Taken (Dark Legacy Duet 1)

The orchestra begins to play as Margarita comes on the stage, singing her woeful song.

Helena turns and puts her hands on the wall.

I draw her hips back, nudge her legs wide with my own, and the dress splits in two, exposing her to me.

I take a minute, stand back and admire her, pull her hips farther so she’s bent over, and I look at her like this, waiting for me, open for me. I want her. I want her like I’ve never wanted anything else in my life.

One hand on her hip, I hold her open as I undo my belt, unzip my pants, shove them and my briefs down. I slide into her pussy as I push her long hair off her back.

The raised lines beneath my fingers makes me harder. I close my hand around the back of her neck and hold her with one hand while with the other, I keep her ass spread open so I can see her, watch her pussy stretch to take me, see the tiny ring of her asshole.

I want all of her, her pussy, her ass, her mouth. I want to fill every hole at once.

She arches her back as I thrust into her, and the sounds of our fucking, of wet pussy swallowing up hard cock, of moans and groans and skin slapping against skin rival that of the soprano. When she fists her hands and I feel her squeeze me, throb around me, I come too, filling her up, squeezing the back of her neck, digging my fingers into her hip.

More bruises, my marks on her, only mine.

When I pull out, I watch cum drip out of her, drip onto the floor. I turn her to me and kiss her mouth as she wraps her arms around my neck, fingers in my hair, nails digging into the skin of my scalp.

“You’re mine, Helena,” I say between kisses. “You’re what I want.”19HelenaThe drive back late the following afternoon is quiet. The sun is shining bright, so opposite the sheets of rain the day before.

I feel him glance at me, and I wonder what he sees. I wonder if things will change now.

I touch the ring on my finger, turn it a little, so the skull face is staring at me.

“What is that ring?”

He pays attention to everything. “My aunt gave it to me after the reaping.” I can’t help the accusatory tone in that last word.

“My Aunt Helena.”

He nods, looks straight ahead.

“Did you decide if I can call her?”

He won’t look at me when he replies. “Let’s talk about it later.”

“This is later, Sebastian.”

Nothing.

“She gave it to me to remind me that not every Willow Girl dies,” I say, unable to help myself. Unable to help that familiar darkness from creeping into my words.

We’re nearing the docks. We’ll be back on the island soon.

“I miss her.”

“She lived with you, right?”

“Yes. I’d sometimes catch her and my mom in these top-secret meetings. I called them that because they were so strange about it. I realize now my aunt must have known about the money that would change hands when the next one of us was claimed.”

By the time that day came, I felt like she hated my mother. I didn’t know why, not then.

“I overheard them once. It was on our sixteenth birthday. I’d gone to my aunt’s room to call her down for the celebration. She was out of her chair. She could walk, but she was so old, it was easier for her in the chair. But she was up on her feet, and my mom was sitting on the edge of her bed. They were arguing more loudly than usual, and my aunt did something I’d never expect from her. She slapped my mother’s face, and I can still remember the sound of it and her exact words: “You saw what they did to your sister and you’ll put your babies on those blocks? And for what? You make me sick.”

There’s more that I don’t tell him. How my aunt had told my mom it should have been her. That Libby wouldn’t have done this. She would have chosen differently.

They had argued then, and my mom forbade her from coming to the birthday celebration. She locked her in her room like she was a child.

When I took Aunt Helena a piece of birthday cake later, she lied to me, told me she hadn’t felt well enough to come. I think it was the only time she lied to me.

I take a long breath in. “Please let me call her today.” I’m not above begging, not anymore. “You can be in the room. What are you afraid I’ll say? I just want to talk to her, tell her I’m okay. Hear her voice.”

What would my aunt think if I told her the truth? That I was starting to have feelings for my Scafoni master. Would she slap my face too?