Page 84 of Grotesque
The entire time those bodies had been there I had been fucking him. I had been letting Corban inside of me while his curse infected and condemned me. I played each of his games willingly, tying my soul to his. His to mine.
“Don’t be scared, Sorcha. I love you. I’m going to love you forever. For all of time.” He nudged my nose with his. Instincthad me tipping my face up so that it was our lips that touched next.
“How long is that? Can I go back? My mother.”My mother.Guilt slammed into me like a ton of bricks. We had always had a strained relationship but the idea of never seeing her again gutted me. Worse was that she would never know what had happened to me if I didn’t go back. I didn’t want that to haunt her.What horrible things she would come up with? Would the town spin something as tragic as Rosaline’s story?
“A long time,” he said with a kiss. “Your home is here, Sweet Sorcha. My changeling giving her life up for mine. To save me.”
Corban pulled the covers down, pulling me with them. He kissed me and this time I kissed him back. “Saint Sorcha,” he said, dropping his lips to my throat and collarbone. With each kiss he called me a new name, erasing all the crazy names that were given to the mad women of Glamis Manor. “Savior Sorcha.”
I opened my legs when his tongue slid over the sensitive line of my neck. His cool body pressed to mine. He must have glamoured his clothes away. Or had he been bare this whole time?
“Successor Sorcha. You will make a fine queen.”
Queen.
The title had a pretty ring to it. As scared as I was, I could not deny the thrill I felt. How my heartbeat changed from its gallop of terror to a steady thud of morbid fascination.
All I had wanted was a place to call my own. I only had to last one year, and I would have inherited Grandma Macky’s wealth. A wealth I imagined was as real as the manor itself. A work of fiction, a fairy tale too good to be true.
I slid my hand along Corban’s face and pushed him back gently so that I could see him. Beneath the red was the faint jade green of his eyes, a reflective glow that heated as he looked backat me. He kissed my wrist before I let my touch travel up to the horns on his head.
The broad span of his hand slid over my knee, pausing briefly so that his thumb could brush the scar of his ownership, before sliding up my thigh as he pushed my legs farther open.
Maybe I had been a little mad even before Corban, what with my obsession with the dark and macabre. Was this not just the start of my own, twisted, happily ever after?
I arched into his mouth as it grazed my chest.
The final thing I knew about Grandma Macky was that she loved her family. I could feel it in the cold yet hot press of Corban’s body to mine. That the only reason she had shut out her children was to keep them safe from the monster that haunted her halls. Her cruelty is what drove my mother down south to Miami, so that Macky might never meet her one and only grandchild. Just as Grandma Macky had wanted. Not because she didn’t love me, but to keep me safe from the monster that now coiled around me.
“What’s going on inside that pretty head of yours?” Corban crooned. He hovered over my stomach, poised to travel even lower.
Grandma Macky wasn’t batshit crazy.Shehad been the saint. She had given up her life to save everyone else. She would have succeeded if Corban had not been equally desperate. Corban would have been forgotten had I not been such a fool.
“What happens now?” I asked.
Corban slid his tongue across my naval. “We live,” he answered. “Free. You and me, for all eternity.”
I had let Corban lead me this far, what other choice did I have left but to accept my fate?
“Tell me you love me,” he murmured against my center. His wicked forked tongue flicked between my thighs, tugging a sigh from deep within my soul. Was it even my soul anymore?
I had never been touched by anyone with such cruel affection. Had never had a man worship me the way Corban did. I had watched every horror movie ever made and had been working my way through every book, but none of them could have prepared me for this. Even the dark romances with their twisted happily ever afters had lied.
Free? Hardly.
They don’t tell you when the villain gets the girl, the crown and jewels he offers her are just pretty silver shackles in disguise.
And yet, the weight of them wasn’t as heavy as I imagined it would be. Corban was a horrible, wicked creature that I gladly welcomed with the arch of my hips against his mouth. His mouth that had been covered in blood the last time I saw him. He caressed me with those possessive hands that had killed. For me.
“Tell me,” he said. One split of his forked tongue slid inside of me while the other lapped at my clit. It was something he hadn’t done before and as I looked down I realized why. He had let a little more of his costume slip to reveal a much wider; much longer tongue. He took hold of my hip with a clawed hand as I involuntarily ground against him.
“I do,” I said. There was no coming back from this. No salvation awaited me at the end of my life, however long that might now be. Corban had damned me and with every prayer he lapped against my center, the farther I fell. I grabbed hold of his horns as he pushed me back by my thighs, angling me so that he could better feast.
A broken sob cracked from my lungs. “I love you,” I choked, as if it were forced from me. I hadn’t meant to say it but there it was. The truth. I loved Corban. Every manipulative, evil part of him.
Corban twisted the entirety of his tongue inside of me before he pulled back, unfolding my body. In one luxurious motion, heslicked it up my stomach across my breasts, and to my open, waiting mouth. In the next motion, he was inside me, filling me so completely that I saw stars. Stars that made up galaxies I had never seen before.
“What a magnificent queen you will be. What a beautiful wife,” he purred.
