The Truths we Burn (The Hollow Boys Book 2)

Rook

It is said in Western folklore, you can use a crossroads to summon the devil or a demon. Depends on what deal you’re trying to make.

They are hailed by ritual items said to be buried in the center of where the roads intersect. It is there that you can bargain a wish for the cost of your soul. You can be granted anything your heart desires, but on a fixed date of the demon’s choice, hellhounds will unearth from the underworld, ready to claim that soul.

I’d been summoned for vengeance, to deal karma to someone with whom I’d been biding my time. Someone that I had once made an agreement with, and I had let them go untouched, scot-free.

But now, it’s time to collect.

I lean against a tall pine tree, the sound of my cigarette burning disturbed the silence.

For an entire year, I’d been trying to get her out of my bloodstream. Trying to cut her out like some flesh-eating disease, trying to penalize myself for having faith in someone like her. I realize now, I can’t cut her out.

I’m going to have to cure the root of the infection.

Eliminate the virus at its source.

And that’s just what I planned to do as I find myself standing here on the crossroad in front of St. Gabriel’s church, staring at the back glass of Sage’s car that sits adjacent to a black sedan.

I’m not sure what she had invited into the world when she decided to negotiate with the feds. When she decided to make herself one of the enemies.

My greatest enemy.

But it had unleashed an entirely new degree of wicked inside of me.

I tried to rationalize after leaving Silas at the graveyard. I tried to calm down and give her some leeway. Maybe they really were friends of her father and she didn’t know what they were up to.

Once again, I had given her the benefit of the doubt. My heart went against my gut and tried to convince me once again it was all a misunderstanding. Something about her keeps wriggling beneath my skin, turning all my screws backwards and making me place confidence in her that she doesn’t deserve.

When someone shows you their true colors, you have to believe them.

And Sage is flying her colors high today.

I hadn’t been stalking her; I’d actually planned on confronting her about it, but when I saw her leaving the dorms alone, I decided to follow. I drove behind her a good distance, at a slow pace, but fast enough that I kept her taillights in view.

When she pulled into what was left of the church where a car was already waiting on her, it was then I knew what she had really been up to this entire time.

Why she had decided to come back, her plan all along.

I’ve been standing out here for about thirty minutes, starting to grow impatient, when I see Detective McKay exit the burnt church doors where they had been chatting. Where she was running her pink mouth about everything we had been up to, reporting back, being the good little rat she is.

My mouth waters with venom, my hands itching for retaliation. I step into the trees farther as he gets into his vehicle, turning the key and slowly backs out of the space.

I wait until I’m sure he won’t be returning, pleased to see that Sage is still inside the building I had once set fire to. I toss my cigarette out onto the ground, stepping on it as I walk towards the entrance.

An odd feeling comes over me. I’m not twitching or enraged. I’m calm; I’m not overcome with impulse. It’s as if my body knows exactly what we’re coming here to do. What we’re here to take care of.

The door whines as it opens, casting a beam of sunshine into what remains of the inside of the cathedral. Ashes and soot are stuck to the ground, burned benches, and broken decorations. It looks exactly like I had always wanted it to.

Like hell.

This place of holy ground burns my feet. I feel it sizzle through my shoes, searing my soles.

I like that feeling, stepping into a place I know I don’t belong just because I fucking feel like it.

Maybe that’s because I’d always felt more comfortable in chaos.

Sage is stationed in the front, her hands resting on one of the only pews left, her head tucked between her shoulders. From this distance, it almost looks like she’s praying.

“God doesn’t talk to people who make deals with the devil,” I call out. “Don’t you know that?”

She flinches like my words wound her and shifts her body so she is facing me. All the pigment in her face drains when her worst nightmare comes to life. I’ve caught her in the act. There is no lying; there is nothing to help her out of this situation.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, eyebrows furrowed together.

I walk forward slowly, looking around at the damage my flames had done to this holy place. The place that had started the rumor of my demonic lineage. The first place to turn me into a monster.

“I told you, Sage, I would be watching you, didn’t I? And it’s a good thing I did,” I laugh cruelly, “or I would have missed you meeting with Detective McKay. Since when did your daddy start making friends with the FBI?”

