OMINOUS: Book II (Ecstasy 3), page 46
She arches her back, sitting between my lap, and her ass pushes against my cock.
I’m so fucking hard for her.
It’s been so long since I’ve had her. And here, sex is a risk. Not of getting caught, although it’s that. But every time is beyond kink. It’s actually dangerous.
My eyes water, thinking of the bleach in the closets. It’s the only place to go, really, with any privacy.
There are cameras everywhere. I’m not sure how ethical it is, but there isn’t another place like Montford.
They house some of the most dangerous young adults in the country.
Rules are bent here. Broken. Snapped.
“I said shut up.” Her eyes open, and she’s looking at me upside down, her head on my shoulder as I hold her, my hand still on her face, her lip pulled between her teeth.
I know she wants me to slap her. She thinks she’ll like it.
I’ve done it before, to other people. Just last week, someone punched me in the mouth before they came in it.
I’m under no illusion Eden is made of glass.
I know the kind of things she likes.
She’s deviant too.
But to me… she’s an angel. Dark and fallen, but my angel, still.
I couldn’t hit her if I wanted to.
Instead, I grab her face, turn her head, and I kiss her neck.
Her fingers reach behind her, for my own throat, and I know she’s looking for the choker, but there’s nothing there.
She cut it off of me.
She saw me bleed, and I could tell, maybe from her shaky hands, maybe because somewhere buried deep in her darkness there’s an innocence even I haven’t ruined, she was upset.
We took a break. Went outside.
Then everything… happened, a lot like I knew it would.
Everything with the police, and being committed, and my fight with dad, the talks with the school board. I really did too much this time, and unlike before, when I wanted out of the spotlight after Winslet’s disappearance and I broke that kid’s nose, I didn’t want to be taken away.
This time, I miscalculated.
But it’s okay because she’s here now.
She settles with looping her arm back, around my neck.
She turns her head, and she kisses me, and it feels like… it feels like I’m living.
I’m not sure I ever really did that before.
But now, for her, I try.
I don’t know how long we kiss, but it feels like hours. It feels like forever.
Then I open heavy-lidded eyes.
I hear the jangle of keys.
Alive check.
The word echoes in my mind, and out loud, in my room.
There’s a flashlight in my face.
My eyes water.
“Sleep well, honey.” A woman’s voice, familiar.
The flashlight sweeps out of my room before I can see, black spots fading from my vision.
In the dark, the nightstand comes into focus, the block of wood built into the wall. Rounded edges.
But there’s no Sentra keys. No coke residue. I glance at the floor, pushing the thin sheet off of me. The one I had to earn.
No sheets until I could prove I wasn’t a suicide risk. They still don’t believe me though, hence the fucking alive checks.
I glance at the floor.
No checkered bag.
My fingers drift to my throat, my eyes to the nightstand again.
No choker on my neck.
There’s a small, battery-powered clock, no cords. I reach out with a shaky hand, pressing the top button. The time glows green in the night.
3:33.
“Come inside.” I push my hands into the pockets of my sweats, watching Winslet in the dark, drudging through the mud in bare feet, pulling at her white, cotton dress, her blonde hair swirling around her as she spins. The motion lights from the house are flicked on, the gated pool to the right, Dominic’s separate apartment is undergoing renovations. New flooring, insulation. He’s old enough now to move in there, his parents decided.
After he begged.
He doesn’t like to watch his mom get hurt, I don’t think.
Winslet laughs, shaking her head. “Someone is coming to pick me up.” She’s still yanking at her dress, her movements clumsy as she steps backward.
I glance at Lake Wisteria behind her, it edges many of the houses in this neighborhood. There’s a dock, a few boats in the water, but the Landers have theirs at the Atlantic Ocean.
“Who?” I take a few steps toward her, in sliders. The mud is slick from the afternoon rains. Dom was pissed about that. He wanted to swim in the lake, but he hates the rain.
