Page 101 of Petrify

“Keep going,” he whispers.

A spark of defiance blazes in my chest. Maybe this is a trait of the girl who comes out when I’m sleeping. I stop moving altogether.

“Mal.”

This little act of spite for all the secrets he’s kept from me. He didn’t tell me about my sleepwalking. He didn’t tell me Leo and Mariane wanted me dead from the start.

He can’t see my smile at the flustered noise he makes. “Mallary.”

Though it’s hard to form words when my cunt is stretched around him, I sigh, heady with pleasure. I could stay like this for days, I think, tethered to him. Isn’t that what he wants? “Let me take my time with you.”

For a brief second, I wonder if on some distant day, he’ll think about this moment when he’s fucking someone else.

But there won’t be someone else.

Slowly I start grinding into him again. Where we meet is slick and sticky with his arousal and mine.

His playing continues as I move. This is our song.

He wrote this for me.

I’m dizzy, my heart fluttering too quick against my ribs. I chase my climax, moving quicker, grinding harder, feeling so full I might scream. My fingers keep circling my clit, each shockof pleasure spreading through my thighs, my spine. I reach up, tangling my fist in his hair, holding him to me.

The song is punctuated by my moans. He breathes heavily, and I keep going, wanting to hear his resolve chip away, wanting to break his focus.

Ido this to him.Imake him desperate.

The static builds in my core until I’m crying out, trembling against his body as my orgasm wrings every last bit of pleasure from my limbs. I come, coiled around him, my cunt clenching down on him so tight I see stars.

“Fuck.” He groans through his teeth, his bruising fingers leaving the keys to clamp onto my hips and hold me in place. His cock twitches inside me, and I revel in it, in knowing I’m the only one to take his cum like this, the only one that can make him this desperate. I’m the only one that can give him this.

After a moment, he leans over and scrawls a few things out on the sheet of music, the pen scratching the paper. He taps a few keys, playing a few measures.

He wraps his arms around me again. The movement nudges his still erect cock in my sensitive pussy.

I squirm, still catching my breath.

“It’s finished, I think.” Sated and spent, he looks at me with admiration. He looks at me with the warmest affection. It frightens me.

“You’ll have to play it to be sure,” he says, “but—the song. It’s done.”

Chapter 46

The Ghost

The snakes writhein their crate. Warmed out of their hibernation, they hiss inside the box, dozens, maybe even hundreds of them, their sleek black scales glinting through the small holes in the wood. There is not much room in the box for anything else.

“This can’t be humane,” Desmond says.

I don’t dignify that with an answer.

He blows out a breath. “Snakes and fire. If you’re wanting to send them all to hell, I think you’ll do it.”

“Don’t act like the ethics of murder sway you.” Walking around the box, the thrashing within like black-scaled demons begging to be unleashed.

“This is just…” He searches for a word, a crease forming between his brows as the hissing continues between us. He scratches his head. “Kinda fucked up.”

The mask hides my grin.