One of Many (9 page)

“Do you want me to fuck you, Little Bride?” he growls in my ear.

“Yes,” I pant.

Something is not quite right about Kiev. Hell, he watched his father force himself on me and enjoyed it. Though I like to think he did what I did—pretend it was him on me. I kept watching Kiev, imagining it was his fingers inside me again. The reaction I had was purely physical… I think.

“I’ll leave my door unlocked tonight. Or we could…” I look down the stairs behind me. “We have time.”

“You
are
a virgin.” Our lips meet again, and he puts both hands on my face, bringing it up to his.

The towel falls at our feet.

I kiss him harder, feeling like I get a piece of my old self back as each second passes. “When I fuck you, it’s not going to be over quickly.” His cock hardens against my stomach, and yet he pulls away, totally unashamed of his naked body.

Leaving the towel on the floor, he turns and walks away. “I’ll see you tonight, Little Bride.”

I’m standing there, breathless, staring at his muscular ass until he closes his bedroom door behind him.

I shake myself and pick up the towel, only to drop it in front of Kiev’s door. I go across the hall to my room and turn, looking at the entrance to Kiev’s room, hoping he’ll come back out.

Other than sex, I don’t know what Kiev wants, but I know what I want.

Out.

I want out of The Community, and I need his help.

Kiev

After softly closing the door and turning the latch, I stalk across my bare room, ignoring the mattress on the floor, the scarred but serviceable chest of drawers that holds a single photo, and move straight back to the bathroom.

I stand in front of the mirror, staring at the image I hate. That I can't forgive.

My gaze takes in the reflection in the mirror. You.

I hate
you.

You look like Weston.

I grip the edge of the vanity with my fingertips, grasping the plain white tile bullnose in a death grip. Curling my finger around the edge, threatening to break the tile just as I want to break him.

Fucking Little Bride.
It's her goddamned fault. If she wasn't so fucking
hot.
Needy.

Pure.

I
could
resist. But I can't. And I need her. I have to fuck up the newest wife to take down the cornerstone of the foundation for The Community.

Sucking in oxygen, I let deep exhalations rip, shuddering out of my large frame. Breath by breath, I settle.

Chill.

My dark gray-blue eyes, so like my father's, fall away from the muscular tatted guy staring at himself like a fucking reject and latch onto the scars covered by some of those inked designs.

A phoenix rising is centered on my chest, its colorful wings spread, edging my nipples like feathered lace as they splay with great detail across my pecs.

I work my body hard. It's what I can control.

Now.

When I was small, I wasn't in control. Weston was, and he never let his first child, from his only legitimate marriage, forget it.

I finally loosen one hand from the curved border tile and run light fingers over four small bumps near my right wrist as it clenches the edge of the vanity. A thick vein bulges underneath one of the perfect bumps.

My pulse moves that tiny pinhead bump in time with my heartbeat.

Tines.

That particular scar is from a fork. Stabbing me at seven because I questioned Weston.

It's difficult to see the tiny nubs of flesh within the design. A noose flows right over the dots, and some of the twine detail of the rope intersects the perfect row, making it look a part of the whole.

Sorta like the wives.

They intersect each other like the twining rope that hides one of the scars of my childhood.

It doesn't take a shrink for me to know I'm fucked up.

That seeing my father fuck his wives—and he knew I was watching—doesn't have something to do with my degenerate psyche now.

Weston was grooming me.

Audrey knows something is wrong. She should be running for the hills. But she can't run from what we’ve got, anymore than I can. We're like the two poles of the earth, forever seeking without meeting.

And soon we'll collide.

God help us when we do, cuz it isn't gonna matter that she's Chosen, or Weston fucks her, or my plan comes about or not—she's mine.

I don't love her. I'm too fucked up for that.

I raise my chin, looking back in the mirror. The gray part of my irises darken and are deadly. Resolute.

