Vile Bastards, page 14
Unless … well, some Prescott brats have cars that are so old they don’t have seat belts or else the family dog chewed it off before they inherited the car from their mom who inherited it from their neighbor for five hundred bucks and a year of lawn mowing. Even before all that, it was probably a clunker.
Swear to fuck, some of the cars driven by my peers are held together with a wing, a prayer, and a shitload of duct tape.
“You’re very Addams Family, you know that?” I state, and Bohnes pauses to think for a moment. Not sure if he’s seen the early nineties film or not, but it’s an appropriately morbid comparison.
“Morticia and Gomez have a beautiful romance, but the Addamses are far too fucking nice for their own good.” Bohnes hits the throttle, and I get that queasy, churning kick of adrenaline that almost immediately triggers another panic attack. Bohnes notices, but he doesn’t slow down which I appreciate.
Instead, he lets me work through it even as I know he’s watching from the corner of his eye, anticipating whether I might need him to pull over or take me somewhere. For as psychotic as he is, I know that he cares about me. He made that obvious when he showed up to bury the mayor’s hired gun without asking for anything in return. He made that obvious when he helped me bury Lemon and dispose of Aspen Kelly. And the look on his face when I climbed out of the car, and he fell to his knees?
I’m so busy fighting through the panic that I don’t realize we’re heading toward the Pleasant Hill area. There’s not a lot out there (yet), so I wonder where it is that he’s taking me. It occurs to me then that I’m in Kellin Bohnes’ car, in the dark, on a cold November night, rocketing away toward the countryside.
We pass a lot with a large sign advertising a future tract housing development, Archer Realty TM. And then, less than thirty seconds later, we pass a full-blown construction site with yet more cookie-cutter houses, Archer Realty TM.
They have a Kafkaesque fragility to them, like they’re so insignificant and disturbing that they must be a sign of something terrifying and pertinent.
“Fuck, I hate fuckin’ tract housing.” That’s what leaves my mouth because, yeah, I’m Scarlett Force. This is Prescott. I will say and do whatever the hell I want, and everyone else can straight stuff it. Living to please other people is a one-way ticket to emotional turmoil. Growing up in the southside, it’s obvious that underneath the world’s feigned civility, there’s rage and anger and hatred, injustice and violence and despair. I don’t have to play along with any of it. “Should we burn these down, too?”
“They might multiply, like a wet Gremlin.” Bohnes presses down on the gas, and the Chevelle cannonballs into the blackness. We make a sharp right turn near the sign for Mt. Pisgah (it’s a nature preserve) and then follow a winding road into the woods.
Bohnes rolls with this slick, easy confidence, driving dirty out of necessity rather than simple habit. He grew up on the streets of Prescott and fended for himself at an early age. Why wouldn’t he know how to outrun a cop or make a clean getaway? It’s in his blood.
I admire that in him. Mostly, I admire the sumptuous leather beneath my ass, wiggling into the bench seat and entwining my fingers together behind my head. My eyes close, and I listen to the purr of the engine, the shushing of the tires on the pavement, and the faint crackle of a nearly muted radio.
“I’m breaking every well-known Prescott girl rule there is,” I admit. That is, don’t go out with a crazy Prescott boy alone; always travel in groups or at least double date. If you must go out as a couple, for God’s sake, don’t let him take you somewhere private. Mostly, just don’t ever date a Prescott boy, period. “Please don’t kill me out here.”
“You find that funny now …” he starts, and then I open my eyes to see we’re quite literally turning into a cemetery. It’s an old one that I’ve never been to before. I squint my eyes out the window at the sign. Ferndale Hill Cemetery.
“Only in an ironic sense,” I add, and then he’s stopping the car and I’m climbing out and looking up the hill at an impressive array of headstones, obelisks, and mausoleums. The night is cold, but Bohnes grabs a hoodie from the backseat and tosses it to me. Even though it probably looks ridiculous over the top of my blue satin dress, I drag it over my head, pull my overly long hair out of the neck of the sweater, and find myself enveloped in Bohnes’ burnt sugar smell. Like caramel, nice and sticky.
