Page 24 of The Black Lotus
“Just took a blood thirsty fox to awaken it,” I purr, turning around to place my hand on his chest.
He leans down, placing a soft kiss against my lips. “Now I crave something else.” He grips my waist, and lifts me effortlessly, walking us back to the table to place me back on it as I wrap my legs around his waist.
He tears off his shirt, primal hunger tensing every muscle. Ripping his pants down, he jams his cock into me hard and deep.
I scream out his name while my fingers rake down his back, leaving red marks in their wake. My tattooed leg hangs freely as he lifts the other and thrusts deeper, stronger, careful not to hit it.
“No toy can satisfy you the way I can,” he grunts.
“No toy is as big as you,” I gasp, “or can go as deep.”
His hands grip my hips with bruising force, tugging me closer to the edge until my ass hangs off, going further in than he ever has before, making my whole body lift off the table and my hands wrap around his neck. Up and down I bounce, his hands gripping my ass to keep me suspended on him. He walks us to the wall under the window, my back slamming against it. My moans and his grunts combine to create a hauntingly beautiful symphony. Over and over he pounds into me, my desire rising higher and higher until we explode together, bathing the room in our cries of pleasure.
Panting and breathless, he slowly lowers me to the ground, holding on to make sure I don’t fall over. I lean my head on his sweaty chest, and he presses his lips against the top of my head.
Our bliss is interrupted by Aster's phone going off, the alert telling us someone has entered the property. My breath locks in my chest. Both of us start panicking, grabbing our clothes andputting them back on as quickly as we can. I’m careful not to touch my tattoo as I peer over his shoulder and see someone with cinnamon hair enter our house. Their mouth is hidden under a mask, the curves outlined in the tight black clothing they’re wearing. My shock quickly morphs to rage.A girl is in our home. Who the fuck does she think she is and how did she get in?
She makes her way into our living room and steals Aster's old and ratty stocking he got when he was at the orphanage. He hasn’t told me much about his time there, but I know it was bad and that his stocking is important to him. It’s well past Christmas, but with everything going on, we haven’t had the time or energy to take down our stockings, even though they were the only things we managed to put up.
She grabs an envelope out of her jacket and places it on the mantle before turning around and looking right at the camera, waving Aster's stocking in the air, then tucking it into her leather jacket.
Aster's hand tightens into fist as she leaves the house, he clicks a button behind another picture and the stairs begin to fall. He storms down the steps to chase after the culprit, leaving me to follow behind my raging boyfriend.
TEN
ASTER
Rage consumes me as I stride furiously down the stairs, my stomps rattling the house.Who the fuck does that bitch think she is, takingmystocking. Serena is huffing behind me, trying to keep up. I reach my hand behind me, never slowing my pace and feel her hand clasp around mine, calming some of the storm raging inside me.
“Aster,” Serena pants. “What if it’s a trap?”
“Then it’s one they’ll find themselves caught in. She’ll be dead before she has a chance to try anything.”
I feel Serena tug on my arm, trying and failing to plant her feet to stop me, but nothing and no one, not even my worried vixen, will stop me from finding out who that girl was and what she’d left behind.
We get to the living room and I snatch the note and crush it in my hand after reading the words.
If you want your stocking back, then you’ll have to find me. Follow the clues that will lead you home. Deliver the girl into my hands.
First clue: A place you’ve been only once, where your touch was gentle and left no haunts.
My body jolts from Serena’s cold fingers wrapping around my hand that’s still gripping the note. My chest rises and falls as she takes the crumpled paper from me, silently reading it to herself. Her brow dips, her lips mouthing the words as she scans the riddle over and over.
If this cunt thinks I am going to hand over Serena to get my stocking back, she is sorely mistaken. I will kill her before her fingers even have a chance to touch a hair on Serena’s head. I will leave with my girl and my stocking and I’ll leave a body behind for Deputy Wiley to find.
There are not many places I haven’t been in Salem, though there are many I avoid. I stick to what I know. I have a routine. Places I go. People I hunt. Rules that no longer matter since meeting Serena. The stocking she took was the only thing I kept when I left the orphanage. I didn’t have many belongings when I first arrived and everything I did have was thrown away. Regardless of who you are or where you came from, on your first Christmas each child was given a stocking to put whatever they wanted on it. That stocking was the one thing that was solelymine. When it was first placed in front of me, I stared at it, drowning out the voices surrounding me intent on telling me what to do with it. Only when the paints and crafts were placed on the table I sat at with the other newcomers did my hands move to grab and create. I ended up painting a fox watching a little lamb munching on grass. The sky was dark and ominous in the background. The caretakers thought the whole thing was innocent, complimenting me on my talents. All except one; the one who punished me the most saw right through my art. She didn’t throw it away, but she did whisper angrily in my ear thatI am a devil just like my creators. That comment warmed me at the time; someone more evil than my parents saw through my innocent tortured broken boy act. One day I will kill her for the things she did to me and the other children, but today I need to murder the one who stole my stocking.
Serena’s voice brings me back from the past. “Where is the one place you didn’t kill?” Her fingers mindlessly tracing the note, searching for the answers in my eyes. Answers I don’t have.
I pace back and forth, my mind whirling through the memories of the places the riddle might be pointing. There aren’t many places I’ve been to once without killing, but I grab a paper and pencil and start writing down the ones I can think of. Serena watches from over my shoulder, her breath tickling the back of my neck. If it were anyone else, I would have snapped their neck already, but because it is Serena doing it I feel more at peace. A sense of zen one would feel after meditating. After I finish jotting down the possible locations, we stare at the words together.
Serena’s hand reaches from behind me. “There.” She points at the wordzoo. And I smack myself for not realizing it sooner.It was staring me in the face the whole time.The one place my hands didn’t hurt anything. The one place the orphanage took us to from my childhood. An effort to make them not seem like a bad place; like they weren’t abusing the children who lived there.
Turning around to kiss Serena, I grab my burner phone, both of our jackets, and just as I’m slipping on my boots to go to the one place that had been a light in my dark childhood, Serena tugs at my arm.
“Aster, the zoo is closed.”
I look up to see the night sky greeting me. If I wasn’t so worried about Serena and drawing too much attention to us, I would break into the damn place.
