Apathy by L.K. Reid

Skylar

^{Four weeks later}

It was funny how fast things could change.

Four weeks ago, I thought I’d finally found the one person that could understand me, that could maybe even help me overcome the demons I was battling on a daily basis, but it turned out that I truly didn’t know him at all.

After finding out about Ash’s family, I started realizing that I wasn’t the only one hiding the truth. But why would he?

I sneaked away from the library and took that book home with me, trying to decipher the Latin text woven throughout, and the stories about our families, but nothing really made sense. Okay, I basically stole the book, but I couldn’t exactly tell Mrs. Montgomery that I needed it with me because I thought my family was involved in something sinister. The articles I discovered about the Crowell family were scarce, and the only thing I could find was a newspaper article from the Seattle Daily, mentioning the death of the Crowell family—a mother and a father and their two sons.

But they weren’t dead.

Maybe Ash’s mother and father were gone, but he and his brother were very much alive. I wouldn’t be thinking this way, if he actually told me this himself.

The name of the fifth family was always kept from us—not that we asked—and I didn’t know why. The more I read about the history of Winworth, the more I started realizing that there were things I never wanted to discover.

Things that made my blood run cold, while my brain battled with the horrible picture all those stories painted. And the worst thing was that I couldn’t talk to any of my friends about what I had found.

Kane was already behaving like he was close to a nervous breakdown. Lauren pretended everything was okay, and every single time I tried to bring up us finding Megan’s body, she shut me down.

Danny and Rowan were on a mission to drink themselves to death, and Beatrice and Hailey were doing God knows what.

The only person I was spending time with was Ash, and I hated these suspicious thoughts filling my head every single time I even thought about him. My own heart was torturing me because it didn’t want to believe that he had some nefarious plan. But with everything that was happening around us, with the cloak of darkness that fell over Winworth, I started suspecting everyone and everything.

We agreed to study in the school library today, and even though he was sitting right across from me, I had a feeling he was a million miles away. It was as if after I found out that he belonged to one of the founding families, everything changed.

He behaved the same, but I knew things now. Things no one else knew, and I feared that the deeper I went, the darker it would get. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see everything that book was hiding.

I was hoping that I would be able to find out who the hooded figure was, who the attacker was, or at least who left me that note in the locker, but I found a lot more than I was looking for. I found an intricate world woven with lies, secrets, and betrayals.

Only a couple of pages of the book were innocent enough, talking about the area, and where our families came from, but the more I read, the more I realized that there were borderline insane things happening in Winworth.

Words like sacrifice, Samhain, and rituals kept being repeated over and over and over again. On the fifteenth page of the book, a black-and-white photograph fell out from between the pages—three kids, all standing in front of the altar I saw in that photo I received. Their faces were robbed of smiles, while three hooded figures stood behind them, with their hands on their shoulders.

I didn’t have to be a genius to know that those kids weren’t there of their own volition.

What bothered me the most was the fact that the book wasn’t simply written and left alone. No, different handwritings were etched on its pages, and when I turned it to one of the last pages, the date written was October 31st, 2007.

It was the date of my fifth birthday.

“Is everything okay, Skylar?” Erin Dagonn, the girl sitting on my left side, asked, pulling me back to reality and away from the thoughts of a certain malicious book. We had a couple of classes together, and we studied together from time to time.

I wanted to tell her that nothing was okay. Nothing would ever be okay. But I could feel Ash’s burning gaze on the side of my face, and instead of voicing what was really wrong, I smiled at her, and closed the biology book I was holding.

“I’m okay.”

We had a test next week, but no matter how much I tried studying about genomes and all the other things we were going to have on the test, I just couldn’t. Every time I looked at the pages of the book, trying to study, different text appeared in front of my eyes, and I gave up.

I was here today only because I promised Erin, and because I agreed to spend some time with Ash after we were done.

I’d been avoiding him as much as possible, and he knew something was up, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to him about the things I’d found. Maybe it was from fear. What if I looked him in the eye, telling him all these things I’d found—about his family, all our families, actually—and he wasn’t looking back at me?

What if he started hiding his midnight eyes from me, afraid I would see the truth there? Afraid that I would see the secrets he’d been hiding.

I kept my eyes on Erin while she talked about her sister studying in Toronto and how much she missed her, but if she asked me to repeat everything she said, I wouldn’t be able to.