I don’t ask why we’re here. We grew up in Prescott. A cemetery is basically a park, and it’s not entirely unreasonable to visit one on a date though I’d caution any and all of my girls against it. That’s why Bohnes is special, because he isn’t like that. Because I don’t have to worry about him doing anything to me that I don’t want, even if he is crazy. He’s just not that sort of crazy.
“Follow me.” He heads up a set of stone steps, holding out his hand to help me up. Luckily, we don’t have to go far or else I’d have taken off the heels. I might be the baddest bitch you’ve ever seen in stilettos, but that doesn’t mean any reasonable person wants to run in them. Or fight in them, as the case may be.
We pause beside a large, stone mausoleum with an empty scroll carved into the stone above the door. There’s a small table, two folding chairs, and a firepit set up alongside it.
Bohnes squats down, lights a clove cigarette, and takes a drag before flicking it into the metal firepit. The logs go up with a whoosh, like he doused them in lighter fluid or something. It’s meant to be cool, and, if I can get past my own cynicism, I think it probably is.
“What is all this?” I ask, taking a seat in one of the chairs as Bohnes unzips a backpack on the ground near the other and draws out a white cloth. If all this stuff is here, that means he came out earlier and set it up.
Shit, shit, fuck. No. I can’t and won’t fall for a piece of shit Prescott boy.
I really, really shouldn’t.
I know that. I know better than that.
Yet, if I were to look in the mirror right now, would I see the same obsessive gleam in my eye that flickers so prominently in Ash’s? Because when I look at Bohnes, and I see him looking back at me, I feel it. And I wonder why I even need any other boys around …
“This is a strange ritual custom known as …” He looks up at me in dramatic fashion, hair swept back like a prince, eyes impossibly blue even in the shadows. “Romance.”
“You’re a cocky fuck, you know that?” I bite out, watching as he rises to his feet and lays the white cloth over the table.
“Scarlett, I’ve already bathed my dick in your virgin blood, rutted you into a filthy forest floor, and sucked your sweet cunt under a Halloween harvest moon. Naturally, romance would follow. You’re still afraid—which is reasonable and understandable—but we’ll get past that.”
“Uh-huh.” I pause at the sound of a car pulling up, its headlights sweeping the cemetery and limning all of the gravestones in bright, white light.
Bohnes doesn’t pay it any attention, using a lighter to set the wicks of over a dozen candles aflame.
“Did you guys order Grubhub?” the driver asks, and I give Bohnes a harsh look.
“This the Southside version of catering?” I ask dryly as Bohnes turns toward the guy making his way up the stone steps toward us.
“Getting the taco truck to deliver food on Cheap Taco Tuesday is the Southside version of catering. This is five-star concierge service.” Bohnes takes the bags of food and then freezes when the delivery driver dares glance over at me. “There are still empty plots in this cemetery.” This is said mildly, as if it’s anything but a threat.
Grubhub Dude leaves at a much speedier clip than he arrived.
“What are we eating?” I ask as Bohnes unpacks containers and stacks them on the table. “Denny’s? Applebee’s? IHOP? You know, all those klassy with a K restaurants over by the mall?”
“None of the above.” Bohnes flicks one of the boxes open and I spot a steak with some fancy sprig of herbs on the top. “Steak from that place in Thurston with its head up its own asshole.”
“Kelly’s.” I name the restaurant and sigh. It hadn’t occurred to me that, perhaps, Kelly’s Steakhouse was owned by Ash’s father, Jonas. But if Bohnes is ordering from there, and smirking the way he is, it occurs to me now. “Hilarious.”
We eat in relative silence, sharing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and smoking clove cigarettes. Once the food is gone, it opens up the space for further conversation.
“I don't really know you all that well—”
“Get to know me then. Just don’t rush it. We have years.” Bohnes slouches in his seat, holding the liquor bottle by the neck with one hand and the sleek ebon black cylinder of a cigarette with the other. Bohnes is still Bohnes, in or out of a suit. “Come with me.”
He sits up suddenly and then rises to his feet. By this point, the fire’s warmed me up enough, and I’ve kicked off my shoes. I don’t mind walking barefoot in the icy grass for a minute.
