Page 57 of For Fillies and Monsters

Her face flames red in anger, her eyes blazing silver. Golden hair tumbles around her face, the strands yanked from her braid. She looks like an angry, vicious goddess, and I loosen my grip on the body beneath me.

The body. Fuck. Nathan.

I look at the blubbering man beneath me. His face is bloody, eyes swollen shut, black and blue, a crooked bleeding nose, and a busted lip. I huff looking at my handy work.

All things considered, he doesn’t look too bad.

Snot dribbles from his broken nose, and tears leak from thecorners of his swollen eyes, but his face isn’t caved in. That has to be good,right? He looks pathetic—correction:he is pathetic. His arms lay helplessly by his sides; he didn’t even fight me or defend himself. He just laid there like the little pussy he is.

“What the actual fuck, Gus? Get the fuck off of him.”

Growling, I turn my snarling face to look at Stetson. She tugs on my bicep again, her fingers piercing my skin. I can hear her hammering heartbeat from here, and smell the faint hint of lemon that always seems to cling to her skin.

“You going to save him?” I bark, and she flinches, caught off guard by my question, before shaking her head.

“No, but you are going to be in such deep shit, and I don’t want that.” The words are a mere whisper, but something about her trembling voice makes my cock hard. Which is fucking weird because my hips hover just above Nathan, who’s moaning incoherently beneath me.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want you to go anywhere.” Her lips tremble now, too, and I wonder if she’s about to start crying. Stetson doesn’t cry. I won’t allow it.

“Never, Little Filly.”

She shakes her head, her anger deflating like a balloon, replaced with something akin to defeat—and that is the fucking worst.

“Get off of him, Gus.”

I hiss, my fists re-curling at my sides. I can’t stand seeing her sad and defeated. “Does seeing me like this upset you? Disgust you?” I know I’m snarling in her face. I know I’m probably pushing too hard. But I do not fucking care. Stetson is stronger than she allows herself to be. So what, she likes kinky shit, and is into domination and degradation. So, she had the worst fucking parents known to man and doesn’t know how to give or receive love. All of that is fine, all of that is perfect, actually.Because I will show her, I will share with her, I will teach and learn andbe with her, always. She just needs to show me a sign that she’s ready.

“Answer me, Stetson.”

Her eyes are wild now, her grip so tightly wound around my arm I can feel my heartbeat—my blood struggling to pump through the vise.

“No, it doesn’t disgust me. It, it…” she stutters, but she doesn’t look away. She doesn’t back down or drop my arm. She leans in.

It’s a single action, a barely there movement, but it’s the biggest step we’ve taken. My girl is more worried about the villain than the victim.

“You’re as fucked up as I am.” I mean it as a praise—as a triumphant declaration—but her shoulders slump, proving she doesn’t see it that way. Her eyes hungrily trace my face, and I can’t tell what she’s looking for. She doesn’t release her vise-like grip on my arm. And fuck, I hope it brands into my skin.

Maybe I’ll have to get a tattoo of her fingerprints there. To remember this moment.

“You have no idea.” She breaks the silence, her voice trembling, and I smile, that feral one that always seems to come out around her.

“Try me.”

Her eyes continue to search my face, hungry and desperate, and her fingers dig deeper into my arm, making me hiss. I don’t pull away, though. She’s as much my anchor as I am hers. Silver eyes dip to my lips and her tongue pokes out, tracing the bottom seam. The plump pink glistens and I ache to bite the juicy flesh, to see if it tastes as good as it looks. Groaning, the sound vibrates through my entire body, and she sucks in a sharp breath.

“Violence turn you on, Little Filly?” She opens her mouth to respond and the front door clangs, announcing someone’sarrival. Stetson drops her hold on my arm as if it electrocuted her, and scrambles back. I growl, anger pounding new and unchecked within me.

Who the fuck is interrupting us now?

Glaring over my shoulder, I see Dale saunter in and stop, taking in the scene before her, her eyebrows raising to touch her hairline with each new noted detail. She looks between Stetson’s flaming face and my own, both confusion and delight twinkling in her eyes. I’ll never fully understand why she pushed Nathan on Stetson, but the way she’s looking at us now, I wonder if it had more to do with just pushing Stetson to do anything outside of her comfort zone, to have contact with anyone that made her skin crawl, simply to get behind her icy wall. Dale might think Nathan is a decent enough human, but she’s in Stetson’s corner, even if that means receding into the darkness with her to access it, and does not seem the least bit concerned about the current state of his face.

She cackles, the sound eliciting bumps to raise across my arms, and Stetson’s eyes to widen. I can’t fight off a chuckle of my own, which earns me another glare from Stetson.

I knew I liked Dale the first time I watched her take Stetson out and defend her, even after years of no contact. But that smile, that cackle? She just moved up to my best friend spot, too.

“Want help burying the body?”

---