My body was in tune with Ash—my Ash—silently staring at me, while Erin talked my ear off. I could already imagine the storm swirling over his face because I was ignoring him. I’ve been doing this for days whenever somebody else was with us, and I was avoiding staying alone with him.

I dreaded the moment when we would be left alone, because then I would have no choice but to look at him, to talk to him, to really miss him.

Because I did, miss him, that is. I missed him when he was gone, and I missed him when he was with me. And now my father knew about Ash.

He knew I wasn’t working on gathering information about Kane’s parents, and he was livid.

“All righty.” Erin suddenly stood up and started collecting her things. “I have to head out. My mom wants me to come home before dark today. They’re all spooked about—” She bit her lip as she looked at my scarred arm. “Well, you know what they’re spooked about.”

Yeah, I did know.

I had a list of things I was terrified of right now, and at the top of that list was a monster they still couldn’t catch. There were no prints inside the house, no further evidence that could point to one person, and the police were as clueless as the rest of us.

I was glad for October and the colder weather it brought to us. At least now I could wear long-sleeved shirts without looking like a lunatic, while everybody else wore short-sleeved shirts and basked in the rare bouts of sunshine in Winworth.

When the doctor removed the bandages from my arm, I wanted to cry, scream, shout, fucking break something, because he didn’t just slice me up like a turkey for Thanksgiving. No, he left a mark.

A mark I knew.

A mark I had seen two times already.

Once on that paper in my locker, and the second time on the spine of the book I found in the library.

The only thing it was missing was a circle or ouroboros around the symbol, but it was exactly the same mark—the triangle with upturned ends.

Dylan held my other hand while the doctor removed the stitches and applied ointment. I was furious, but I held it inside. At least I tried to hold it inside, until we reached home, when I broke down, letting the tears stream freely down my cheeks, uncaring who was going to see me. And Dylan… Dylan broke a vase that always stood in the foyer of our house, smashing it against the wall as soon as we stepped inside, not once looking at me.

That was the last time I saw him before he went back to Seattle.

“Call me?” she asked as she started heading toward the exit, leaving me alone with Ash.

I should’ve turned around and looked at him instead of staring at the space now vacated by Erin, but I couldn’t.

My stomach churned as worry spread through my body, settling at the pit of my gut. When he finally spoke, his voice ricocheting against the shelves, falling over me like a blanket, that churning sensation increased tenfold, but I still refused to look at him.

“I’m not sure if I should spank you,” he started in a low vibrato, my core clenching and unclenching, my body begging for his touch. “Or if I should just walk out.”

I turned at that.

“What?” I asked breathlessly. He would leave? The nerves from earlier were suddenly replaced by fear, and as I dropped the book on the table, he leaned over, placing his elbows on the dark mahogany wood, his eyes never leaving mine.

“What is going on, Skylar?”

He never called me by my name anymore, at least not my full name. After those nights at my house, something changed in him, and true to his word, he never went back to ignoring me or to pretending that what was happening between us wasn’t real. So hearing him use my full name felt like lead settling in my body, rendering me speechless.

Unmoving, I blinked, and then blinked again as he dragged his hand over his face. He was furious with me, I knew that. But I didn’t know that he would be furious enough to walk away.

“You would leave me?” I murmured, dreading the answer.

Panic gripped me, my heart protesting against my rib cage, afraid it would lose its anchor. But I already lost him. I wasn’t sure if I ever really had him.

Not because he didn’t tell me about his family.

Not because he never tells me anything about him.

But because I was never supposed to be his. My father, my monster, already wrote every sequence of my life, and no matter what I did, I would never have my freedom. At least not while I’m in Winworth.

Ash was mine to love and mine to lose, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. I was going to break my own heart, and if I could, I would rid myself of my last name, so that the only thing standing between the two of us was only this table in front of me, and nothing else.

He suddenly stood up and rounded the table, crowding me, cutting off my oxygen supply, because he was everywhere. The sky was not just the sky anymore. It held colors hidden in Ash’s eyes, and every night when I looked up from my balcony, I saw him.

The forest didn’t smell only like wet soil and pine trees. It held Ash in its arms, making me think of him even when I didn’t want to think of anything.

The sound of the chair scraping over the floor sounded around us as he pulled me around. He was on his knees, his hands on my bare legs, inching higher and higher, going underneath the black skirt I wore today.

“I don’t know, Moonshine,” he murmured, looking at me. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you lately, and it’s driving me insane. You won’t let me touch you, you won’t let me kiss you… You’re here, but you’re not here.”