I think of Winslet’s blood on the coffee table, edged in gold. Her banged up knees. Her sniffling as Dom went upstairs with Luna.
I’m surprised Luna hasn’t figured it out yet. The bedroom down the hall where Dom spends most of his nights.
I chew the inside of my cheek, thinking of this morning. Pina coladas mixed by the pool. Winslet between us, our legs in the water. My hand on her thigh. She tilted her head toward me, grinning, glancing to the side, wanting Dominic to see.
I think of the photo Dad showed me last week when I was at the beach with him and Dominic.
Adonis.
She fucking named him Adonis.
Fuck. Her.
“Are you jealous, Eli?” Winslet tries to taunt me, fiddling with the buttons on her dress, but she’s getting frustrated. I see it in the way her lip furrows, her brows too. “Help me.” She throws her arms by her sides, pouting as she lifts her eyes to me.
I don’t move toward her, and instead glance over my shoulder, at Dom’s house looming behind me. I should go inside. I’m tired. I don’t want to be out here.
“No.” I answer Winslet’s question honestly. “I’m not.” Slowly, I face her in the dark. I take a step toward her as she goes back to yanking at the material of her dress, and when I’m a foot from her, I hear the fabric rip.
She does too, and she giggles, tearing it down the middle until she can slip the thin straps off of her shoulders and step out of it, wearing only white underwear.
“You’re not at all jealous, Eli?” She brings her hands to her breasts, cupping them and letting her nipples peek through.
I highly doubt anyone is picking her up, and either way, I don’t care. I just want her to shut the fuck up and come inside so I can sleep. But then I wonder why it matters.
Why am I still out here? I followed her because I thought I might be able to fuck her. But this is too much work.
“Goodnight, Winslet.” I turn around, taking a breath and heading toward the expansive back porch. I think of Dom upstairs in his room this morning. I think of the pills he had in a little baggie. I think of Winslet pouting earlier today, asking for something different.
I think of him winking at me. Crushing up the pills, putting them in her drink. She watched it. She knew. But now… she’s not just drunk. She’s high too.
She’s oblivious.
“Eli!” She sounds scared, and I stop, turning once to look at her. “Come swimming with me. I can’t go in there when he’s with her.”
I roll my eyes, turning back to the house.
“Eli! I’ll tell my dad. I promise I’ll tell my fucking dad if—”
“You do that.” I’ll kill your goddamn dad before he puts a hand on me. I keep walking.
She’s quiet, and I think she’s crying. I think I hear sniffling, but it’s dark, and I just want to go inside. For once, I just want to fucking sleep.
Dominic is fucking his sister.
I want to kill my brother.
Which one of us has the bigger problem?
Then I hear it, just as I lift my foot to the bottom step of the porch. At first, I think maybe it’s a creak from the umbrella in one of the patio tables, folded out. I think it’s the pole spinning in the socket.
But then I straighten, turning slowly, and I hear her.
“Come in the lake with me!” She’s shouting, and I can barely see her in the dark, but I know the splash was her swimming. “Come swim with me!”
I’m not going in the lake.
But swimming while she’s fucked up… it seems like a bad idea.
I weigh my options but saving her doesn’t factor into them.
I close my eyes. I see Mom’s. Feel her hand on my chest. My bowels loosen. In the end, I only pissed myself. It seemed like the best outcome.
I open my eyes.
I think I see Winslet’s hands waving in the night air, but I don’t hear her anymore.
I always wondered what it would’ve been like if Mom had kept me under. What it would have felt like, sucking in water.
I glance again at Dom’s house.
I turn to the lake.
I take a deep breath.
Then I stroll toward the dock, hands in my pockets. I’m not getting in that water, but I’ve always wondered what it would be like… watching someone drown.
It’s only later I see Luna. It’s only later I wonder what she saw too.
