Page 4 of Make Her Scream

“I still can’t believe they make the dinosaurs look so real.” She shakes her head as if in wonder at the special effects. We’re watching one of the Jurassic Park movies, and she’s loving it so far. “If something like this park existed, would you go?”

I think about her question for a moment then nod. “Yeah, absolutely.”

“Even though you’d likely get eaten by a T-rex ten minutes into your trip?” Malachi glances up from where he’s sitting in the corner.

He’s at the table, his dark head bent over some music he’s working on, but he won’t let any of us hear it yet. I’ve got a feeling what he’s writing will have a lot to do with Ophelia. She’s his muse now.

“It would be worth it, though. I mean, what a way to go.” I chuckle softly to myself.

“Why, would you?” Malachi looks up from his notebook, fixing his kohl-ringed dark eyes on us, and he raises his brow questioningly at Ophelia.

She considers it, her head angled to one side.

Then she shrugs. “I think I need to start with something slightly less insane than a dinosaur park for my next few adventures.”

Roman wanders into the room, all tall, blond and Viking looking, a steaming cup in his hand. It will probably be one of his herbal concoctions. Or some sort of gross mushroom drink, since he’s gotten into those recently.

“What sort of things would you like to do?” Roman asks as he sits on the couch, on the other side of Ophelia, his legs crossed under him.

She leans into him a little, and he gives a happy sigh and kisses the top of her head. We all have our own special relationship with her, but something happened between Roman and Ophelia that has given them an extra strong bond. He basically killed for her when he took down a twisted guard who harmed her right in front of her. He did so brutally, in a uniquely Roman way, and it’s given them a deeper connection. I’m not jealous of their connection, because I know her from way back. We were childhood friends before she was taken, but I recognize it in them. She also helped him through his own trauma, so it goes both ways for them.

Ophelia twists the long braid of her white-blonde hair around her fingers. I watch as she does so, finding myself getting hard. It’s crazy, the tiny things that make me hard around this girl. Her hair is definitely one of them. Although I’m not as obsessed with it as Malachi. That guy has a full-on kink for it.

“There are all sorts of things I’d like to do, I guess.” Her voice jolts me out of the filthy thoughts I was having of wrapping that braid around my fist and leading her upstairs by it to ravish her on the bed. “I’d really like to travel. But maybe later, not right now. I’m enjoying being here with you guys too much at the moment. I’d also like to swim in the ocean one day. To ride a horse. I’d like to own a horse, truthfully.”

Roman’s head jerks up, and I can just picture him on the phone tomorrow, ordering her an entire herd of horses to roam free around the water tower. I think the college where we live on the grounds might have something to say about that, though.

“There is one thing we could maybe do soon,” she says, clasping her hands together and glancing at me from under her lashes as if she’s about to ask for something stupid. “It might sound weird, but even before everything went wrong and I was taken, I’d never been to a carnival or a theme park. Not even the circus. I suppose my parents weren’t really into those kinds of things.”

Yeah, I can’t imagine her old man would be, the dour bastard.

“I didn’t think about it too much as a kid at home, but then when I was taken, a local traveling carnival became the highlight of the year somehow.”

I frown at that. Did the Prophet, the sick fuck who held our Ophelia along with so many others, let them go to a carnival? It seems odd.

“At the end of every summer,” she continues, “a carnival came and pitched up near our compound. It was close enough that on certain nights, if the wind was in the right direction, you could hear some of the laughter from the rides, the music, and other, strange sounds. I guess those were from things like a funhouse or even a haunted house. Some days, if we went right to the edge of the boundary of our land, you could smell something on the air. A kind of burnt sugary smell. It always made my stomach rumble.”

She rubs her stomach as she relives the memory, and my heart aches for the version of her that was denied such simple pleasures. I want to spend my life making it up to her.

“Anyway,” she continues, “one day, one of the girls asked if we could go to the carnival, and she got taken to the barn for a punishment. We were called to a church meeting and told that the carnival was full of sin. That the people who ran the carnival were demons, and we should never go there or even listen to the sounds of it again. They ordered us not to hear it. So, every time the carnival came, if we were outside alone, we had to hum hymns to ourselves, so we couldn’t hear the noises. Anyway, I guess being forbidden to go for so long has made me want to even more. I’ve seen them in movies and TV shows, and they look kind of freaky, but in a good way.” She giggles, and her cheeks turn a delicious shade of pink. “It’s silly. Forget it.”

“It’s not silly.” My voice is gruff when I speak, and I clear my throat. “We’ll find out if there are any nearby.”

I glance over her head to Roman, who nods and takes out his phone.

“The only thing is, can it be a night when it won’t be super busy?” She twirls her braid again, lowering her voice a touch. “You guys understand that I don’t like crowds.”

A few hours later, and Ophelia is sharing a bath with Malachi. I’m on the couch, reading through the recent performance tables of my investments. Roman was in his altar room, but he stomps into the living space and sits heavily on the couch. His face is taut. I’m about to ask him what’s wrong, but then I hear the high-pitched gasps and deeper moans emanating from the bathroom.

“I’m trying to meditate, and all I can hear is those two going at it.” He’s grumpy, which isn’t unlike him.

“If you’ve got blue balls, I’m sure they’ll let you join in.”

He rubs his face. “Nah. It’s been a while since Mal’s had some alone time with her.”

We don’t have a set schedule, but we try to make sure we all get some one-on-one time with Ophelia, because even though our group sessions are hot as fuck, it’s nice to be close to her with no one else around.

“Oh, hey, I looked up carnivals, thinking we’d have to travel a fair way, but there’s a traveling carnival arriving in Verona Falls in two weeks.” Roman brightens a little. “It’s only here for five nights, but I’ve emailed and asked them if we can rent it out for the night.”