If only he knew how much I wanted to be here, to be present. Not just physically, but mentally as well.

He gripped my bare thighs, his thumbs dangerously close to my core.

“So, you tell me.” He pressed his lips against my knee, his dark lashes fluttering as his eyes closed. “Do you want me to leave?”

My chest rose and fell, and I closed my hands into fists, battling the need to touch his dark silky hair. I didn’t want him to leave, but I had to let him go.

“I-I…” I stammered.

“What do you want, Moonshine?” he asked again, pressing his lips to my other knee.

“I want—”

He licked his way from my kneecaps to my inner thigh, lifting my skirt higher and higher, until it was hunched around my hips, barely covering my drenched panties. If somebody walked inside, there would be no doubt in their mind about what we were doing.

“Do you want me?” His grip on my thighs became painful. “Because if you don’t, I’m not sure if I would be able to let you go.”

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

My heartbeat echoed in my ears until I bit my lip, tasting blood.

“You’ve ruined me for everybody else, Moonshine,” he whispered, dragging his finger over my soaked panties, sending small rivulets of pleasure through my body. “And I don’t give a shit if you think that this couldn’t work, it has to.” He pushed my legs apart, planting his face between my thighs, inhaling me, tasting my skin, devouring me until I couldn’t remember why I had to stop us.

“You can’t decide that you don’t want us anymore. You simply can’t. And you know why?” He looked up, a small smile dancing on his lips. I shook my head, my ability to form words stripped away from me. “Because I belong to you, Moonshine. I belong to you today, tomorrow, a hundred years from now. I will always belong to you.”

I wanted to tell him I would always belong to him as well. I wanted to tell him how much it hurt not having his hands on me, loving me, teasing me, caressing me as if I was the most precious thing. But I couldn’t tell him any of those things.

I couldn’t tell him that my soul cried every time I thought about leaving him, protesting against me.

But I had to leave him, even if I didn’t want to.

I had to, because if I didn’t, the next dead body would be his, and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if that happened.

So this, this here… This was our goodbye.

“Ash,” I murmured, making him lift his head as he started peppering my skin with kisses. “I want you.”

Something blazed in his eyes. Something dangerous, sinfully delicious, a vicious desire that was coursing through me as well, and it was like flipping the switch—in one moment, he was soft, and in the next, it was as if everything he was holding in came out.

His pupils dilated, punishing touches pushing at my shoulders until my back was plastered to the chair.

“I hope you’re not too fond of these.”

“Wha—”

The sound of my panties ripping in two filled the air, and before I could comprehend what was happening, he lowered his head, spreading my legs wider and wider. My skirt went higher up, and I lifted my butt to let it go all the way over my hips.

He inhaled, his breath caressing my clit. “You smell like heaven.” He pressed a kiss on the hood of my pussy and then licked all the way from my opening to my clit. A moan escaped me, and I threw my head backward, pushing my hips toward him. “You taste even better.”

“Please,” I begged, willing him to play with my fire. He licked me again, running his tongue over my clit, over my lower lips, while his fingers spread me wider, baring me to him. “Ash!”

“Is this what you want?” He smirked as he entered me with one finger, lazily dragging it up and down.

“Ash!” I protested again, bucking my hips, begging him to go faster.

“Or this?” He pushed inside with a second finger, then the third, mixing pain with pleasure as he dove and bit on my clit.

“Fuck!”

He increased the pace, then slowed down, then again increased, driving me insane with need, with lust. I started forgetting about everything that worried me.

His tongue danced through my folds while his fingers brought me higher and higher until he pressed against the spot inside my core that made me see stars. The pressure that was building at the bottom of my stomach started slipping from my grasp, and as my entire body started convulsing, he murmured against me, the vibrations elevating me to a new level.

“Let go, Moonshine.”

I screamed in an empty library, trying to hold on to him, hold on to his head, gripping the silky strands as my body finally gave in. He continued stroking me, licking and biting, prolonging my orgasm while I kept shaking, unable to stop my body from giving in.

“Good girl,” he purred against my heated skin and removed his fingers from my body. I felt high, drunk on him. When he stood up, taking me with him, he gripped the back of my neck with one hand, while the other one played with the hem of my shirt, lifting it higher, until his hand reached the silky material of my bra.

“Hmmm.” He smiled and bent his head down to my neck, grazing my skin with his teeth, while his fingers circled around my nipple, over my bra. I pushed my chest at him, letting him take full control of my body.