But if Weston touches her in violence again, I'm going to fucking
end him
.

My hand convulses over the tile.

The piece comes away, leaving raw, broken mortar in its wake.

*

My arms shake. I'm a dumbass to work myself more after I got cleaned up but
damn.

I need this.

I need to burn, to feel alive—in control. And pushing my body will make that happen.

I'm on push-up one hundred fifty with almost as many arm pulls behind me when a soft tap comes at the door.

My ass hikes in the air, and I stand, giving my bedroom door a hard glance.

I saunter over there.

Maybe Little Bride is thinking naughty thoughts. I sure am. About her ripe untried cunt.

I know I own it. Every slick, tight bit.

Weston doesn't know, and that's okay. By the time he finds out what's going down, shit will be too far along for him to stop what I set in motion.

I slap a palm on the doorjamb and rip the door open, then I hang on to the door as I lean forward.

Anna, wife number four, leaps back as if I punched her.

I smirk, not bothering to contain my disappointment that it's Anna at my bedroom door and not Audrey.

I've never seen her get the beef injection from Weston.

Nope. I was long gone to college by the time this wife showed up.

I undress her with my eyes anyway. She's made up all wifely: heels the exact shade of her dress, and her wrists, neck, and ears dripping tasteful jewelry.

I know what she wears underneath all the finery.

Fucking Weston's a huge perv. A perv that's shootinʼ blanks.

She'll have standard wife lingerie. Crotchless panties, nipples bare, with a scrap of lace underneath her rack for some support but not much else.

He likes
access
to the wives.

I don't give a fuck about Anna. She makes my cock limp.

Now Audrey—she's a completely different thing. When she's around, my dick is a plank.

My sarcastic grin notches up. “What do you want?” I tighten my grip on the jamb and lean farther, deliberately making her uncomfortable.

She takes a step back, and her golden-blond hair falls forward like a curtain. “A police officer is here to see Father Weston.”

Weird
. I feel my eyebrows shoot up. “Yeah? Why do I care?”

“Father Weston is at Worship, and the officer wants to question Audrey.”

Hearing her name makes me salivate. A person of authority putting the screws to Audrey gets my testosterone juices flowing.

“Where?” I bark, clenching my fists.

Her eyes skate to that small show of violence, and she retreats further. “Downstairs,” she whispers as she casts her eyes at the floor.

I dip down and snatch my bath towel outside the door of my room and toss it behind me on the floor. I think about walking away from Audrey earlier. Leaving my towel where we had a little make out. My dick twitches.

I catch Anna's eyes taking in my sparse room, and I slam the door behind me, blocking her view, and she drops her eyes again.

I stride to the top of the curved, solid-wood bannister, and Anna calls out, “Kiev.”

I turn, and her lip is trembling.

Fucking weak,
I think before I can stop the thought.

“Don't tell him anything.” Probably took all that she had to pull up her big girl panties to ask something of me.

Not part of the plan, whore of my father.
I don't speak, I just shake my head and charge down the stairs.

*

I make the corner that leads into the kitchen almost at a sprint and stop dead.

Audrey robs me of breath.

Of everything I am.

The sight of her in that kitchen looking so much like a Chosen I want to hurl chunks.

Instead I flick my eyes at the cop sitting comfortably at the kitchen table.

Well, that is until I showed up in all my punk-ass tatted glory. Sweaty and beefy from a brutal self-torture work out. I'm pumped, on edge.

The man takes my measure, and the cop has found me dangerous.

He'd be spot-on with that assessment.

His fingers hover over the butt of his weapon, and Audrey looks up in apparent surprise, overflowing the cup of coffee he holds. The dark liquid flows over the rim, slopping onto the pristine table.

“Oh!” Audrey says and jerks the carafe back to stop the flow.

“That's okay, Mrs. Weston.”

She gives a guilty flinch at the name, and briefly it occurs to me she could be a Mrs. Weston.

But not with my father.

