SWNOVELS Dukes of Madness: Chapter 15
I don’t even hear the thunder until I cut the bike. It’s dark out here, pitch black, but a flash of distant lightning reveals the cut through the trees. I don’t need it. I could walk this trail with both eyes closed. It’s better like this, anyway, with the wind and the rain, the sky battering the earth with her anger. It makes sense, fits together in a predictable way. I’m watching the universe stomp its feet, its howls being carried by the wind, its tears falling from the heavens.
I jump off the bike without a second thought, breaking the chain of her arms around my waist so forcefully that she teeters, crying out as she catches herself. I’m there first, though, steadying her only to rip the helmet from her head.
It’s only when I get a good look at her, her gray eyes wide and wet, that I pause, considering the ride. The rain beating against my helmet, soaking through my suit, freezing the tips of my fingers.
But I need to know.
So I lift her from the seat and begin dragging her toward the trees,
“Wait!” she shouts over the screams of the sky, raindrops falling from her eyelashes like tears. “Are you going to tell me where we are?”
“Yes,” is my answer, but it emerges in a conflicted tone that makes her face screw up against the wind. She looks fucking miserable. She’s cold—shivering—and soaked down to the black, lacey underthings I’d picked out for her this morning. I don’t like the black ember of guilt settling in my gut—never have, never will. Usually, I’d give it away. The black. The reprisal.
I need to fucking know, and I’d drag her kicking and screaming through this mud to make sure I do.
But I wouldn’t feel good about it.
She’s my Duchess.
Goddamn it.
Clumsily, I remove my jacket, and it’s useless, waterlogged and too heavy, no warmth inside of it at all, but I drape it over her shoulders, anyway. “I’m not good at this,” I tell her, swatting the wet hair from my eyes.
“At what?” she yells back.
I answer with a frustrated growl. It’s never a problem when I drag Sy or Nick through the mud with me. They’re warriors, blood and bone. Even Tate seemed carved from stone, to the point where I’d often forget she was a girl at all.
But Lavinia is a Royal woman. She’s soft and delicate, and maybe Sy wants to harden her into the same stone Tate was made of, but I don’t. I prefer her just like she is, standing before me so small and yet so big, the tip of her nose glowing a vivid pink. She doesn’t know it yet, but there’s just as much strength in her frailty as my muscles. In the knobs of her elbows as she punches into the sleeves of my jacket. In the furl of her brow as she hugs it around her slender middle. In the tilt of her head as she searches my eyes.
“It’s a short hike.”
Her crimson-red lips drop agape. “A short what? Remy, I’m in heels!”
I look down at her elegant feet, bright red toes peeking out of the leather. She’s right. She’ll break her fucking neck walking up the path in those. Annoyed, I begin rolling up my sleeves. “I’ll just carry you.”
“You want me to piggyback ride through the woods with you?” Thunder booms overhead, and the silence that stretches in its wake makes me certain she’s going to reject me. “Remy, what are we doing here?” She’s looking at me in the familiar way. It’s the same expression everyone wears when they’re wondering whether or not I’m off my meds. Except this time she knows I’m not.
“Do you trust me?” I yell over the storm. But since I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear the answer to that question, I amend, “Do you want to trust me? Because I want to trust you!” She bites her lip, watching me with big, worried eyes, and it’s a physical battle to not just take her by the arm and tow her to the summit. “I can order you!” I remind her, beating my chest in emphasis. “I’m your Duke, and that means you’re mine! The Duchess serves at my pleasure.” I can already see her shutting down, becoming all that hardness Sy’s been trying to mold her into. Shaking my head, I add, “But I won’t order you to do this. This isn’t a cage, Vinny. No box. No prison. There are things I’ll make you do because I’m your Duke, and this isn’t one of them. This has to be free or it’s nothing at all.”
She watches me closely—too closely—arms hugged around her middle. A few days ago, I told Nick that Vinny’s had a fucked up life, and I see the vestiges of it swirling in her eyes. She’s afraid of me. She’s afraid of this place. She’s afraid of giving in, seeming weak.
She’s also brave. “You have twenty minutes,” the resignation weighs her shoulders low, “and then I’m calling Sy.”
“Alright.” I twist, squatting. “Let’s go.”