Panic washes over her. The web that she had spun is crumbling down around her, and she’s grasping for something to say, a lie to conjure up.

“Rook, let me explain. I’m not—”

“You’re not what?” I spit out, my upper lip curling, filled to the brim with anger that she would have the fucking guts to lie straight to my face after I’d caught her red-handed.

“You’re not snitching to the feds about our plans?” My footsteps are heavy thuds. Each weighted movement forward just builds my fury.

“No, that’s not what is happening. I know that’s how it looks, but it’s not. My father came to the facility with Cain—Detective McKay—and they tried to give me a deal.”

“That’s how you got out, isn’t it? You cut a fucking deal? To do what? Snoop around, get close to us, just so you could stab us in the back? Have us all sent to prison before we got to put your father’s head on a stake?”

I’m closing in on her while she shakes her head back and forth quickly, stepping away from me with every single step in her direction. Fear bubbles up in her eyes, making my mouth water.

It doesn’t matter. She can back away as much as she’d like. She can run if she wants. It won’t fucking matter, because she’s in my clutches now.

And there is no way in hell I’m letting her get away.

“No!” she shouts. “I mean yes, but I wasn’t going to do it. I just needed them to let me out so that I could help you guys get to my father. I was going to double-cross them, not you. I just needed them to believe me enough to let me out. That’s it.”

I bite my bottom lip, smirking. “And you’re good at that, aren’t you? Getting people to believe you.”

Her back hits the front of the confessional. The sturdy wood that it’s composed of had fought against the heat of the fire, leaving most of it intact. I can practically feel her heartbeat running rapid in her chest.

“I’m not lying, not to you. I swear that’s the truth. Cain is working with this group called the Halo. All of them are—they’re the people my father owed money to. They’re taking girls around Ponderosa Springs and selling them.” She reaches her hands forward, palms out as if that will stop me, prevent me from doing what I want to do.

“I only want to stop my father, and then I’m gone. I swear to you. Just like that first night at the lake house, I’m telling the truth. You have always had all of my truths, all of them.”

So many questions run through my brain, overwhelmed with the information she just spewed. What the fuck is the Halo? Are both of the feds dirty? Is she even telling me the truth?

I try to take in the information. I try to process, to take what she says and hear her words, but I physically can’t.

My body temperature is so hot it’s about to melt my clothes. It’s boiling my brain, and the color crimson starts to leak into the corners of my vision. I’ve waited a year to make her feel this pain that she’d left me with. This betrayal. I want to hurt her. To make her pay.

But flashes of the girl on that dock, broken and ripped apart by her past, hit me. They swipe across my memory at high speed, the organ inside my chest tried tethering to it. I’m right back there, being the fool all over again.

But I refuse to do that.

I close in on her, slamming my palm so hard into the front of the confessional that it stings my hand.

“All. You. Fucking. Do. Is. Lie,” I grind out, my teeth bared like a rabid wolf starved for food.

Her hands press into my chest while she shakes her head aggressively. “This is why I didn’t tell you to begin with, you fucking prick! No matter what I say, you won’t believe me! There is nothing I can say to make you trust me!”

I’m at my end. I’m starting to malfunction.

Because of her eyes.

They are fucking glowing. Bright blue like scalding flames, shining the way they did when we were together. When I thought she was something more. When the words that came from her mouth were ones coated in holy water.

They are so goddamn beautiful, and it hurts.

It hurts more than Thatcher’s cuts, more than Alistair’s hits, my father’s words. I hurt so fucking much that it prevents me from breathing. Every single inhale feels like needles in my throat.

And for the first time in my life, I want the pain to stop. I need it to fucking stop.

No, no, no, I repeat to myself.

“Because all you are is a treacherous fucking poison. I trusted you, and look what that fucking did.”

Do not let her do this to you again, Rook. Don’t fall for this. It’s a fucking trick. Pretty poison—it’s the venom that’s still pumping in your veins.

I take her fragile neck in my grasp, using the leverage to forcefully jerk her closer to me. Her scent gets all up close and personal with my nose, making it tingle. I press my waist into hers, feeling just how soft she is against me. Feeling just how easy she would be to break.

My cock stiffens, straining against my jeans.

I’d once thought she felt angelic in my arms. An angel that had wandered too far from home and found herself in the clutches of something sinister.

