Menace (Scarlet Scars #1)

by J.M. Darhower

“If you give the monster a name, it takes away its power, because we’re really just afraid of what we don’t know. If you name it, if you know what it is, you can be stronger than it. So face your fears and wipe your tears, remember? Face your fears and wipe your tears.”

This is fucked

Hide, she thought, so only Mommy can find you.

Sighing, he pulled his hand away and leaned over her, pressing the softest of kisses to her silent, parted lips. It looked sweet, like love, the little girl thought as she watched, not at all like the anger that had broken down the door. Maybe he did have a heart. She couldn’t tell.

It’s so cold I think my balls have closed up shop and gone home. Home, back in Florida, where it’s a beautiful seventy degrees this time of year. They’re basking in the glow of the warm southern sunshine, while I’m stuck here, freezing my cock off out by the East River.

I’d show you, but well... you’ve got to earn that first. So pay attention, okay? There’s work to do here.

Yes Sir

Her face betrays that, though, with a set of wide brown eyes, innocent eyes, and a quirky smile, almost sheepish with the way only one side seems to curve.

“Oh, without a doubt. I’d steal you in a heartbeat.” Color rises into her cheeks. She blushes, soft pink accentuated by the crimson on her lips as she tries to fight back a smile but loses... miserably. “Smooth. That line usually work for you?” “Every single time,” I say, “but I wouldn’t call it a line. It’s true. If you don’t take good care of what you’ve got, someone will be more than happy to take it away.”

But the gut? The gut knows. The gut remembers. You should always listen to it.

Okay Gibbs

She knocked into me, catching me off guard, distracting me for the moment... She fucking pick-pocketed me. Me.

Jesus Christ, the woman is crazy. She’s fucking insane.

Barefoot. In a strip club. Yeah, I haven’t seen my dignity in a long time.

“Pussy probably isn’t even that good, lady.” “Nice one, Slick Rick,” I call back at him as I keep walking. “Your bitterness isn’t showing at all there.”

They said ugly words and called people bad names, and they didn’t like girls, although they claimed they did.

“She is worth your heartache no more than she was worth mine. We will both get over it.”

He loves this house, this neighborhood, and this dream... The only thing I love is, well, maybe him.

I don’t surrender.

“Barbie,” I say. “And is Barbie her real name?” Leo asks. “Or is that just what you’re calling her, since she was platinum blonde and plastic?”

But unlike the fictional Scar from the cartoon, I don’t intend to lose at the end of my story. Everything the light touches in this city belongs to me. I’m the fucking Lion King.

Besides, life fucks me every single day, and I just bend over and take it. I whore myself out to life in an attempt to keep breathing.

“Beg.”

Yes Sir

“I have been patient with you,” he said. “You hide from me. You avoid me. I have not punished you for breaking the rules. You leave your room when I tell you not to, you snub my kindness, refuse to eat what I have sent up and instead choose to steal from my kitchen. You steal. I understand you are upset, kitten. Your mother has hurt you. She hurt me, too.”

“Yes, Papa,” he said, “or Daddy, if you prefer. Your choice, but choose one, because you will call me as I am.”

The color drains from Scarlet’s cheeks as the spark dims in her eyes. It’s fleeting, a flash of emptiness, like she’s nothing more than a shell of a human. Cold. I don’t have to wrap my hands around her throat to kill her, no… those words take the life right out of her. She knows I watched them.

You see, while women like bad boys, they don’t really like them. They want a bad boy in reputation, not one in execution. They don’t want to see it. They don’t want to be reminded we’re not good people, that it’s not a role we’re playing.

The kind that turns beautiful women into ghosts.

Someone once told me that evil can sense itself inside of others, our hearts beating in a different rhythm than most, playing a morbid song that only other evil knows.

She likes it, I realize. She enjoys the burn. Can’t say I’m surprised.

He reminds me of someone else… someone I once knew, a long time ago. He reminds me of the man who stole my innocence. He looks at me like I’m something and not somebody.

Death doesn’t always come with a scream and a bang, no… death, when premature, usually comes like a whisper on the wind, quietly stalking you until it can rob you of your last breath.