She relents, hiking up her skirt, slinging one leg around my waist and then the other. I hook my arms around her legs, holding her tight, and stand. She’s light—as weightless as the rain, or the wind, or the dead leaves whipping around us—but I carry her like she’s a boulder, too substantial to drop. There’s a shock of cold on my neck that I almost don’t feel until a blaze of heat proceeds it. Her nose, her cheek. She buries her face into my neck and I shield her from a gust of wind, my mind fixed to a singular point.
I fight the urge to run up the hill, releasing all the rage and anger I didn’t unleash on my bastard of a father. But I’ve got this girl on my back, my compass, and I don’t want her to fall, to slip away as her sister had two years ago. It feels right that I finally bring her here, to the place we first met, without either of us really knowing, and I refuse to let her go. So I keep my grip tight and strong, and I can practically taste the marks I’m leaving in her thighs as I trod us further and further.
“The first time I came up here,” I tell her, huffing as I hike, “was for a Boy Scout trip in the third grade. We camped at the top, under a sky full of stars. It was all hotdogs and s’mores until a thunderstorm rolled in during the middle of the night—two of them, both coming from different sides. It felt like we were under attack. Two gods battling it out in the sky.”
“Were you scared?” she asks, breath hot on my ear.
I shake my head. “No. It was like I could feel the electricity under my skin.” I look back, catching her profile in a flash of lightning. “The next time I came up here, I was thirteen and buying weed from a prick from North Side. Little did I know, he’d laced it with something. I hallucinated for three days before coming down.”
There’s a long pause before she breathes, “Three days?”
Nodding, I remember, “Yeah, I rode it out in Sy and Nicky’s basement. It’s what triggered my first episode.”
“That’s what your dad was talking about.” I hear the guilt in her voice, through the chatter of her teeth. “Jesus, Remy. I’m… I’m sorry.”
I shake my head. “Not your fault, Vinny.”
Her grip tightens around my neck. “But my dad made those drugs, he—’
“Isn’t you. I want you to know that I get that.” I draw my head back, catching her eye, wanting her to know that I mean it. “After that, I came up here a few times with Tate. She liked the quiet. The peacefulness. Nicky was never much for it. You’d never know it to look at him, because he’s always so composed, but he likes things to be loud and unpredictable. It makes him still somehow, getting lost within the havoc of things. It’s why he always clicked with me.” Thinking, I add, “And Sy… well, he likes the quiet, but not the peace. He always needs something to do. Restless son-of-a-bitch, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” she answers slowly, as if she’s putting the pieces together. “Remy, are you… are you taking me to the cliffs?”
But she asks just as we arrive at the crest of the hill.
I exit the tree line and onto the flat sheet of granite that makes up the highest part. Away from the thick branches, the flashes in the night sky give enough light to navigate closer to the edge. Across the river, dots of yellow lights push through the trees from nice houses overlooking the water.
“Widow’s rock,” I say over the rain.
Vinny is silent as I ease her to the ground, intensely aware of her warmth and then the loss of it. The second I turn to her, she’s taking a step back, a shock of horror in her eyes. “I can’t—” she stutters, shivering. “I don’t think I can be here.” She isn’t looking at me when she says it. She’s staring out over the edge, the color vanished from her cheeks.
“You’ve never been up here,” I realize, something within me unwinding as I follow her gaze. The river is black. A fathomless abyss. A span of nothingness that could swallow us whole.
I lace my fingers behind my head and bask in the sky, letting out a laugh. “I knew he was full of shit. I knew it!”
When I look at her, she’s bracing a gust of wind, so rigid that you’d think she was holding back a tide. “She didn’t die.” Vinny shakes her head, looking around. “She wouldn’t have been taken down like that. Not here.”
But I can see the doubt in her eyes. She’s telling herself a lie that she has to believe. I get the sense it’s something that keeps her going. Makes the cogs of her fate keep turning. Keep her from the yellow.
I get it.
I do.
Feeling heavier than I did ten minutes ago, I confess, “I never could figure out who would come after Tate. My father is right. She wasn’t a threat to anyone. She was just this random girl from West End. She was fun, and she kicked ass, but she was broken. She stayed out of the business. She wasn’t a problem.” I look around, trying to see that night, to remember something other than the sky. “But I’m starting to think that maybe she wasn’t the target.”
Vinny stares at me, expression shifting. “Leticia.”
The name, and all the baggage that comes with it, hangs in the air. Leticia Lucia could easily be a target and there are countless suspects. “A King’s daughter is born with a bounty on her head.” I gesture to her. Her dripping hair. Her tense frame. Her rosy cheeks and chattering lips. She looks like a doll who’s been forgotten in the park, dirty and tattered. “No one knows that better than you.”