Bohnes takes me over to the front door of the mausoleum and then reaches into his pocket for a key. When he unlocks it and steps inside, I feel my heart start to pound.
Despite my better judgment, I follow him in and pause in the large, open space. There’s some sort of stone altar in the center—for a coffin, I guess?—and a trap door set into the stone floor that’s currently open to a steep set of stairs.
“Here.” Bohnes turns and offers up the key. “This is for you.”
“For me …?” I reach out to take it and Bohnes grabs me around the wrist with cold fingers, yanking me close. His breath is warm against my lips as he leans in.
“If you’re ever on the run from anyone or anything, you can come here. It’s a safe house, Scarlett.” He releases me and stands up straight, allowing his gaze to sweep the small room. Outside, I can hear the fire crackling. “If we’re separated, come here first and I’ll find you.”
“You’re that worried about this?” I ask, curling my fingers around the key and peering into the shadowy darkness that awaits at the bottom of the steps. I shiver and Bohnes kicks the door closed. When it’s shut like that, it’s hard to see; the edges blend in with the rough stone floor.
“It never hurts to have backup plans, now does it?” His words are cocky, casual, careless. But that’s not the look in his eyes, a look that says he might have lost me, or I might have lost him, or, more importantly, we might’ve lost each other. “Also, this is our future tomb. We can be buried here together.”
I turn and take off out the door, shoving the stupid key into the pocket of the hoodie, and then Bohnes is right behind me.
He grabs me by the shoulder and yanks me toward him, pushing my back against the exterior wall of the mausoleum.
“You're not allowed to do that.” My words are breathless but wanting, and I can’t seem to make myself stop showing him that.
Like his stupid dead rose, he’s pricking me all over and making me bleed.
“To do what?” he hisses through gritted teeth.
“Make me feel like I can’t live without you.”
Bohnes has me lifted up and in his arms in an instant. I’m not sure where he even gets the time to undo his slacks, and then he’s slamming my bare ass cheeks against the stone, pushing my panties aside, and burying himself to the hilt inside of me.
His kisses are rough, almost painful, but I return them with ferocious kisses of my own. I’m barely human in that moment, as much a beast as Widow fears that he’s becoming.
That’s how I know it’ll okay, that even if he is, it doesn't matter. We can be beasts together, a mated pair of violent creatures.
Bohnes fucks me up against that wall like he’s starved for it, biting my neck the way he likes and grunting with primal satisfaction as he rams home each thrust.
I gather him against me, welcoming him in, begging him to go as deep and hard as he can with husky whispers against his ear.
With a growl, Bohnes drops us to the grass, pulling out of me and flipping me over so that he can mount me from behind.
He pulls my hair so that my back arches, using his other hand to grip one of the thigh straps I’m wearing.
“What are these for, Scarlett?” He grinds my name off the end of his tongue, and I marvel that I even remotely thought he was sane at any point during the night. “All the better to tie you up with?”
“Garter belt with no garters,” I gasp as Bohnes releases my hair, grabbing the other thigh strap and then yanking on them both simultaneously.
The move forces my legs even further apart, knees sliding in the damp grass, smearing me with dirt. I collapse forward, my head pillowed on one arm, the other reaching out to dig my naked nails into the ground. I claw at it as Bohnes fucks me, my dark hair falling all around my face and getting stuck to my lips as I pant.
“Get a hand down there. I want you to come on my dick; I want my balls bathed in your slickness. Mostly, I want you to show me that you’re alive, Scarlett.” He gives another small yank on the leather thigh straps. “Show me. Prove it to me.”
I adjust my left arm, reaching between my legs and allowing my chin to rest in the dirt. My fingers find my clit, swollen and throbbing and almost too sensitive to touch.
Bohnes jumps the gun, reaching around me and under my dress, pressing his fingers over mine and pushing down. He rocks my clit with my own fingers, and I gasp, bits of grass brushing my tongue as my mouth parts in a desperate gasp.
He places his palm on the ground near my face and leans over me with the express purpose of making me as uncomfortably ecstatic as I’ve ever been in my life. My body is being ripped apart by pleasure, but it’s his intent and his fucking feelings that threaten to douse those wild flames.
