Chapter 21

Ophelia

Leaning against Alex's old pickup truck and staring at the burning house in front of us was almost empowering. The flames tried to destroy hell itself by lapping at the very bones of the structure that housed so much torment. Even though it seemed impossible, it was working. Engulfing, devouring, and cleansing the land of all the evil that was born and raised inside. Well, maybe not all of it. The man beside me had been spared.

Because of me.

Even though Alex was a part of them, I couldn't imagine him burning in that graveyard when he still had some signs of life. Some signs of humanity.

I lifted the hem of my shirt and wiped the sweat from my forehead. Alex reached over and wiped the trail of perspiration that rolled from my chest and slid down my belly. Goosebumps tightened my skin.

"I'd be dead if it weren't for you," he said, wrapping his hand around my waist and tugging me into him. He leaned in and kissed me. His breath smelled like smoke, like something ominous and dangerous. Like something that crawled from ash.

"And I'd be dead if it weren't for you," I whispered as I let his lips spread against mine.

"No, O. None of this would have happened if I hadn't abducted you."

I pulled away from him. He had no idea. "That's not true, Alex. Death was always on the table. Before you. With you. Maybe even after you. You forget what I've come from and what I have to go back to."

"No one else will ever touch you again." He reached out, wiping the sweat from my lower back and dragging my sweatpants down my thighs.

I stepped out of them and kept my hands clenched in fists at my sides, unsure about what was happening. I had wanted him to take me again, to prove that Gunnir hadn't dirtied me, but now that it was happening, I was so confused. There was no chain around my neck, no reason to comply to his demands, yet I wanted him as badly as he wanted me.

He lifted me until my legs wrapped around his waist. I balanced on the rusty fender as he backed me against the truck. He held me around his waist, unzipped his soot-covered jeans, and pulled out his cock. He pushed inside me with no inhibition.

Fucking outside of that home felt different. Almost wrong. Like I was allowing the chains to wrap around my heart.

Though we weren't right beside the house, the truck's metal had absorbed the fire's heat, and it burned the backs of my thighs as he fucked me. I watched the flames reach toward the sky, hissing as they consumed the shitty old farmhouse and all its shitty secrets.

The secrets pushing inside me now.

"Alex, stop," I said, the memories screaming as a fire of indecision scorched my soul.

He stopped, lifted my chin until my eyes met his, and shook his head. "No, O. You're mine, you will always be mine, and I need to claim your perfect pussy. I need to claim you outside of that house because you are my home now." He thrust inside me with enough force to take my breath away, then he gripped the truck's hood so he could fuck me harder. The way he needed to fuck me.

I watched the flames again, and another fire started inside me. Deep in my gut. I wrapped my arms around his neck and melted into him. I let him take my body. I let him own me like he wanted, and I began to accept and almost enjoy that ownership.

The friction rubbed between my legs, and the fire lapped at my insides, cleansing me of the hell that had resided within me for as long as I could remember. All the pain, hurt, and abuse that had tortured me long before Alex and his brother had taken me. It was like a controlled burn inside me, destroying the damaged earth of my soul and leaving the healthy growth behind.

I came around him, pulling his mouth to mine and filling it with my pleasure. His nails dug into the back of my thigh as my spasms drew his own.

"Come with me," I moaned against his mouth.

He did, and it was so fucking freeing. Sweat coated his chest and soaked my sleeveless shirt as he pressed against me, and I didn't care. We bathed in the heat and smoldered against the truck.

When he was sure I could stand on my own again, he retrieved the sweatpants. I steadied myself with my hands on his shoulders and stepped into them without bothering to clean up the mess between my legs.

He gave the house another glance and turned to me. "You ready to get out of here?"

"Definitely," I said with a nod. "Are you?"

His shoulders lifted in a noncommittal shrug. "I don't really have a choice. I just burned my house down," he said with a sly smirk.

A thought crossed my mind. "What about your neighbors? What if they call the police? Will anyone go looking for you?"

Alex shook his head. "No, we're miles from anyone else. This place used to be a pig farm, and it's got some acreage attached to it. The surrounding land is owned by farmers with a lot more acreage than us, so it shouldn't draw any attention. Folks around here keep to themselves. Some of them bring milk and eggs on occasion, but I can swing by and make something up before they show up again. Tell them we're planning to let the forest take the land back so we'll have more hunting area or something."

Why do you care?I asked myself. If this stunt landed him in jail, that would be one less moral dilemma to concern myself with. Yet I still cared and didn't know how to stop.

He tossed the keys at me, and I caught them and climbed in the cab. As we pulled away from the blaze, one thought kept running through my mind: Freedom felt weird. It felt even weirder to be beside Alex without a chain around my neck or the threat of Gunnir breathing down my neck. As he stared out the passenger-side window, I wondered if my version of freedom felt like captivity for him. He was willing to die in that house, so what could life possibly be like for someone like him?