Now, she just feels like a sin.

The sin.

Primal, hot, and immoral.

This is the one thing I’ve been depriving my body of for a year now. Refusing the temptation, punishing myself for what’s directly in front of me now. And I don’t know how I’m going to stay in control.

“I never lied to you, Rook. Not in the way you think.” She gasps for air against my grip. “I wanted you to keep—”

“The lowest, blackest, and farthest from Heaven,” I interrupt her, tightening my fingers so she’ll shut up. “That’s where traitors go. Did you know that? That’s where I’m going to fucking send you.”

I don’t want to hear her excuses. I don’t want to hear any more lies.

It’s my turn to make her hurt. It’s her turn to be punished.

“Traitorous sluts like you deserve to be punished,” I snarl, my hand moving up to her face, forcing her lips to pucker as my fingers dig into her cheeks.

“You sound awfully fucking sanctimonious for a man they call Lucifer. Aren’t you supposed to reward sin?” she quips, her voice thick and sticky like cough syrup, leaving me bitter.

Fighting me just like I want her to.

I don’t want her to already be broken. I want her to be a fucking fighter so that it feels even better when I make a mess of her.

My belt digs into the soft flesh of her stomach as I take my free hand, palming her ass, causing that short, short denim skirt to rise up. My fingers inch in between her legs, hovering over her pussy just above her panties.

The heat that radiates between her legs makes my knees fucking weak.

“No, Sage, this is my hell. My kingdom. My fucking rules. I reward good little whores only.”

Just like I knew she would, she pants, opening her mouth. I spit directly on her pink tongue, using my hand on her face to close her jaw shut so she is forced to swallow it.

My lips crash with hers, desire pooling in my gut. It’s all teeth and tongue. Her venom tastes sweet, too fucking sweet. She pushes against me, moving her mouth against my own, meeting my feral hunger.

I pour all my loathing into it, curing her with my tongue, damning her with my mouth. I bite down hard on her bottom lip, pulling it out barely as I bring my hand up from between her thighs, showering her with the juices that stick to my skin.

“Fucking pathetic. Look how wet you are. How long have you been thinking about this? About me?”

Her face heats up, cheeks bright with a mixture of pleasure and embarrassment.

I drop my hand from her face to the front of her low-cut shirt, grabbing a hold of the material and yanking it down. The tearing of fabric echoes in the air, and I’m left staring at her milky tits that are spilling over her black bra.

My head falls, and I inhale deeply, filling my lungs with her smell. I trail one long, slow lick from the valley of her breasts to the scar that runs along her collarbone. The matching one on my body starts to throb.

One year of depriving myself of this, and now the forbidden fruit is melting in my hands. All I can think about is feasting. My self-control is nonexistent at this point.

I rotate her body, spinning her around and pinning her front against the confessional. She reaches up and grabs the wooden bars that separate the two booths. I use both of my hands to lift her skirt, shoving it up her waist until her entire backside is visible.

“Rook…” she breathes.

“This is confessional, Sage. That’s not how this starts,” I hiss, running one hand up her spine and gathering a handful of her short hair in my hand. jerking it back so she arches her ass into my cock. “Or have you fallen so far from grace you don’t remember?”

I knead my palm into her ass, giving her only a few moments to reply before I pull my hand back, slapping her flesh. My hand stings from the impact, and I look down to see the blood already rushing to the surface of her pale skin.

She squeals in surprise, the little noise shooting straight to my groin, making me grind into her harder.

“Answer me.”

“Go to hell. It doesn’t matter what I say, you wanna fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid,” she grits out, even though I know what she wants.

I grin, even though she can’t see it.

She wants me so badly she can’t even see straight, but she never gives in that easy. Which is why it’s more fun.

I know her body, what makes it tick, what makes it explode. The ins and outs of her pussy. She can front all she wants, that’s fine with me. It’ll only make the end result that much better.

“I live in hell, TG. Remember?” I hum. “You helped send me there.”

I pull my hand back again, sending another harsh smack across her skin, making her jump. I feel her try to pull away from the pain, but I root her in place by her hair, not letting her move.

She will feel this ache. She will feel it for as long as I tell her to.

