Page 41 of Where the Dark Things Bloom

I gasped. “Oh God.”

“Yeah,” he murmured against me. “You like that, don’t you?”

“Yeah...” I moaned, eyes fluttering closed.

His tongue circled my clit as one finger curled and slid inside me — slow, coaxing, addictive. I opened for him, helpless under the rhythm of his strokes.

I’d never touched myself before. I’d always been the good girl — the quiet one. But now he was showing me how to be bad... for him.

It was so fucking wrong — and I didn’t care. I wanted more.

As his thrusts deepened, he slid in a second finger. He smiled against my clit, still working his tongue up and down my swollen, sensitive skin.

“I’ll be your first... and your last, Trouble,” he growled. I could feel every slow thrust inside me, pushing me closer to the edge.

A moan broke from my lips. “Yes... more. Please — more.”

He kept going, holding my lower lips apart as I writhed against his face. I couldn’t stop myself — my hips moved instinctively, riding his mouth, chasing the waves he sent crashing through me.

Then I started to tighten around his fingers. I was so close.

He smiled against me again, still stroking, still devouring me like he owned me.

We didn’t notice the attic door was still open — that anyone in the house could hear us.

And someone did.

My father stood there. Pale. Silent. Frozen — as he watched his daughter writhing under the mouth of his stepson.

But I didn’t see him — not until it was too late.

I was moaning, my body trembling, eyes fluttering open just as the orgasm hit me. I saw him — my father — and our eyes met at the exact moment Dorian pushed me over the edge.

And I screamed his name.

“Dorian.”

Dad stormed inside, grabbing Dorian by the neck and ripping him off me. His mouth was still slick with my taste on his lips, blood smeared from the blows, and he laughed.

Laughed at him.

Even as Dad dragged him across the floor, shouting, Dorian’s voice cut through.

“Now she’s mine, Father.”

The door slammed. Silence swallowed everything after.

I didn’t move.

Tears streaked down my face, but my body still trembled — not from fear. And my lips, curved upward, soft and secret.

That night, I became his.

That night, he consumed me.

I woke with a sharp breath, upright, fingers tangled in the sheet beneath me. No clock on the wall, and never had been, but I knew. 3:18 a.m.

It was always 3:18.

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