He played me like an instrument—one hand on my chest, the second one in my hair, his lips on my neck, leaving a blazing trail all the way to my mouth. He nibbled on my bottom lip, then kissed me as if his entire life depended on it.

Our teeth clashed, the fight for dominance coursing through both of us, but I knew that it was a fight I would never win.

I already belonged to him—body, mind, and soul.

“You’re mine, Moonshine,” he murmured between kisses. “I don’t give a fuck what anybody else says… You. Are. Mine.”

For the first time since I met him, his emotions were written all over his face. Lust, anger, passion, love, and the one I hated seeing—fear.

Midnight blue stared back at me with uncertainty, as if he thought I would disappear. I knew if I asked him about it, he would deny it, but I didn’t need words to see everything he felt reflected back at me.

“Ash,” I murmured, going up to my tiptoes and pressing my lips to his. “I will always belong to you, baby. Always and forever.”

He abruptly turned from me and knocked over all the books from the table.

“What—”

I didn’t manage to finish asking before I was airborne, held tightly in his arms. In the next second, my butt was firmly placed on top of the table with him between my legs.

He lifted my shirt all the way above my chest and pulled me to him, lining my core with the bulge in his pants.

Possessive lips descended on mine, branding me forever. Skillful hands owned my body, and without a word, he started unbuttoning his pants, letting them fall to the floor.

“You’re not wearing underwear?” I smiled, breaking the tension in the room.

Instead of answering me, he bent down and took out a condom wrapped in a silver packet, then ripped it open. His dick was pointed right at me, and my mouth salivated at what was coming. Unable to help myself, I got off the table and stood right in front of him, placing a soft kiss in between his pecs.

Then another one lower, right against his stomach, until I started going down, dragging my nails over his skin, over his abs, until I reached the delicious V pointing to his dick. I could feel his eyes on me, his burning gaze. When he didn’t stop me, I slid down, all the way to my knees, licking my lips when the angry red head appeared in front of my face.

“Moonshine,” he rasped, empowering me by letting me have this control over him. He wrapped one hand in my hair, pulling it away from my face. I dragged my nails over his thighs, inching closer to his balls, and then pulling back, earning a groan from him. “Sky, please.”

It was music to my ears, his pleading, and his sharp intakes of breath. Without waiting any longer, I wrapped one hand at the base of his member, and licked the vein straining against the soft skin, all the way to the bulbous head.

“Fuck!” His hips bucked forward, and I grinned, knowing that all this was for me. Only me. “Open your mouth, Moonshine.”

But I didn’t. I wanted to play more, to explore every inch of him, to savor his moans, his groans, his begging.

“Please,” he begged when I placed a soft kiss on top of his cock, dragging my hand up and down. I looked up only to see him already looking at me. We were playing with fire, but I didn’t mind burning if it was with him. “You’re a very bad girl today,” he murmured. “And you know what happens to bad girls?”

I did. I closed my eyes as my other hand traveled to my pussy, collecting the juices dripping over my thighs, to the floor, and lifted it up, massaging his balls then his dick with it.

“Fuck, fuck, fu—” he started chanting, and before he could say anything more, I wrapped my lips around him, swirling my tongue over the head, while I pumped him with my other one. “Fuuuuck!” erupted from him as I started bobbing my head up and down, feeling the pressure build up at the base of my stomach.

I bit into the skin of his butt cheek with my nails, pulling him closer, holding myself up. He suddenly tore away from me, breathing as if he ran a marathon.

His hand wrapped around my ass cheeks, lifting me up until his lips mashed with mine, fighting for dominance, fighting for something I couldn’t explain.

“You taste like me,” he muttered against my lips. “I need to fuck you, Moonshine. I need to be inside you.”

He didn’t have to say anything else. I moved backward and sat on the table, moving myself further away from the edge, waiting for him to come to me.

Ash rolled the condom over his member, fisting himself at the base of his dick, and took a step toward me, like a predator with its prey.

Words weren’t needed as he unclasped my bra from the front, letting it fall to the sides, devouring me with his eyes. His greedy hands ran over my stomach, his thumbs digging into my ribs, as if he was holding himself still, trying to control the animalistic urges rushing through his veins.

“Ash,” I panted.

I arched my back, pushing my chest higher, as his fingers started circling my erect nipples, driving me out of my mind.