“You were wrong before. I have been up here.” She swallows, throat clicking so loudly that I can discern it from the beat of rain. “Just never from this side.”
The silhouette of her profile pulls at the memories of that night. Leticia and I were on the edge. Ringing in my ears. Tate slumped over on the ground. Falling. The wind. Red lights. Stars. Always stars.
“We were there.” I point to the spot, then up to the sky. “Jacks in your eyes.”
Vinny studies the area, but her eyes are clouded and glazed, her cleavage hitching with these small, panicked breaths. “This is where she…?”
“Right here,” I rush out, feeling an odd excitement mixed in with this squirming anguish in my chest. I go to the edge, right up against the drop-off, and look down. It should scare me, but it doesn’t. I know what it means to take this leap. I understand the wind against my face, know where it lives, feel its age against my cheeks. I’ve felt the water below, cold and consuming. “Can you feel it? The dust in the air? This place is ancient, older than our ancestors.” Some part of me needs her to feel it. To understand. “We must look so fucking small to the wind up here. Don’t you think? Little specks, with our little problems, being exhaled by the lungs of the universe.” I turn to her, seeing the torment in her eyes, and the only way I know to soothe it is to take her hand, tugging her closer to the edge. I peer down into the abyss with her, giving her my most precious secret. “That’s the part I remember the clearest, Vinny. The thought that came to me when I jumped. That we’re all just stars inside of a grave we haven’t laid down in yet. That your sister and I were going to die.” I touch her cheek, rubbing at something that could be a raindrop or could be a tear. “And it wasn’t so bad.”
She jerks away, eyes wide, grief lining her face. “Why would you tell me that?”
I blink the rain from my eyes as I take her in. She told me she thinks Leticia could still be alive, but I don’t feel it. Not in my gut. “Because I wanted you to know how beautiful it was.”
Her eyes swim with dread. “Death isn’t beautiful. Death is nothing.” It’s all over her face. The worry. The tension. The fear. She’s thinking that she needs to call Sy. That I’m doing something impulsive. That I’m at risk right now, on a cliff that could be the edge of my world, begging for a sweet slice of nothingness.
I raise my chin, staring down at this woman who’s as scattered as the stars, but just as sharp as the lightning slicing through the chasm between north and west. “Then show me something,” I say.
The gears in her eyes turn as she struggles to understand what I’m asking. Is this a challenge or a command?
In truth, it’s neither.
I know when she surges up to kiss me that she’s figured out it’s a plea. That I’m begging for something bigger than myself. Something I can hold in my hands, palms fixed to her cheeks as I cradle her skull, forcing my tongue into the fiery heat of her mouth. Something so solid that I can slip against her skin as I claw the straps of her dress off her shoulders. Something warm and soft, her tits giving to the pressure of my hands as I take and take and take.
She’s the one to push my shirt off, her icy hands tearing the buttons as she pulls and tears, careless and frantic. I almost wish I hadn’t asked, because now I wonder where the energy is coming from. Are her nails scratching into my back because she’s afraid I’ll jump? Or is she tugging me away from the cliff’s edge because she needs to feel my skin on hers?
Do I even care?
A bolt of lightning zigzags over the water, followed immediately by bone-shaking thunder. I grab her hand and haul her away from the cliff’s edge, dragging her, stumbling and breathless, toward the patch of meadow that meets the trees. She goes still when I stop, but there’s a moment where she searches my face, licking out to catch a bead of rain on her lip.
I stare, transfixed, as it disappears behind her teeth. “Tell me,” I demand, reaching out to trace the path of another droplet, cold and slick as it tracks down her temple.
“You can fuck me,” she says, her voice sounding so much sturdier than she looks. “That’s what you need, right? I can be that for you. You can—”
“Vinny…” I touch her throat, feel the pulse of her heartbeat against my palm like a snare drum. “I am going to fuck you. I’m your Duke. That means your body belongs to me. It’s not going to be gentle. That’s not how I do it. And I’m not sure how long I’ll last, because I’ve been about to bust a nut since I saw you walk out in that dress, but I’ll make it good for you.” I feel her swallow against my hand and I follow it with my palm, sliding down to her sternum where her heartbeat transforms into a furious flutter. Wings banging against her breast. “That’s not what I need, though. You know what I need to hear.”
It’s not about the words or what they mean. Not really. They matter less than they probably should.
It’s about making her surrender.
Feeling her beside me as we jump.