He cuts me. “That’s twice now,” he says, leaning close to whisper those words in my ear, pinning my body against the door. The heat radiating off of him swaddles me. “Twice you’ve come at me with a knife. There won’t be a third time, Scarlet. You ever try it again, I’ll kill you. I’ll cut you to pieces while you beg me to stop.”

warming the air between us so much I damn near start sweating as he growls. Oh god, he growls.

“What turns you on more?” he asks, his hands grasping my thighs as he pulls me up. “The fighting or the fucking?”

Edoardo Accardi might be in my head, but he’s never been in my blood.

Which means they might’ve fucked her, sure, but they didn’t do a goddamn thing for her.

“What’s your story?” “I have no story.” “Everyone has a story.”

She’s gritty and raw, but goddamn, the woman is beautiful. The more I look at her, the more I see it.

“This is how you want it?” I ask between kisses. “You’d rather fuck than talk?”

Fuck this. I can fuck her with my clothes on.

“Go ahead, get mad,” I say, continuing to thrust. “But when I’m inside of you, Scarlet, you don’t get to fade.”

It’s not. If anything, it helps you. People take you seriously, not only because you’re a man but because you’re a man who clearly went through hell. They don’t look at you and see something broken. They see something strong, something that won’t break, because you’re still standing, despite everything. It intimidates them. They respect you for it. But if you were a woman? You’d be ruined. The world would look at you and think ‘aw, poor thing, someone broke her, she must be so weak.’ That’s what they think about a woman who has been though hell. Believe me, I know.” “I don’t think you’re weak.“ “But you think I’m broken,” I say. “You asked me who broke me, like I’m made of glass and someone can just shatter me and scatter my pieces, like I’m that fragile. I might be hurt, I might be beat down, but I’ll be goddamn if a man will ever break me, Lorenzo. But the world can’t comprehend a woman being that strong. We’re supposed to buckle and break, like the only time we can possibly have any strength is if there’s someone with a dick standing by our side. It’s like a penis is a prerequisite for an opinion, so if I don’t have one myself, I’ve got to be utilizing someone else’s in order to have any say-so in my own fucking life.”

There’s a reason girls yell ‘fire’ instead of ‘rape’, why we lie and say we have boyfriends instead of just saying ‘no’ when we’re not interested. Because a lot of men respect another man’s property more than they respect a woman’s right to her own body.

“It’s just a word, you know. Broken. Just a fucking word. Hell, you can call me broken if you want. You can call me anything.”

After he walks out, I sit there, considering those words. Protecting me. If this is how they protect people, I think I’d rather protect myself.

She wasn’t sure if she believed that, but his gentle tone made her smile. For the first time in fourteen long days, she smiled at him.

Moments are pieces, formed together and built upon, creating the bigger picture within the border of your world. My puzzle is full of deformed shapes and jagged edges, but it still all fits together in its own twisted way, making a hideous fucking picture of my reality.

“He stole from me.” “Stole what?” “Everything,” she whispers, “but mostly my innocence. He took away everything good in my world, he stole it from me, everything I loved, and he tried so hard to snuff out every bit of light in my life, to make sure I never felt the sunshine again, and he did it, he said, for my own good, like that was what it meant to love somebody.”

“I will slit his fucking throat and drink his blood, Scarlet,” I say, my voice gravelly, quiet, and goddamn serious. “He might scare you, and maybe it’s for good reason, but he doesn’t scare me. Because all those words you used to describe him? I’ve been called them, too. I’ve earned my distinction, I fought for my title, and whether or not he’s worth the fear he incites? Well, I’m still deciding. You got me?”

“He’s Natural Selection, live and in the flesh. If you want to make it, adapt, because it’s survival of the fittest around here. He weeds out the weak.”

His lips are the softest things about him, warm and gentle, like a slice of heaven wrapped in hell, so worth battling the flames to feel his fire.

“I’m about to fuck you with my mouth like you’ve never been fucked before, and you’re going to keep telling me that story. You got me?”