I’ve spent a year punishing myself for her, and now it’s her turn.

“Don’t fucking move unless I say.”

Smack.

Smack.

Smack.

Three more blunt strikes to her sensitive skin, leave her quivering in my hold. My mouth waters at the sight of her plump ass all swollen and throbbing. I raise my hand back to deliver another blow, but I hear her sweet voice, sugary and erratic.

“I—” she stutters. “Forgive me, for I have sinned.”

I roll my hand over the sore skin, rubbing gently in slow circles. “Mmmm, that’s a good little whore.”

Snaking my fingers to her center, I find that she’s soaked through her underwear completely. Dripping for release, dripping for me. I shove the material to the side, using the pads of my fingers to massage her clit.

She moans loudly, grinding her hips against my hand. I move them back, slipping two fingers inside of her tight channel smoothly. My fingers pump in and out of her, curling as they disappear inside of her pussy, brushing that spot so deep inside of her no one else will ever be able to touch it like I do.

It’s here, while she’s bent over a confessional inside the remnants of a singed church, that I realize she had never been Eve.

I hadn’t slithered into the Garden of Eden and stolen her, coerced her with the fruit. No, that would have been too easy.

She had always been my Lilith.

The reason I fell from grace, tumbling through the clouds and thrown into the pits of hell. Damned to live an eternity in the flames because of her.

“Confess,” I grunt, my hand working to undo my belt and zipper. “Tell me what I already know. That you love being my dirty, fucking slut.”

“Rook, please. I need—”

“I know. I know what you need. But you’re going to give me what I need first.”

I slow the pace of my fingers, teasing her, giving her just enough to feel pleasure but not nearly enough to really enjoy the sensation.

Pulling my cock from my jeans, I use my free hand to stroke myself as I put her through deliberate torture. Pre-come drips from my throbbing tip, falling onto her ass.

“I love being your dirty slut,” she whimpers. “I want you to fuck me, break me, use me.”

There’s no more holding back for me.

I replace my fingers with my shaft, drilling into her with no warning. We both groan when I enter her, sliding all the way inside her silky walls until I can’t go any farther. She pulses around me, sucking me in like a vise.

“Your cunt takes me so fucking good.”

Her back bows, spine stretching as she pushes into me farther.

So tight and so warm.

I start to hasten the tempo, grunting as I do. Violent smacks fill the stuffy air inside as my cock glides so easily in and out. My rough hands reach around to clutch onto both of her arms, holding my own out straight, using this new grip to drill into her with more force.

Her mewls and whimpers are fuel to the fire. I watch as her ass jiggles with the power of my thrusts. Every single time I slip inside of her feels like another injection of her into my veins. Straight shots of adrenaline into my system.

She is so fucking intoxicating.

“Rook, I—” she moans, trying to form words, but I already know what she wants to say.

This angle has my cold jewelry tickling her G-spot over and over again.

“I know. Come all over my cock. Be a good whore for me and come.”

She snaps, falling apart on me. Her cunt is snug around me, clamping down and refusing to let me go. Sage drenches my dick, soaking my length in her juices.

I keep forcing my way into her body, even though she’s shaking in my arms, whimpering from the overload of pleasure. Sweat falls from my forehead, my body chasing that high.

My own release tears through my body, hitting me like a wave.

I groan loudly as static zips through me, racking my bones while I pour myself into her heat, filling her to the brim with me, so much that I’m leaking out of her body.

Sage’s body falls slack in my arms, twitching from the surge of her climax. I breathe heavily, catching my breath for a moment before stepping back from her body. I slip out of her, sliding her panties back into place to catch my come that’s started to drip from her tender hole.

I feel my cock start to stiffen again just thinking of her walking around with my come staining her underwear.

I’m buckling my belt before I notice she’s turned around to face me, her body relaxing against the confessional, blistering blue eyes seared towards me.

She waits for me to say something, waits for me to explain what just happened between the two of us.

“What?” I snap.

There is a snap of pain that flicks across her face, but she hides it quickly. Nodding her head, she takes her bottom lip between her teeth. She fixes her shirt the best she can, pulling her skirt down back where it belongs.

“So you can fuck me, but you won’t trust me?”

“Well, your cunt doesn’t lie to me. Your mouth does.”

