Red Thorns (Thorns Duet 1)

This is me, true and unfiltered, and this is how I’m going to be from now on. I’m done playing nice and pretending that I approve of the shitty decisions you make.

From now on, you’ll get a reality check from me.

If you hate it, I don’t give a fuck. Don’t write back.

But I’ll continue writing. Don’t read my letters if that bruises your fragile ego, but I’ll keep them coming.

Go complain at customs.

Seriously. I have zero fucks to give at this point. Going forward, we’ll do it my way.

P.S. This is my actual personality. All the previous letters were me playing it down and being nice. I’ve had a wake-up call lately and realized I was always a bastard, so it’s pointless to pretend I’m someone I’m not.

Until next time, Yuki-Onna.

Love (but not really),

Akira

23

Naomi

If I had a doubt about positively losing my mind, it’s gone.

I am insane.

It’s been two weeks of pure madness. Of running in the woods and being chased around my dark house when Mom isn’t home.

Two weeks of pretending my monster isn’t the same football star everyone drools over on campus.

Two weeks of drifting.

And in these weeks, I’ve felt more alive than in my whole life.

Or more accurately, since it was snuffed out of me during that red night.

But even the feeling of being alive is shadowed by something else. Something eerily gloomy and haunting.

Something…bad.

I recognize it even though I try to hang on to the fantasy, to the addiction. To the fact that I’m not just a floating existence in the middle of a thousand others.

I’m special. I’m different. At least, to him.

Not Sebastian, but the beastly side of him.

The one who doesn’t take no for an answer and gets off on having me cry and writhe as he chokes me with his dick, then breaks me with it.

The one who wants me so badly, he’s blinded to everything but me.

The beast and I have a common ground. He gets off on the hunt and violence, and I can finally admit that I get off on being chased and degraded. On being used, roughed up, sensually ravished.

The beast and I meet in the dark, in the forest, and do our taboo ritual on that rock or against the filthy dirt.

The beast and I have an arrangement. I take his darkness and he swallows mine. I get off on his unapologetic dominance and he gets off on my unconditional submission.

The beast abandons me battered against the rock and doesn’t look twice in my direction.