Eden
I duck into the passenger seat without looking at him after he opens the door for me. I watched him pull up and came quickly outside. He doesn’t often come to my door to get me, which Mom hates, but the thing is… I don’t want him to.
I crave the distance. It’s something I rarely gave to Eli, but even this—keeping him out of my house—I stuck to. Save for the time he barged in to eat breakfast, feeling guilty about letting Luna suck his dick.
Although “barge” isn’t quite right. Manipulated quietly is more what he did. He was always so very good at it.
And guilty… yeah, I’m fairly certain he never truly felt that either.
Dom clears his throat and I look up from my skirt, rolled up three inches higher than it should be. I haven’t changed out of my uniform yet. Mom just got us home from Trafalgar half an hour ago, and this is one of the sexiest things I own, anyhow.
The sun is beaming against Dominic’s back, his body throwing a shadow over mine. His dark blue tie is perfectly knotted, cutting a vertical line down his white dress shirt. His skin has the beginnings of a tan, which looks like blush on his sharp cheekbones.
I lift my eyes to his blue ones. A smile is pulling on his lips, despite where we’re going. His arms are draped over top the doorframe, and he tilts his head as he watches me. The air is humid, even though it’s only March. But my pulse doesn’t drum like it once did being so near to boys. Sweat begins at the base of my neck, beneath the heaviness of my hair, but I’m not drenched in it.
The medication helps with those things.
“You’re fucking sexy.” Dom’s words as he eyes my legs, dragging his gaze slowly up to my face.
I feel a flutter in my low belly, but it’s weak. It feels… cheap. Easy. Like Dom was never out of reach, never above me, or even from another planet entirely.
His attention feels like something I didn’t have to earn.
But when I study his pupils, seeing the wide, dilation of the darkness, hear his familiar sniffing as he studies me, the butterfly wings beat faster.
I think of Sebastian.
Of the fact we now know he had heroin in his possession for hours before he gave in.
Before he stumbled outside, to save us all the haunting of his death in our home. Distance from the night I found him hasn’t made me kinder toward him.
Sometimes, I still hate him for what he did to me.
Dominic sniffs again. Before I can smile at him, he leans down, ducking his head under the doorframe and as his aquatic scent comes lower, I think about being denied at Bloor.
I think of Dom’s insistence it doesn’t matter, because he has money, and he isn’t going to college at all.
I think all these things as his fingers thread through my hair and he cradles my scalp in a way he thinks is aggressive but that’s because he doesn’t know what I can take.
His eyes come to mine as he jerks my head, so gently it could be called a whisper of passion, and I hear it then. What the butterflies are saying in my belly.
Danger.
“Don’t think of him.”
I don’t know if he means Eli or Sebastian and I don’t care enough to ask as his nicotine and mint lips graze mine.
“Please, Eden.” His words are hoarse.
We don’t speak of Eli often, but sometimes I find him staring at the lake as we’re tangled up together in his sheets. A frown, marred between the line of his brows, and I never know if he’s wondering about Winslet, or if he’s missing Eli.
He’s given me pieces of Winslet. The way she laughed like a fairy might, he said, high pitched and twinkling. The way she hated storms and she’d come to his room and hide under the sheets.
He never mentions what else they did under there.
He presses his temple to mine and his grip in my hair turns to desperation, not the precursor to violence.
I hear his rattling breath. I reach my hand up, to his spine, gripping the warmth of his shirt as my eyes flutter closed.
Something like grief tangles in my chest, my throat, my head.
We love him.
Both of us.
I know that for a fact. And I know we’re both grieving someone else too, and maybe we feel guilty for holding onto the green-eyed boy who is still alive, just a little tighter than to the family we had to bury.
“Please.” A jagged whisper from his lips.
The medication makes it hard for me to cry, but I feel something pressing behind my eyes.
“Okay.” It’s a hoarse word, devoid of promise. But I say it again anyway, because I need to hold onto something, or I’ll slip under again. “Okay.”
