Niall didn’t seem to care much either way what happened, and as Mateo’s arm slowly went slack, he brushed past him and walked upstairs without another word.
My throat burned as I watched him go, wondering if his big bopper bride had upset him or if it was coming home to us that made him sad. I’d been pacing all night (okay for like an hour and eleven minutes) wondering where he was and imagining all the things he might have been doing with her, feeling like a canary in a fish tank while I just waited to see if he was going to return with a worm for me or if he’d given up all of his insects to Anastasia. Even in my head, I said her name with a sneer. Maybe he missed her already. Maybe he was upstairs packing a suitcase so he could go and live with her. Maybe he’d leave us here like cats left behind after their meanie bambini owners moved on to a better life without them.
A noise of hurt left me and Mateo moved the knife under my chin, tipping my head up to make me look at him. My breath caught and flutters rushed over my body like tiny wingtips from the contact of that weapon.
I knew Mateo would never hurt me, but I liked the idea that he could. He could cut off pieces of me until I was nothing but blood and bone. He was powerful like that, a god that could create and destroy as easily as he could blink.
“Why do you pine for a man who is nothing but a butcher? He doesn’t feel for you, mi sol. He feels nothing. I may be darkness wrapped inside a man’s body, but I am capable of protecting you, of making your skin heat and your pulse race with pleasure. That is what I can offer you, what is it that he can offer that is worth this pain in your heart?”
One hard slice of that blade could end me for good, and that was why I gave him the truth. Because I wasn’t afraid of death, I was afraid of becoming someone I wasn’t. And who I was, was a girl who’d stumbled into a clan of men who were as different as she was. So this was where I wanted us to stay.
“I don’t feel odd when I’m with Niall,” I said. “He’s me in reverse, his cracks are in the same places as mine. You ground me, Mateo, but Niall makes me fly. And I need to fly sometimes as much as I need my feet down here with you too. When you’ve been as lonely as I have for as long as I have, feeling like no one in the whole wide world wants anything to do with you, and that no one could ever understand what it’s like to live in your head, I think it's impossible to let go of feeling accepted once you find that acceptance. I feel like I’m finally home, but I’m terrified, Dead Man, because nothing lasts in this world. It all vanishes, poof. Bit by bit or all at once. One day, it’ll be gone. All of the good, the bad, and I’ve known so much of the bad, now the good is here, I want to enjoy it while it stays. I want you and Niall and Brutus and AJ. I want to stay here for as long as life lets me, and I know that means it’ll hurt more in the end when the goodbyes come to claim me, but they’re inevitable. Everyone in this world is tied to their own train tracks and a train is coming, they just don’t know when. So let me be here, now, with you and him and everyone, because the darkness is going to consume us all eventually. At least let me open my eyes and bask in the sun while it’s still shining.”
Mateo let out a heavy sigh, lowering the knife so it grazed along the length of my throat before he dropped it to his side.
“Go to him then.” He stepped aside. “I’ll be here when he disappoints you, chica loca. Because what you think lives in him is an illusion draped in a lie.”
I tiptoed up to kiss Mateo’s cheek, quietly denying his words before heading to the stairs and jogging up them. I was wearing my comfys, a pair of baggy white sweatpants with stars on the ass along with a tank top that had a skeleton on it with its middle finger up.
I crept up the stairs and crossed the little walkway which looked back down into the lounge before making it to Niall’s room, pushing the door open quietly, the darkness thick inside.
I peered into the gloom as a low groan sounded within the space and I spotted him on the bed, his pants unbuckled and his huge cock gripped in his hand as he pumped it hard. My lips parted and my pussy throbbed as I stood there, watching his big hand work the length of his spectacular dick. His thumb grazed over the top of it again and again and I just caught a glimpse of silver there as he rubbed it.
I’d been thinking about the way his dick had been decorated a whole lot since he’d shown it to me, wondering what that little silver ball would feel like if it brushed against my fingertips, my tongue and a whole lot of more interesting places besides, and it looked like he was enjoying the feeling of it a hell of a lot himself.
My breaths came heavier, the urge to go in there and take his cock from his hand rising in me like a monster with her own desires. I swear I could feel every stroke of his hand inside my pussy and I ached as a low noise rumbled through Niall’s chest, biting down on my bottom lip to hold back my own moan and keep myself hidden in the shadows.
He grabbed something from beside him as his hips thrust forward and his hand movements got more frantic, and I realised it was a pair of my panties. I watched in awe as he wrapped them around the head of his cock and groaned as he came into them, mopping up his cum with the little thong before laying there panting on the bed.
He shoved to his feet suddenly and I darted to the side of the door, pressing my back to it a second before he stepped past it and headed into his en suite, somehow not noticing me where I lurked. I’d managed to evade being caught and I had to put it down to the sneaking training he’d given me before. I’d had to try and stick a post-it to his back without him noticing me do it and it had taken me weeks and weeks before I’d finally managed it.
I stepped into his room, switching the light on and trying to slow my wild heartbeat as I stared at the spot on the bed where I’d watched him pleasure himself. My mouth was dry and my throat tight, the idea of his cock inside me going round and round in my mind like it was on a carousel, carnival music starting up in the back of my brain.
I could taste cotton candy on my tongue as I spun round and round on a little horse in my head, but then the ride came to a jolting halt and the angry ride man told me to get off. Because I wasn’t who Niall wanted. He’d proven that when he’d used my underwear to clean himself up, like a rag that had no meaning to him at all. Maybe I was just a rag holder to him, and my clothes were fair game for scrubbing himself. I clutched the clothes on my body in alarm at that, not wanting them to be used as scrubby rags. I’d fight for them until I was bloody and bruised and—
Niall stepped back into the room and I whipped around, praying he couldn’t see the truth of what I’d just witnessed written all over my face. I should have walked away, I shouldn’t have just stood there and stared like a duck hit by a loaf of bread.
He pushed the door shut behind him and I swear a vacuum sucked all the oxygen out of the room, leaving me gasping like a fish dragged onto land and left there to flap its little fins.
“What are you doing here, Spider?” he demanded, his hand snapping out to turn the light back off.
The darkness was immediate and drowning, and it had nothing to do with the bulb going out. It was him, all him. It was terrifying and exhilarating, the danger so potent I could feel it crawling down my spine.