We bumped along the potholes in the street, and I pushed the what-ifs from my mind. He directed me to the diner since I didn't know the backroads. Once the miles faded behind us and the diner came into view, I was back in familiar territory. My home was a walkable distance from the diner, down a winding sideroad that disappeared into the thick wall of trees. I walked most nights because I lived for the peace and quiet of that walk, but I wasn't sure I'd ever go out on my own again, especially not on foot at night. I'd be too scared of being taken and brought back into the flames of hell. I'd be afraid of another monster like Gunnir.

A shiver raked my spine at the thought of him. I still struggled with the memory of what happened. When my father did things, I disappeared into my mind, usually to a park, sitting beneath the bright, warm sun. I could feel the heat of that sun instead of his hands. I heard birds chirping instead of his grunts and groans. I felt the grass prickling against the backs of my thighs instead of his weight pressing me into the mattress. I tried so hard to live in that park when Gunnir was over me, but he kept me trapped in the moment, forcing me to feel every unwanted touch. Then Alex entered the room, bleeding and armed, and he did what I couldn't. He saved me.

As we passed the diner, I began to process where we were heading. From one hellish home into another. The familiarity didn't make it any easier. I kept wondering if we'd walk in and find my daddy dead, eternally passed out on that beat-up recliner. I prayed the alcohol had killed him, but with my luck, he'd still be alive, waiting to prey on me like he always had.

My lip trembled.

"You okay?" Alex asked as I pulled to a stop at the top of my driveway.

Without answering him, I hopped out of the truck and retrieved the money from its hiding place. I counted it out and was glad to see it was all there. I stuffed it back into the tin box and tucked it beneath the seat once I climbed behind the wheel again. "Where should we go?" I asked.

"Aren't we already here?" He looked around. "This is your place, right?"

"We don't have to go in there. We can—"

He gripped my hand. "Yes, we do. You saved me from my hell, and it's time for me to repay the favor. I won't let anything happen to you. Go to the house."

He didn't leave any room for argument. I put the truck in drive, and it rattled as we rumbled over the driveway full of potholes I never knew how to fix. There were a lot of things I didn't know how to fix, but I thought I could maybe try to fix Alex. I had no clue what I was doing with my captor. Bringing him into my home—a place that didn't feel any safer than his.

As the house came into view, my mouth went dry. What the hell would I say to my father? How could I explain where I'd been and why I'd brought a stranger into his sanctuary? The place that had been hell for most of my life. The place that haunted and hurt me in different ways.

I turned off the ignition, and the ancient engine sputtered to a stop, leaving us in silence. Alex's eyes trailed over the property with a boyish curiosity that almost made me smile. I wasn't sure what he was gawking at, though. There was nothing special about my old house. The crumbling concrete and mismatched siding showcased its age and condition. The grass hadn't been cut since I'd been gone, and the summer sunshine had fed it well. His house hadn't been much better, but I still found a flush of embarrassment creeping into my cheeks.

"What about your father?" he asked.

I swallowed hard. I wasn't sure what we'd walk into. It scared the hell out of me, but I had no choice. I had to be strong.

"Stay here," I said, though I wasn't sure why. Maybe it was to keep him from seeing how we lived. The graveyard of bottles. The corpses of dirty dishes and half-eaten meals that likely littered the counters. More embarrassment. Or maybe I thought it would be easier to speak to my father without Alex by my side. Either way, I felt it was something I had to do alone.

I took another step, but his hand clamped around my wrist.

"There's no way in hell I'm letting you go in there by yourself," he said, his voice firm and unwavering.

Again, he left no room for argument, so we got out of the truck, setting foot into purgatory the moment we stepped into the knee-high grass. The steps creaked with my meager weight as I placed my feet on them, and my hand lingered on the rusty metal doorknob as I worried about all the skeletons tumbling into the daylight once I opened that door. It wasn't just a closet full of them. They filled the house.

When I walked inside, the dusty smell of age welcomed me home. It was a scent that had been a staple my entire life, and it was all I'd known before Alex and his brother gave me something to compare it to. I hated the smell I bathed in at their house, but I couldn't decide which was worse: dust and mold or sweat and death.

Shame gripped me again as we entered the hall and I looked around. Through the kitchen doorway I could see the flies circling the moldy food residue on the plates scattered across the countertops. Empty bottles dotted the table in the hall. They hadn't been there when I left, which meant he'd managed to get more alcohol somehow. I wrapped my arms around myself and glared at the staircase my father often drunkenly climbed to get to me. I shivered at the memories.

Warm arms wrapped around me, and I jumped and turned around, trying to stop the panicked spasm in my throat, trying to slow my galloping heart before it broke through my sternum and landed on the floor.

"What's the matter?" Alex whispered, wiping the sweat that had gathered at my temples. "I've done some pretty shitty things to you, and you didn't react that violently. I didn't understand just how bad it was, but I think I'm beginning to." He set his jaw and looked toward the living room. I recognized that fiery look in his eyes. Someone was about to pay for their mistakes, and this time it wouldn't be me.