Page 33 of Sour Lollipops and Sweet Nightmares
Other times, we passed because of something we did unintentionally. Levi had banged well over a hundred chicks by the time he was seventeen and therefore passed lust. He wasn’t trying to pass anything. He just liked fucking. Then there were the stupid ones. Aiden passed wrath when he was fourteen because he wore red on the right day.
It was all very confusing and made absolutely no sense. My father claimed I would understand when I took his spot, but I highly doubted it. The Society’s rule book made the bible look small and read like it was written by someone with ADHD who was coming off a cocaine binge. But it worked. We had been controlling the world from the shadows for over a thousand years.
“Says who?” Ravi shot back at him. “You think Dad would tell you if you had?”
Ravi had a point there. The General was a prick who liked to spring things on his kids to see how they would react.
Slater crossed his arms. “It doesn’t matter. There is no way that girl is a virgin.”
“Please,” Ravi snorted at his brother. “Georgia Pyne screams virtuous. I pity the guy who has to break her.”
When Ravi said break, he meant break. The claiming had four rules. Bend her, break her, bind her, and breed her. While the whole point was to produce an heir, the breed her part didn’t necessarily mean we had to knock them up right away. It meant fuck her, without a condom.
Wives and brides were always bareback. That was rule number twenty-three in chapter ninety-two of the ledger. The girls could use birth control, but we could not. Male essence must flow free with the Salem sister. That was literally how it was written.
The claiming wasn’t all bad. The bend her and break her part could be fun. There was a rush that came from fucking with people. It was like watching a deer freeze and look around the forest. They could feel danger in the area, but they didn’t know why or where it was coming from. I wouldn’t mind seeing Georgia’s big green eyes round with alarm.
“I won’t fucking do it,” Levi insisted.
“If she’s yours, you won’t have a choice,” Ravi shot back.
“Fuck you, Ravi,” Levi pointed at him. “I’ll kill her first.”
That was always an option, but not one that would be looked very well upon. The Society went through a lot of trouble to track down these girls. Offing one because you didn’t want her would more than likely lead to severe punishment, if not death.
“We don’t get to pick our brides,” I pointed out.
If anyone should understand that, it should be Levi. He was royalty. Royalty always had to get permission to marry, and not marrying wasn’t an option. In that aspect, Levi had it worse than us. He had two bloodlines to carry on and a title. It wasn’t as high as his brother, who was an earl, but he was still Lord Levi Jacobs.
“Fuck you, Issac,” Levi huffed out a breath and continued grumbling. “She’s not mine. She can’t be mine. My father would never pick someone like her.”
As much as I hated to admit it, Levi was right. The Duke of Gloucester was a picky son of a bitch. There was no way he would choose some country bumpkin for his son, and an American bumpkin at that. It wasn’t happening, but that didn’t mean Levi wouldn’t be the second. A part of me hoped he was, since the second also had to remain celibate until the bride’s claiming.
That wasn’t some strange twist that made no sense, like some of The Society’s other laws. There was a purpose behind it. Simply marrying and breeding our chosen girl wasn’t enough. The Society wanted us to care about her. It was the second’s job to make sure that happened. I was pretty sure that was why they also had to remain celibate. It was an extra incentive for them to do their job.
Caring about our girls had nothing to do with us being in a happy relationship. It was so we could learn an important lesson. That was where the second’s other task came in.
Once The Society received confirmation that feelings were involved, he came in and fucked our girl in front of us. So, we would learn that what was ours could be taken away. There were other things the second had to do, but those were tailored to the specific groom.
When I was Graham’s second, my orders were to make his girl fall for me. Graham was a jealous bastard, and doing so would push him towards her. Another directive tailored toward the groom, could be how long the second could fuck the bride.
I got a week with Bonnie. Sometimes Graham joined us, other times I made him watch. The point was to make it hurt him. Oh, and I did. Every time she came on my cock, I made sure he felt it, because I couldn’t fuck anyone else until the job finished.
The claiming of the brides was essentially a game of wills—the groom versus his second.
“Maybe she has a distant royal bloodline,” Slater suggested. “Ever think about that?”
Levi responded by throwing an empty milk carton at him. It bounced off Slater’s chest and rolled on the floor.
He looked down at it, then up at Levi. “Really?”
Levi shrugged, “I thought a chair would be too much.”
Ravi rolled his eyes. “There’s no point in arguing about it until we know who she belongs to.”
“We could always refuse,” his brother suggested.
I looked over at Slater. “That didn’t work out so well for Matteo.”