Knowing that she’s with me as we fall.
It arrives on the tremor of her shiver, her wet lashes fluttering. “I want it,” she breathes, pressing her palm to my bare chest. “Please, just… fuck me. Please.”
There’s something in her tone, the way she sounds a second from bursting into tears, that makes me reach for her, anchoring our bodies together. That’s all it takes for her to latch onto me again, impatient, hands scrabbling at my chest. Sure, the fear is there. The sweet despair in her eyes. The tremor in her fingers as she grasps me closer. But there’s heat here, and it’s scorching; celestial bodies crashing to earth in a storm of cinder and ash. Her mouth, hot and frantic, tastes as sharp as the ozone from the storm, and when our skin hums, it’s the same vibration as the electricity in the air.
Lightning skitters overhead, followed by another crack, this one so close that I can feel it bounce between us, echoing off the rock, rattling our brittle bones. I push down the soggy dress, tearing off the lace that clings to her tits. Squeezing them together, I mouth both nipples at once, tasting the rain and the current. They react, sharpening into hard points, and when she threads her fingers into my hair, pushing my face between them, I feel her gasp more than I hear it. My cock swells, hard and raging. The way she rocks against me confirms what I’ve known since I felt her pussy earlier, slick and swollen.
She’s so horny, she’d beg for it if I made her.
We fall in a heap on top of the sticky leaves, bonded with the earth, the dirt and wet and dead things. I surge into her, pressing with my weight until she’s flat beneath me, allowing her eyes to reflect the stormy heavens. She’s so fucking beautiful here, soft and pale, hard and warm, fire and ice. There’s no mistaking this girl, not tonight, not underneath me.
Vinny is here.
She’s real.
She’s mine.
I hook my fingers in her panties and pull them down her legs, impatient and unseeing, my eyes glued to hers as she watches, incandescent with anticipation. I know what she’s been doing with Sy at night. Touching him, guiding him, conquering him. I also know it’s a part of why my fingers find her slick and ready, her hips bucking into me, an instinct older than time.
I slip down her body to spread her thighs, pushing them apart until I feel the strain of her muscles. The sound she makes when I dip down, licking a hard stripe up her slit, could rival the roar of the storm. Her thighs battle my hands to close around my head, but I don’t let her, forcing them wide as I tongue into her folds, making her feel what it means to have me like this.
“You do this to me,” I say, rising up so that I’m hovering over her. I guide her hand to my straining cock. She fists it first, grabbing it through the fabric before fumbling for my buckle, eyes glazed and hungry. “Do you know that?”
“Yeah,” she says, not looking away from me as she frees my cock, spreading her thighs for me. “I’m ready, just… just like this.”
I shudder at her touch, and her eyes widen when I circle the base of my cock, stroking it for her, letting it bob against my hand, tip tightening, dripping. I wish I could paint this—the way she looks on the leaves, a star inside of a grave.
I press against her, seeking her heat. “Once we do this, there’s no going back, Vinny.” I gaze down at her as I hold myself steady, the tip of my cock slotted against her slick heat. “This will make you mine. Not just your body. Not just because you’re my Duchess. You understand, don’t you?”
I can’t say the words, but I know she can hear them. I can see it in the furl of her brow, the lightning overhead making her eyes flash with terror.
Sy can take her body.
Nick can claim her mind.
I want her soul.
“I know,” she says, chest heaving with these huge, gulping breaths. “Take it.”
It spurs me on, and I barely register the hard press of the rock under my knees, eyes focused on her body, cock zeroed in on the warm, slick heat between her legs. I catch her breath into my waiting kiss when I punch in, knocking her very essence down my throat.
Her pussy is perfect.
For a long moment, that’s all I can think about. The way I fit inside her, stretching her, her pussy holding me like a goddamn vice. The feeling doesn’t fade, but it does expand big enough for my other senses to register. To hear the keen of her cry. To see the wrinkle of agony between her brows as she digs her head back into the ground. To feel her fingernails pressing their crescent moons into my shoulders.
I crash into her like the turbulent tide, tasting the immediacy of something definite in the back of my throat, bitter as blood and just as sweet. “Look at me,” I growl, pulling away only to plunge back into her body, my cock buried so deep that I feel her wince, even if she doesn’t show it.
Her eyes, screwed shut, open to me like petals in the spring, and I fuck her.
I fuck her hard, driving her into the wet ground, and I fuck her slow, the tip of my nose pressed to hers until I’m the only thing she sees.