Filed To Story: Pretty Poisoned Novel by Elle Mitchell
He sighs before bending down and picking me up. Holding me tightly against his chest, he trudges back up the rocky terrain toward the road, then into the garage, up the staircase, and back into the house. And I let him, silently surrendering. I don’t have anything left to fight for anymore.
He sets me down in a chair in the kitchen. “My god, Teagan.” He takes my chin in his hand, turning my face to inspect my newest injuries. “You look like you got hit by a truck. Does it feel like anything is broken?”
“I’ve had worse.”
“Come on,” he says, extending a hand to me. “I’ll help you into the shower.”
My lip curls in disgust. “No,” I say, knocking it away. “I don’t need your help, and I’m not taking another fucking shower. Stop fucking acting like you care about me.”
“Teagan”
“No! I know what you are and what you’re doingI’m not stupid. You’re the old man who raised you in isolation, throwing scraps of affection at a dejected, mangled sad-ass excuse for a human being and hoping it’ll be enough to get me to agree to whatever you want. You know, you really are just like him. And I don’t care if you kill me for saying itit’s true. You’re Declan De Rossi in a shittier fucking outfit.”
I shove him hard before storming off to the bedroom, but he barely stumbles backward. And when I slam the door behind me, it bounces off his arm and flies open again.
“God damn it! What do I need to do to get you to leave me alone?”
He grabs me by the arm and backs me into the wall. “It was a compliment,” he says. “I meant it as a compliment. I wish I could kill you because you’re all I think about, and it drives me fucking insane. You asked me if I thought you were beautiful I think you’re flawless. You are poetryyour body, your eyes your battered soul, and your rage. You’re the perfect monster, Teagan”
“I’m not a monster! You are, and I don’t want you.”
“Why not?!” he shouts, tightening his grip on my shoulders.
“Stop. Fucking. Hurting me!”
I slash at him with my knife, but with my restricted range of motion, I barely get a small slice of his abdomen.
“Fuck!”
I brace myself for retribution, but instead, he takes a step back and lifts his shirt. I watch blood run down his abdomen from a thin cut about three inches in length, just under where his sternum ends.
He removes his gloves and then, with one strong, tanned hand, grips my wrist, pulling my arm toward him and turning it over. With the other, he runs a finger through the blood. I watch him write the words I’M SORRY across my forearm again.
“I’m sorry, Teagan,” he says as he releases my wrist, his tone soft. “You can hurt me again if you wantif it’ll make you feel betterI won’t hurt you.” He takes a hand and smoothes my hair away from my dirty, tear-streaked cheeks. “You said you wanted to taste my blood ” He runs his fingers through the blood dripping down his abs again and then brings them to my lips. “Stick out your tongue.”
I do as he asks and open for him, and he places those bloody fingers on my tongue. I close my lips around them and suck.
“It was a compliment.” He cups my cheeks in his hands. “How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being?”
“I’ve heard that before ” I whisper, searching the libraries of my mind. Was it Declan? No I’ve read that before.
“Have you?” he asks.
Where have I read that?
“A bad woman is the sort of woman a man never gets tired of,” I quote. “It’s Oscar Wilde.”
“You surprise me.”
I’ve been watching you for months.
“No ” I shake my head. “No how can you Sebastian?”
He neither confirms nor denies it, staring back at me with dark eyes through the holes of his mask. But are they Sebastian’s dark eyes? The voice I heard on the phone earlier it was familiar.
“But you were nice,” I argue. “You were my friend. You can’t”
Sebastian was funny. He made me laugh gave me extra drugs sometimes. But there were times he hurt me there, toowhen he was incidentally cruel without knowing it, and I couldn’t really blame him. Except if he was Bone Saw, they weren’t incidents at all. They were intentional.
Like when he’d walk me to therapy and whistle the tune to “Leaving on a Jet Plane” by John Denver. Or when he made that joke about how drugs sound like they’ll be fun until you wake up with a dead body under you, and your life is ruined. He acted like he didn’t understand why I wasn’t laughing.
Like when he told me there was a blonde girl waiting to see me on the front patio.
“Were we friends?” he asks.
“Don’t,” I sneer. “Don’t do that. You’re you’re ruining it.”
“Ruining what?”
“You’re fucked up.” I shrug him off and move toward the back of the room. “Take it off!”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Then get the fuck out!”
He stares me down for what feels like minutes before he finally says, “Okay, Teagan.”
His hands move to the chin of the mask and I don’t breathe while he pulls it up over his head and lowers the hood. Sebastian stands in front of meit was his dark eyes behind the mask, his dark curly hair I put my hands through, his mouth on my body.
It was him hiding in the shadows of my room at night.
“There’s only one other person in the worldalivewho knows me as both things. And you like me as both things. You’re an anomaly, Teagan. You’re the only person in the world I’ve ever wanted to know. You’re the only person I could never kill.”
Things. He said both things, not people. Unable to speak, all I can do is shake my head.
“What’d I tell you, Teag?” Fake Luca laughs. He slaps Bone Saw wait, no Sebastian on the back before throwing his arm around his shoulders. “I told you he’s just a man. To be fair, I didn’t see this one coming, either.”
“Teagan?” He looks back over his shoulder. “What are you looking at?”
“Luca is touching you.”
“You’re safe, Teagan,” he says. “I promise. I’m going to move closer to you now.” Sebastian slowly closes the space between us. “I ask that you consider not stabbing me.”
Once he reaches me, he takes the knife from my hand and tosses it onto the bed. “Come upstairs with me,” he says. “You can use my shower and sleep in my bed. You can look at my books, too. They are my books, and the records are mine, too. I don’t live here or anywherethat’s the truthbut unlike the others, I do have some of my own belongings and get to choose where I go on occasion. A perk of being raised by one of the Elders, I guess.”
“I thought you were good.”
He shrugs. “Give a man a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” He takes my hand in his. “Come on.”
He escorts me to his bathroom and then turns on the water for me.
“Do you need help?”
“No,” I tell him.
“You were limping. You said you weren’t hurt.”
“I said I’ve had worse. I’m fine.”
He frowns. “Okay. I’ll get you some clean clothes and leave them on the sink.”
“BSebastian?”
“Yeah?”
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.