We fuck and fuck and fuck until we’re both soaked in sweat and I’m quite sure that if I spend another goddamn second looking into his ebon eyes, I’m going to die.

Look at me, his domineering gaze commands. Look at me and watch, the smirking shape of his mouth says.

Victor slows the rolling of my hips just before I climax again.

“Oscar, get the ropes,” he commands, and my entire body flushes ice-cold before turning into an ardent, flaming nightmare of need. They brought ropes. They knew. Somehow, they knew what I was going to need tonight.

Nothing in half-measures, right?

Oscar Montauk does as he’s told, collecting the bloodred rope we used on Cal, and then Victor is sitting up and Hael is lifting me off of his boss’ dick.

Hael holds me against him, my back to his front, while Oscar pushes his fogged and smudged glasses up his nose with an inked finger and then proceeds to sweep that silky rope around me. He ties my right wrist to Callum’s wrists, binding them together with careful knots. On the other side, he does the same with Aaron, connecting my left wrist to my former ex’s. With my ankles, he does the same. My right ankle is bound to Callum’s while my left is bound to Aaron’s.

And then, Oscar truly shows us all what he can do with his art, wrapping my body up in a firm but gentle caress of ties and knots, highlighting my breasts by braiding around them and making them swell and ache. He does the same with the plump pinkness of my cunt, creating a V-shape around it with a large knot that teases my clit, and two trailing pieces of rope that frame either side of my opening. They come together over the sweet soreness of my ass, rubbing me in just the right way when I wiggle in Hael’s arms.

Oscar even ties me and Hael together, binding my torso to his. I can see now why the phrase the devil finds work for idle hands exists. The devil has found his work here, in Oscar’s beautiful rope.

“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here,” he murmurs, as if he can read my mind.

Once he’s finished, I’m bound and immobile, tied to Hael, to Callum, to Aaron. My legs are spread wide, my cunt highlighted and plumped up by rope while my breasts strain beneath tight loops and knots. My breathing is heavy, my lids drooping, my mouth parted.

“Excellent.” Victor stands over me, looking down at Oscar’s handiwork, his obsidian eyes sparkling as he takes in the sight. “Now, fuck her.”

And so, Oscar does. As he enters me with a deep groan, Victor takes the last bit of rope and, with a surprising level of skill of his own, ties me and Oscar together loosely enough that he can still thrust but that he can’t escape.

Not unless Vic chooses to untie us.

Oscar’s mouth finds first my right breast and then my left, sucking on my nipples and using that bitingly caustic mouth of his to tease and flirt and lick. He bites me, too, leaving marks all over my pale skin and the demon wing tattoos on my chest. His tongue traces the fluted hollow of my collarbone as his body rubs my clit and drives into my cunt all at the same time.

Yet another orgasm hits me, one that’s so powerful and violent that I’m sure I’m going to pass out and wake up to find that this is all a dream. How could it be real, with the old house creaking around us and the flames of the candles sputtering and dancing? How could it be real when Oscar finishes inside of me and then collapses on top of me while the other three boys watch, bound and helpless?

For quite some time, we stay exactly where we are. Even with the ropes on my body and my legs spread wide, muscles quivering at the strain, I actually start to fall into an endorphin-infused sleep, sated and heavy and happy.

I must actually do it, conk out for a minute, because when I blink to, Oscar is being untied and allowed to move aside, and then Victor is mounting me. He plows me into the floor while Oscar takes over the task of teasing and suckling on my swollen nipples, sliding his fingers over my aching clit before dipping one inside of me alongside Vic’s cock, not caring that he’s simultaneously teasing his boss as he pleasures me.

That last orgasm, the one that lines up so perfectly with Vic’s roar of satisfaction as he conquers and destroys all six of us, is mind-numbing. There is no more room for doubt or pain or wonder, I exist only for this moment and no matter what suffering I had to endure to get here, it was worth it.

It was so fucking worth it.

Victor finishes in me with a few, violent thrusts, spilling his hot seed into my womb as Oscar sits up and swipes at his mouth.

And then Vic looks down at me and our gazes clash and the room is drowning with heat and desire and dark magic.

“I love you,” is what he says, and I’m not entirely sure if the words are for me and me alone. Victor slides out of me with a groan and then moves to sit back in our circle of blankets and pillows and takeout. He lifts the lid on the top of the chocolate cake and then stabs a fork directly into the middle of it.

“Jesus,” Hael breathes from behind me as Oscar works quickly to untie us, using that magic of his so that the ropes seem to simply … slough off. With another groan, I crawl forward and slump into the blankets, leaning back on one hand and then letting my head fall back, too.

