Lust (Prey #2)

by Carmen Rosales

No one touches you except us.” His eyes darken and I see the evil that lurks inside of him. “No one, Gia. I’m the one that gets his hands dirty if someone touches you. Your moans and screams are for us.”

I thought the looks I was receiving from people that are part of the Order were because I had Dravin’s attention, but it was bigger than that. This is over. Whatever we had—is over. They broke me. He broke me. They deceived me. I’m trapped.

“Because that is your power,” I tell her, resting my head on the palm of my hand with my elbow on the bed. “If you show indifference, it drives people crazy because they see that they couldn’t break you. Even if you care, don’t show it because they feed off of it. They feed off the fear of emotion. It will be hard at first, but then like everything, it becomes normal. In their world, hurting people and not caring about how it made them feel is normal to them. If you let it eat you up, it will destroy you.”

I should have known better, but sometimes you have to own the shit you get yourself into. Life isn’t a fairy tale you make up in your head or read in a book. Things happen. People use you. They try to break you. But one thing I have learned is that’s the nature of the beast. Evil doesn’t die. It morphs throughout time.

I read somewhere that your first love is the love that teaches you the most. It’s not when you give your heart away, it’s the moment they do something to crush your heart. It’s in those moments the learning really begins. In the split second that it occurs, it’s their way of showing you what you mean to them. In my case, I mean nothing. I was considered a little more than a pawn in a bigger game. A bigger plan.

My arm reaches out, the raven dangling under my fist. “You can have this back, along with my feelings, my love, my shame, and my tears. Maybe you can give it to the bitches you fuck, the vulture you are, waiting to catch your next Prey.”

I may be a pawn in everyone’s eyes. But there is one thing I learned from playing chess with an elderly man when I used to volunteer at a group home back in Wisconsin. He once told me a pawn well placed is more powerful than a king.

They held me at night when I cried about the miscarriage. They took turns holding me. When I was in the shower, the other was there supporting me and telling me that everything was going to be all right.

to put it bluntly. Draven wasn’t the crazier or more dangerous of the two, as I had assumed. Dravin is worse. In a far worse way. I immediately think of Jack the Ripper.

“Don’t cry. We hate to see you cry. To see you cry is like watching our hearts bleed out. We need to stop it, or we end up dying. It’s like hearing my soul cry out in pain, and your tears are the fire burning it to ashes.”

Gia, There are so many stories of happily ever afters—plenty of books written about them. You probably have a favorite. Mine would be the one I want to create with you, the love story you can't find on paper, in a poem, or a book. It's the one no one could ever find because this one is ours. Love, Draven

Fuck with what’s mine, and I’ll destroy it. I’ll lift the world and drop it on their fucking heads.