Page 59 of Poisoning Ivy
Killian
My little fawn goes weak against me, and I let her stay there a moment, soaking in the feel of her small body against mine. It feels so good, but it doesn't last because I don't want to fuck her while she's asleep. That's more Theo's thing, and while I generally support his kinks, I don't get it. I like watching her eyes war between panic and calm, her body war between pleasure and pain, her soul war between right and wrong as she tries to deny how fucking good it feels.
I put her on the couch and turn to find Monty and Theo watching me expectantly. The air is full of the things they aren't saying, which is rare for us. We don't hold back. We don't hide things from each other. A relationship like what we have doesn't work with secrets involved.
"You don't believe her?" I laugh, because it's absurd. "I didn't know anything more than either of you."
Theo rubs the stubble on his chin, thoughtful. "Why would she lie about that?"
"Why would I?"
"What if she didn't lie?" Monty suggests. "What if her parents just took the letters out of the mailbox or paid the postman not to send them?"
"Why would they do that?" Theo challenges, his skepticism obvious.
"Because they didn't want anyone knowing what they did to their daughter?" Monty glances at her, passed out on the couch with her lips parted. It would be so easy to wake her up with my cock between them. Suddenly, I get the allure of Theo's kink.
"Because we would have stopped it if we knew what was going on." Theo surmises. His eyes flit to mine, seeking confirmation. I don't like the way he needs the reassurance, questioning me for the first time in as long as I've known him.
Fucking Ivy. It's why Monty calls her poison, because one touch and she's under your skin. She poisoned us all from the start, twisted us into what we are.
I scrub a hand over my face, bothered by everything that we just learned about her... and mostly bothered by the fact that she thinks I like to see anyone else hurt her. Was it not obvious when I claimed her as mine in the train tunnel under the bridge? Was it not obvious when we killed her piece of shit husband? Is it not obvious that I can't think when she's near, but I can't breathe when she's gone?
Given the choice, I'd rather not think. I'd rather feel.
"I'll kill them." I say simply. "Anyone who ever laid a hand on her, I will make them fucking suffer."
"Did you not listen to her?" Monty demands, drawing my attention to where he's sitting on the ground beside the couch, his arm draped over his knee as he watches her. "Whatever the fuck her family is wrapped up in, it's bad.
"I gathered as much." I shrug. "Big deal. It's not like I've never killed before."
Theo chuckles, undoubtedly thinking about his parents. Monty isn't as amused. "I mean, it sounds like they're in the freaking mafia or something. Should we really mess with that?"
"Mafia?" Theo laughs again.
"That would explain the teeth in the basement." Ivy groans, sitting up and running a hand over her face. "But I don't think so. I think my father just aligned himself with people who were into that stuff."
"S-sorry," Theo stutters. "Did you just skip right over that ‘teeth in the basement’ thing?"
"I found pouches of them when I was looking for clothes." Ivy rolls her neck, trying to reorient herself to consciousness despite the fact that I didn't put her out that hard, or for that long. I just needed to de-escalate her for a moment.
"Shit." Monty whispers, his eyes wide.
"Who do you think the teeth belong to?" Theo asks, sounding both horrified and intrigued.
"I don't know." She shrugs. "My parents used to have dinner parties here. They'd invite all kinds of people I didn't know, and I'd hide in my room. They never did it much here at the cabin, but there were times where I woke up the next morning and found that our guests hadn't left. I wouldn't see them, but their cars were still in the drive, and then later they wouldn't be."
"Damn." Theo muses. "All that time, there were two killers on this mountain?" He looks at me, as if he's expecting to see me getting territorial or something.
I've had to learn to be wildly selective when choosing when to give in to my urges, partly because we live in a smaller town where the population is largely people who made me casseroles after my parents died. Even though I didn't eat them, Theo and Monty did, and I appreciated the gesture. Besides, a string of murders in our area would draw too much attention. It's why I went into FireMed, why I trained to save lives. It's the bestsubstitute for taking them, even if it will never feel as truly liberating as it does to end a life.
I also try not to kill people who don't deserve it in the eyes of the general public, which is annoying but necessary. If I were to take out the local parish after Sunday mass, it would cause a hell of a lot more of an uproar than if I killed the vagrant who wandered into our town looking for his next victims.
"Three," I say, my eyes turning to Ivy where she sits on the couch watching me. "Whatever you tell yourself, Ivy, you're a killer."
"No." She shakes her head automatically. "You can't call me that when I did what I did out of self-defense."
"Would a lawyer see it that way?" I shrug, planting the seed of doubt in her mind even though I know the answer to that question depends more on what a particular jury would decide upon. "Do you have any evidence that it happened how you said it did?"