Silence falls within the space. Our adrenaline is falling, our tension leaving.

I reach into my pocket, grabbing my cigarettes, then place one on my lips and light it.

“You’re right. I did lie to you,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ears, exposing her flushed cheeks.

“Save it—”

“No, it’s my turn to talk,” she interrupts me. “I did lie. The day in the theatre when I told you Easton and I were perfect for each other. When I told you that I was only using you. All of that was a lie.”

This had been what I wanted when it happened. These words had been what I hoped for when I first heard about their engagement.

Now, I couldn’t give a fuck less. It wouldn’t change anything now. All that damage had been dealt.

Sage steps closer to me, “The engagement was for my father’s benefit. Stephen Sinclair was giving him money, and in order to continue getting it, Stephen wanted a marriage between me and Easton. I assume because he wanted to be in control of everything. When I started to fall for you, I swear on my sister that I was going to leave all of this shit behind after graduation and be with you.”

A thin stream of water lines the bottom of her eyes as she holds on to the last pieces of her pride.

“I wanted to be with you so bad, Rook.” The first few tears fall, her voice cracking. “But Easton found out about us. He found out and made it very clear that if I didn’t follow through with the marriage, they would force it on Rosie, and I couldn’t do that to her.”

She tries to wipe her cheeks, but they’re falling too fast, there really is no point.

“I had already been ruined. Cain had already broken me in. Made me accustomed to what happens in that kind of life. Rosemary wasn’t—she was free and happy. There was no reason for me to ruin that because I wanted to be selfish. I’d done that enough. I was just trying to protect her. Trying to protect you.”

I’m doubting everything. My gut, my heart, my brain.

The lines of honesty and deception are blurry, evil and righteousness muddled once again by the grime that leaks from the grounds of Ponderosa Springs. It makes me question if she’d ever really lied to me, if I spent a year of my life hating the only woman who’d sparked my interest and kept it.

I don’t care.

I don’t care.

I—

“Cain did what?” I snap, furrowing my eyebrows, stepping the rest of the way there. I let my anger take the forefront, shadowing the ache in my chest for now. Not wanting to face what could be the truth. Not right now.

It’s too much to take in at one time, and I’m not even sure I believe her. I never know what to believe from her.

“That’s what you—”

“Sage,” I grunt. “If you ever gave a shit about me, answer the fucking question. What did Cain do to you?”

There is a numbness that settles on her face. Like she is separating her emotions from her mind in order to say it.

“The man I told you about at the lake house, the one who touched me as a kid.” She nods her head. “It was Cain.”

I feel as if hot oil is being poured directly onto my skin, making it sizzle and hiss. My bloodstream runs so fast that I’m starting to get light-headed. The higher my anger climbs, the lower my pain gets, and I need it to go away.

Because this pain, the one I feel for her, I want it to go away.

I need it to stop.

This whole time, I was trying to cut her out of me when in reality, I was just trying to sever the connection I’d created with her. Every single time Thatcher dug that blade into my skin was just me trying not to feel the ache of her.

Her pain. Her sorrow. Her anger.

I felt all of it as if it were my own, and to some degree, it was.

And I hated her for ruining something that powerful. A bond that my heart desperately tried to argue could not be faked. That what we had was real

And although Sage stands impassive to her trauma, I’m not.

“Every night from the age of ten to thirteen, when he left for the academy.” She pauses. “But he isn’t what matters. I don’t care anymore.”

She’s become so jaded to her own trauma that she doesn’t care about what happens to the one who hurt her, only the man who took her sister. She’s succumbed to acceptance, forced to work with a man who took her innocence before she even knew what it was.

The man who stole her wings.

I’m unsure of almost everything now, except that I want to wear Cain’s bowels as a necklace.

“You’re coming with me.”

“Why? Where are we going?” she asks.

I find her eyes, seeing a woman who built herself from the last spark of her dying embers.

A phoenix.

One that makes no excuses for who she made herself into, no apologies if you get too close to her and find yourself scorched.

They’d ripped her wings from her back, but she replaced them with ashes and eternal wings made of the hottest blue flame.

And in order for her to fly, I’m going to cut the chains keeping her rooted to the ground.

But first…

“There is a theory I need to test.”