventured around his house. I’d opened a few random doors before but there wasn’t anything interesting behind them. His room was one I could never access. He ensured that barrier was not crossed. I’d seen his massive bed and knew the color scheme went perfectly with his personality but that was the extent of it.
Finding myself back inside the room that was supposed to be the main reason for me being here, I lowered myself in the center of the room with one of the lighter boxes.
I didn’t open it right away.
Instead I pulled up our messages and scrolled through them, going as far back as they could, obsessively noting any and all mention of the man she proclaimed to be her husband.
Not once had she written his name. That was weird. Maybe it was just me. I swiped down again until I got to the last message, she ever sent me. It was dated three weeks ago. I found that eerie in the sense that was so closed to when she passed. She’d said she was sorry. Often her correspondences didn’t make sense of seemed to have come out of order.
I never thought much of it but seeing the message she’d seen two days before it had a cold chill sweeping down my spine.
He’s taking me to the Garden.
“The Garden,” I repeated out loud. “Dream Garden.” That was the name of Alaric’s clinic.
He could have simply taken her there because, well, it was a medical facility.
Reading through her erratic messages combined with his lack of emotion where she was concerned, I highly doubted that scenario was the case.
I swallowed, looking around her room as if an answer would present itself. I didn’t know who my sister was, had no connection to her whatsoever other than the man who’d married her because of a deal of some kind, but this whole situation grew more suspicious with every detail I learned.