“You are the most perfect thing I have ever owned,” he murmured, peppering my chest with kisses, going lower and lower, until his face was above the hem of the skirt he lifted earlier. “I’m going to ruin you for every other man out there.”

“I don’t want other men,” I gasped. “I want you. Only you.”

“Then you’ll have me, Moonshine.”

In a move too fast for the human eye to catch, he pulled me to the edge of the table and lined his dick with my opening. He dragged his member over my slick folds until he found the welcoming heat of my body.

I pushed myself up, holding my weight on my hands, as he pushed inside in one swift thrust, knocking the breath from me.

“Fuck!” he roared, stilling inside me, letting me adjust to his size. “You feel so good, Moonshine.” He stared at where the two of us connected. “This is my favorite place on earth.”

“Ash, please,” I whimpered. “I need you to move.”

And he did. Painfully slow at first, wearing that self-satisfied little smirk on his face while I begged him to increase his pace, to give me what I wanted, and then something snapped, taking over him.

More animal than man, he pushed me down, my back pressing against the cold wooden desk, and wrapped one hand around my neck. He pressed on my clit with the thumb on his other hand, the maddening inability to move, to see what was happening, driving me insane.

Something unfolded in my stomach, the fire rushing from my body to that one spot, threatening to erupt.

“Hold it,” he growled against my ear, bending down, and increasing the pace.

The table groaned beneath us, its legs scraping against the floor, creating a cacophony of noises. I turned my head to the side and looked at the ceiling-high window, trying to think of anything else, just to hold off a little bit longer.

“Ash!” I cried out, losing the grip on my body. “I can’t—”

His hand tightened around my throat, cutting me off. “Yes, you can!”

Pistoning his hips, he moved his hand from my clit, and held onto my hip, keeping me in one place. My entire body was one big bundle of nerves, like a guitar string too tightly wrapped around the tuning keys, ready to snap.

I was close, so fucking close, when the motherfucker slowed down and suddenly stopped, letting go of my throat.

“What the fuc—”

His hand wound around my neck, lifting my head up, pulling me to him. “This is for all these weeks I spent without you, Moonshine.” He thrust his hips upward, knocking the breath out of me. “This is how you made me feel when you didn’t talk to me like you usually do.” Another thrust. “Now I’m gonna show you the insanity I went through when you kept these lips from me.” He smiled and bit my lower lip. “When you shied away from my touch.” He started strumming over my clit, bringing me back to the fire.

“Oh. My. God.” My eyes rolled to the back of my head when he suddenly stopped again, depriving me from the sweet release I needed. “Ash!”

“No!” The grip on my neck increased, but he didn’t move. “I own this body, Skylar.” He started moving his hips again, but it wasn’t enough. “I own all your orgasms.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” I started chanting. “Just… Please, let me—”

He pushed me back to the table and slapped my clit, all the while slowly moving in and out.

“Shhhh.” He pressed a finger to my lips. Gritting my teeth, I closed my eyes, trying to focus on anything else but the pleasure ricocheting through my body. “No, not yet!” he roared as I clenched around him, wailing, tears streaming down my cheeks.

“I’m… I-I…”

He gripped my hips with both his hands, and I knew I would have purple marks to remind me of this night. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I placed one hand over his, and with the other one, I started rubbing at my clit.

“Now!” he yelled. “Now, now, no—”

The orgasm shattered through me, muting out any sounds around me. My back arched, my mouth open, but no sound came, my walls holding him in a tight grip. Our eyes connected, and I could see everything I felt reflected in him. The shirt he wore was soaked with sweat, and as he collapsed on top of me, my legs wrapped around his waist, I lifted his shirt and started drawing circles on his skin, reveling in this feeling.

But it couldn’t last.

“I love you, Sky,” he whispered against my ear, making my whole body lock down.

Those words… Those were the words I wanted to hear. Words I wanted to say, but we couldn’t.

I couldn’t.

I couldn’t be the end of him. I couldn’t be the reason behind his demise, so I did what I should’ve done earlier.

I pushed him away, wincing when he finally detached from me. The furrow of his eyebrow told me that he knew something was wrong.

“What’s wrong?” he asked carefully, slicing me with the standoffish way he stood in front of me.

He removed the condom and wrapped it up, throwing it in the bin next to the table.

I pulled my shirt down, and jumped from the table, barely holding myself straight. My knees shook, muscles trembling, but I had to do this now.

Fixing my skirt, I turned around and faced him.

“We need to talk.”