“I’m never letting you go, Scarlett. If you want me gone, you’ll have to kill me.” His eyes are looking directly into mine; I can see the full extent of that truth reflected back in them. “You understand how I feel about you, don’t you?”
“Fuck your feelings,” I choke out, but I can barely breathe let alone talk.
“Fuck my feelings?” Bohnes laughs at me. “Oh, oh, Scarlett … you’ll regret saying that.” His hand disappears from my clit, and then he’s sliding out of me, and I’m scrambling to turn around and stare up at him, my bare ass planted in the damp earth and grass. He buttons up his slacks, and then reaches inside his suit jacket to pull out a knife.
I shove up to my feet, prepared to fight but also … not really, because this is Bohnes. He reaches out and takes my hand, curling my fingers around the hilt of the knife, and then he maneuvers it so that the point is positioned just over his heart.
“I won’t give you an opportunity like this for a while,” he says, and I’m at least relieved to see that he’s as red-faced and panting as I am. He can pretend he’s a ghoul or a phantom all he wants, but, as he said, he truly is just human. “Think carefully about what you want to do.”
With a scowl, I yank the knife from his grip and then make as if I might actually stab him with it before releasing my fingers and allowing it to fall to the ground.
“You stopped fucking me for this? Get your shit together and get your dick back out. Now.” I get up in his face just as the clouds part, and a violent deluge comes down on us, like the heavens aren’t just crying but screaming.
“I have abandonment issues,” he says with another laugh, reaching up as if to swipe the water from his face. Only, there’s no helping it because everything is wet: this damn graveyard, my dress, my aching pussy. “Kill me now and let me go or—”
“I upgraded you to boyfriend, didn’t I?” I query dryly, offering up a shake of my head. I can hardly hear; the rain is so fucking loud. It’s like the world is crying out for us both to get past our shit, to embrace our inner darkness, to entwine our shadows. “What more do you want?”
“I want you to let me be your monster.” He takes my hands and puts them on either side of his neck, his own eyes closing as he puts pressure against my palms. “Leash me. Please, Scarlett. Hold me hostage. Keep me captive.”
He opens those hauntingly beautiful eyes to stare at me, and I feel my heart thundering like crazy behind a cage of ivory ribs. It’s a reminder that I’m alive, that I’m different from these people buried beneath our feet.
“Bohnes …” I trail off, but then my gaze hardens and my lips purse. I can see a flicker of terrified curiosity in his eyes as I squeeze my hands just a bit harder around his throat, not choking him, but collaring him. I walk backward through the rain, and he follows me, into the empty mausoleum with the stone altar in the center.
I’m not sure what it’s for, exactly. To hold a coffin during a funeral? For flowers? It doesn’t matter. Bohnes seems to know what I want, reaching down to snatch up those fucking leather thigh straps again. With my hands on his neck, he uses the straps to lift me up and spread my legs at the same moment, stepping between them as I keep my grip against the throbbing pulse of his carotid.
“Make me a Nightmare.”
“That’s sacred Prescott shit,” I whisper, even as he’s unbuckling his slacks. “Most people don’t even know what that means anymore. Likely, we’ll be the last senior class to even recognize the term.”
“Do it.” Bohnes is panting now, and I can feel the hot, slick tip of him pressing against my folds. “Give me your word, Scarlett. Quickly. Now. Let’s stop pretending this is just a game.” He takes a step back, pushing his slacks down even further so that I can see the fresh ink beside his tattooed cock.
There it is, the shape of my teeth marked in black ink. A branding. A claiming.
I should’ve known what I was doing when I got involved with this crazy bastard in the first place.
“You are vile,” I tell him, and he grins. “Absolutely vile.”
I sigh.
I sort of wanted a normal life, ya know? Well, not like normal-normal, not all financial portfolios and mortgages and picket fences (shoot me now), but like some slight resemblance of normal. No girl gangs or police chases or murders. That’s the part of Prescott that I wanted to shed, but it’s a poison. It’s a toxin. It’s an infection the likes of which even Alexei Grove could never fully understand.
