Page 38

“I’m not your fucking dog,” I grit through clenched teeth. Heat flushes through my body, my palms growing clammy with a slowly building rage. “You don’t own me.”

Making a decision, my legs move with speed as I pass him, shoving my shoulder into his arm, while tears well in the back of my eyes.

I don’t get far before I’m pushed against the wall. Kain’s thigh pins me in place as his fingers dig into the lace of my corset, pulling me towards him.

“Oh, I own you, little devil. I always have. You will be my dog if I wish for you to be.”

Tears prickle my eyes like tiny needles, desperately trying to pierce through and be let free. “Fuck you.”

“Don’t,” he grits.

His face is a blur of black and white as my eyelids bat furiously in an attempt to bite back the tears.

“Don’t what?” I growl, shoving at his chest.

With his free hand, he pins one of mine above my head. “Don’t fucking cry.”

“What is wrong with you, you asshole?” I jam my heel into his boot, but his frame remains hard as rock against me. “And I wasn’t crying,” I lie, pushing my chest into him in an attempt to loosen his grip on me.

I hate this. I hate him. I hate all of it. But worse, I hate myself for reacting to him.

“You think I don’t know you, Jordie? I know you better than you know yourself. Speeding off like that? You used to do that when you got upset. The fluttering of your eyes—you’re holding back tears. Your breathing—hitched because you’re holding that dam together with everything in you.” His words are burning into every forgotten part of him still resting in my soul. “Do not cry. Never for me. Never over me. Never because of me. Do you hear me, step-sis?”

“Oh my god!” I grip his neck, and his eyes widen, before I squeeze. It’s not much, though, because my body is trembling, weak with anger. “I fucking hate you!”

“I know,” he says, dragging my hips further up his thigh and away from the wall while my head presses into it. He lifts, bringing me in line with his eyes and swiftly twists my free arm behind me. “Keep hating me,” he whispers. I can feel the hard length of him pressing into my groin—he’s sick. He gets off on this. On making my life hell. On gathering evidence of our sins for whatever twisted plans my mother may have for me now. On referring to me as his sister.

Is this what they want? To taint me? Dirty me more than I already am?

“Now, are you going to let me escort you to the party like the obedient sister you are, or do I have to put you in the boot again?”

I can feel his pulse beneath my tightening fingertips, my nails turning white from how hard I’m squeezing, but he doesn’t react to any of it, he just expectantly stands there, awaiting my decision. My ragged breathing fills the inches between us and as my tears desert me, I can see his face more clearly. There’s a warning and a challenge in those green irises.

“Do you really want them to catch you sneaking out dressed like the church whore?”

“Fuck you, you fucking prick,” I sneer.

I could fight. I could scream, kick, and push. But it would be no use.

In the end, Kain Westbrook will get his way, and, once again, I’ll be left picking my dignity off the fucking floor.

So, I loosen my grip, and his thigh comes away, dropping my legs. I release him with a shove, my hand thrumming with the phantom feel of what it like to have his skin against mine again and I obediently follow him to the car.

One things for sure, I’ll be damned if I continue to let him embarrass me. The fucker probably gets off on that too.

Black clouds float across the sharp peaks of the church, the red glow from the inside lights, and the illumination from the moon make it look like it should be in some kind of horror film. Pulling into the churchyard—already littered with partygoers, engaged in things that are definitely not holy—tree branches reach out towards me like gnarled hands.

A girl dressed as the devil leans over to sniff a guy's fist before she straightens and pinches the bottom of her nose. People are smoking, kissing, drinking. Everything that are supposed to be sins and I got sent away for. It looks just like a scene from the films me and Poppy watched. This is how sheltered I was from all of it. Trapped away from civilization, confined to beliefs that were being pushed on me against my will. And yet, deep down, I never believed any of it. And it seems neither did most of our peers.

“Jordie?” Kain’s velvety voice pulls me out of my stupor.

I glance in his direction.

“Where did you go?” he asks but I don’t deign him with an answer.

“What are they doing?” I move my head to my window again, watching as more people using cards to gather white powder on the hoods of their cars, their hands, anything with a surface.

“Taking drugs.”