“What's going on, Audrey?” I ask, and the cop's eyes storm.

“Kiev Weston?” the cop guesses.

I nod. “Yeah.” I never hand out personal information like candy. That's for pussies. I fold my arms over my chest. He can deduce all kinds of shit.

Audrey turns, facing me fully, and I get a load of the shit Weston bought her, the artful makeup covers the slap he gave her.

I'll give him this, he sure knows what to put her in.

Her hair is dark brown, her eyes a rich, uncompromising blue that contrasts starkly against all that hair.

She wears a dress of pure white, figure-hugging, clenching those huge, perfect tits of hers exactly right. The neckline isn't too low, and that's what's sexy.

The knit dress is just tight enough to make a man wish but not slutty enough to steal the mystery.

And though my mouth has tasted her, my cock burns for entry.

Right now. Cop present, kitchen table as our bed, I'd bend her over in a nanosecond.

“I'm Officer Langley,” he says, setting his coffee cup on the stained tablecloth and standing, his hand out for a shake.

I suppress my automatic disdain and take his hand. I add enough strength to make his eyes tighten at the corners.

I drop his hand as if he's got a communicable disease and go back to crossed arms. I know my posture is defensive.

Why do I know?

Little known fact, Father Weston had paid for a great education for yours truly at the South Dakota School of Mines.

I have a degree in chemical engineering. But I had to take a few humanities credits, and old Freud had been a favorite.

Now there was a
real
perv. The original.

When my body language is speaking for me, I know what it’s saying. I don't do shit without knowing I'm doing it. I'm broadcasting exactly what I want him to know. To think.

The cop isn't gonna get dick.

Weston wanted me out of here. He's loaded off the backs of his parishioners. Thanks to him, Weston pays for only the best for his kids—his wives.

I went. It had been a relief to get out of the house.

Now I'm done, internships finally over.

The prodigal son returns. The thought causes a sad ache that pulses deeply. I hold my breath against it, viciously squelching any kind of self-pitying bullshit.

I should be moving on with my life. Taking that great education in a sought-after field and moving far away, making bank anywhere but here.

But with education, time, and introspection come scheming. Like a natural outcrop.

After living through the horror of a childhood in The Community, I earned every minute of the expensive education Weston had paid for.

But I owe something to the half siblings I have, the other people who're being duped.

I can stop this. After all, I'm uniquely qualified.

But right now, this cop has entered our house, and that's either a great turn of events, or it's gonna accelerate my plan in a direction too soon.

Time to feel out Langley.

*

Langley spreads his hand inoffensively away from his body. “I'm not here to cause trouble. We're responding to a call.”

That's interesting.

I look around for a partner, and my eyes pick him out inside a squad car languishing out front. The Weston mess doesn't qualify for two cops.

Yet.

He pulls a little notebook out of his shirt, his pen poised. His deep hazel eyes search mine.

I don't pull my gaze away for a moment, knowing I'm giving him great blank face. “Where's your dad, son?”

“Worship,” I answer instantly. One word, clipped. You could shave off a nose with my tone.

His exhale is rough, and he turns to Audrey.

I tense without meaning to, and his eyebrow lifts, but he addresses her. “How old are you, Mrs. Weston?”

Fuck.

Audrey's large turquoise eyes roll upward to meet his. “Nineteen,” she says in a voice low enough we both strain to hear it.

I'd known she was young but fuck—hearing her say it makes that familiar rage burn through my veins, making one on my forehead pop.

“When did you marry Mr. Weston?”

“Father Weston,” she automatically corrects.

He tilts his head, acknowledging her words but not altering a single thing.

I watch her throat tighten. With a nervous swallow, I fight an unfamiliar sensation.

I want to comfort this wife.

I want to do her, but yeah, I am starting to feel something.

Fuck.

“Why?” She shoves a thick tendril of chestnut hair behind her hair, and I spring an erection.