The other boys join the circle and a few of them take up forks of their own to ravage that goddamn cake. Nobody speaks. Magic is too thick in the air for words. Instead, I drop my chin back down so that I can see everyone, adjusting my sore and sweat-slicked body to be more comfortable.

As I do, my fingers bump against the pocket of Callum’s discarded hoodie and knock against something hard inside. His knife. The thought comes to me before I even reach inside the garment to find out for myself. Removing the blade, I stare at it for a long moment before setting the sheath aside.

“Bernadette?” Victor asks as I crawl over to him. I look up at his assumptive, godlike face before I take his hand and slice a thin, sharp line along the faded white edge of a repeated scar. He makes no sound as I do it, doesn’t even shift the slightest bit. His breathing remains even, his eyes fixated on my face.

I slice my hand next, pressing our palms together with an abrupt inhale of pain.

“Blood in,” I reconfirm, squeezing hard. “Blood out.”

I move onto Hael next, slicing his palm, pressing our hands together. His honey-almond eyes are soft, pupils thick and irises darkened with affection as we share blood. Callum is next, and I wonder for a brief minute if this isn’t going to be too much for him, considering he’s already got a body covered in scars. But when I hesitate, he takes the wrist of the hand holding the knife and moves it so that the blade is pressed into his skin.

“Do it,” he tells me, so I slice into his pale flesh and make him bleed. Again, we share blood, looking into each other’s eyes. Oscar is next, and I don’t need to ask if he wants this; I can feel it. It’d be obvious to anyone that walked into this room, that this is all he craves. Belonging. Family. And most especially if all that belonging and all that family was drenched in blood.

Our fingers tangle together, blood smearing between our palms. And then it’s Aaron’s turn.

It’s fitting that he’d be last in the circle today, since he was my first romantic love. He was always first, and nobody can ever take that away from us.

“Hello Bernie,” he whispers as I sit in his lap and we press our foreheads together. I cut him and we squeeze our hands together at the same time that we shut our eyes. Once we’re done, Aaron reaches out his palm and presses it against Victor’s.

A shudder passes through me just as one of the boards on the back window shifts and adjusts itself, letting a breeze blow into the room and extinguishing all of the candles in one, single breath.

“Blood in,” I repeat, shivering as Oscar and Callum get up to check the window, just to make sure that it really was just a side effect of an old house shifting and not a member of the GMP sneaking up on all of us, naked and sated and covered in blood. “Blood out.”

Aaron lies down with me in the blankets and we pass out.

Several hours later, I wake up to find the boys eating the last of the cake and digging into the remaining takeout. Scooting up to join them, I take another swig of whisky, dress myself, and then dig into a cake slice of my own while Aaron relights all the candles with Hael’s help.

Afterward, with just my pink jacket and my panties on but nothing else, I kneel in front of the fireplace on the old wooden floors. Sucking one finger into my mouth, I make it wet and then I draw a word on the hearth of the fireplace, tracing the letters H-A-V-O-C into the dust. Somebody puts the crown on my head, but I’m not paying attention to them right now.

In this moment, with the candles’ flames dancing and writhing around me, I take that tube of Penelope’s pink lipstick and I cross out the final name on my list.

7. the mom

With a quick swipe, I apply the lipstick to my own mouth and then kiss the bottom of the page, leaving the imprint of my lips like a signature.

“Goodbye, Mom,” I say, my mouth in a sharp frown but my eyes dry. “Good night.”

I set the envelope aflame with a single flick of my lighter and then I toss the remainder of it into Victor’s grandmother’s fireplace to burn.

“So it’s done then,” Victor says from behind me, but I know he isn’t really asking. He’s just stating a fact. Even so, I reply because we all need to know for sure.

“It’s done,” I agree, and then he sweeps me into his arms and fucks me into the floor.

Things are different after that night. Better. Blissful, almost. Every day that I wake up surrounded by Havoc, every day that I attend that snooty ass school and sleep in that fancy ass apartment, is a blessing I never expected to count.

Something changes between us all—as you might think, considering the orgy and the bloodletting—but in the best possible way. We’re connected, intertwined, bound and twisted together. It makes it easier to pass the time as we wait out the end of school, a year of marriage, all the steps that will bring us that much closer to Victor’s inheritance and all the power that money will bring to our fingertips.

For now, that’s all we’ve got. Our planning for Ophelia and Maxwell isn’t making much progress otherwise. But time, we can definitely pass some time here. I’m thrilled to be able to do it. Life gets so easy for a while that I start to remember some of my old hobbies. Besides working on my poetry, I’ve been catching up on binge-worthy shows, reading romance novels in the bath, and perfecting the gossip and social intel skills that every Prescott ho excels at.