For a moment, we cling to one another, trying to patch up the void.
Then he pulls away, closes my door gently, and I am left feeling far more empty than I was before we held onto one another.
It’s this, I reason, that allows me to lick the coke from his fingers when minutes later he offers it to me right here in my mother’s front yard after he is back in the driver’s seat.
His eyes stay on mine as I do, no nerves left in my body, no anxious energy like the first time I tried cocaine.
He is twisted toward me, one hand under my skirt, on my thigh, and a wide smile pulls on his lips as the numbness sets in between my two front teeth and the bitter taste is almost hard to swallow down. I deepthroat his finger despite it all, and a knowing gleam seems to sparkle in his blue eyes.
It isn’t just lust, the way his erection strains against his pants.
It isn’t knowing soon I will let him put his hands all over me and I will fuck him back if only to try and grasp onto something, some shred of euphoria or madness or love.
It’s triumph in his gaze, in the wicked curl of his mouth.
It’s knowing, in this strange game he has played for years with Eli, he is currently winning.
“We don’t have to be here.” Dominic has my door open, but he doesn’t move back so I can get out. “It isn’t… required.” He swallows, glancing at the ground. My lips are numb from the coke and him, the way we lost ourselves in one another in his car before we drove here.
Despite the fact it’s afternoon, the temperature seems to have only risen since we left my house, and I feel myself sweating under my skirt. Luna has her arms folded as she comes into view behind Dominic. Her eyes are on my swollen lips and although she never says a word about it, I wonder if she hates me for fucking around with Dominic.
I hate me a little for it, too.
Regardless, she is here after her and Janelle rode together, but I know it isn’t for my sake. I wonder if it is for Eli, too, that she keeps quiet about Dom. Perhaps she is only waiting for my boy to return so she can stake her claim in him and tell him all the horrible things I have done.
Or perhaps I am only delusional.
Janelle is thoughtfully quiet, but her back is to me as she stares at the Addison mansion against the backdrop of a blue spring sky.
“It’s the last match of the season.” I speak the words numbly, but it’s like a knife in my chest. Whatever Luna is waiting for, Eli still isn’t back. He won’t be coming, either. Eric told my mom maybe he’ll sit in on graduation, but that’s the closest he’ll come to being back at Trafalgar.
He will finish up his schooling at Montford. The school board and his psychiatric team made the decision, based on his prior records, and apparently, his current behavior at Montford.
I am not allowed to visit him.
I finally found their visitation policy was on their website, and it seemed like, perhaps, if I tried myself, I could. But when I called and gave my name, they told me I wasn’t on the visitor’s list.
I asked if I could send him letters.
There was a hesitancy before the operator told me she wasn’t sure they’d make their way to him.
My nerves feel raw, knowing this is something Eric and Mom conjured up.
It’s enough to make me want to run. But this was my idea. Now, suddenly, it feels incredibly stupid. But I know Eric put in a good word for me at Trafalgar and convinced the headmaster to let me retake my exams.
He was there when Mom and I went in for our meeting. Mom wasn’t surprised. She’d known he was coming.
It felt tainted, somehow, profiting off my boy’s connections when he isn’t even here to see it. It doesn’t matter, really. The rejection from Bloor was confirmation of that. I think Eli would feel some sort of smugness over the fact.
“He’s going to be missing him, isn’t he?” I lift my eyes to Dom’s.
He stares at me for a long moment. After I left the hospital, I haven’t spent many weekends alone. I’m on medication now. It dulls me, and I have no snappy comebacks or quick wit anymore it seems, but I’m also not climbing rooftops. I’m not carving knives into my skin.
I’m not sure which I prefer. The vividness of insanity, or the calm, dull sea of being stable.
Eli would hate me like this, I know. I think it is this hatred which keeps me coming back to Dominic. It is a twisted bit of logic; the more Eli feels strongly about something, the less likely he will be to forget me entirely.
