Derry_lov3

Roman chews the inside of his cheek for a moment. “Brooke Bluebell.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line, and Roman wonders if he’s gone too far before he’s even gotten started.

“Did you know her?” The man’s voice is strained, and Roman feels a prickle on the back of his neck.

“Did you?”

“She went to my school.”

Roman sits up, licking over his lips as his attention fixes on the call. “They found her in Hemlock Grove. What was she doing there?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know her know her. Did you… do you want to talk about how it made you feel? We’ve had a lot of calls about her.”

Roman scoffs. “No, I don’t feel any type of way about it. And I didn’t know her or anything. I live in the city.”

“Alright then. What do you wanna talk about?”

“How she died.”

Roman hears the hitching of the man’s breath on the other side of the call, and his shoulders sag.

“I’m not comfortable discussing that, sir.”

Roman doesn’t bother to carry on the call. He hangs up, throwing his phone onto the bed and flopping down onto his back. There were only two days until he’d be assigned another operator. He could wait two days.

*

You tap your fingers against the rim of your coffee cup and lean back in your chair. Jacob’s eyes appear over the top of the partition dividing your cubicles, and he wiggles his eyebrows. “You’re on graveyard?”

You shrug. “Pays better.”

Jacob stands up, hooking his messenger bag over his head. “Sure, but you get all the weirdos. Heavy breathing, masturbators. Not sure the time and a half is worth it.”

“Go enjoy your freedom, Jay.”

Jacob salutes you, turning on his heel and making for the doors as you boot up your computer and fix your headset on.

A call connects within a minute, and you relax back into your seat. “Good evening, you’re through to the JUST TALK hotline. How are you doing?”

“I like your voice.”

You cover your microphone and sigh before scanning over your script. “Thank you, sir. What do you want to talk about?”

“What are you wearing?”

“That isn’t what this is about, sir. I’m here for you to talk about whatever you-“

“Whatever I want, right? That’s what I’m paying… uh, three dollars a minute for. You can lie to me if you want, I don’t care.”

“Okay.” You huff. You were so fucking sick of the perverts, clogging up the line and preventing you from reaching people who actually needed to use the service for venting their emotional problems. “I’m wearing thigh-high boots and a thong.”

The man chuckles. “Kinky.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

The man sighs. “I’m not like, a pervert or anything.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he teases. “It’s late. Aren’t you tired?”

“No.” You lied, picking up your coffee and taking a sip.

 The man exhales loudly. “I’m tired.”

You sit up straighter, eyes flicking over your script. “Just can’t sleep, or?”

“Or.” He repeats. “I should sleep. But I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” There’s a pause, and you’re about to feed him one of the prompts from your screen when he continues. “I’m scared of what I’ll see when I close my eyes.”

Roman swallows hard, sucking the inside of his cheek against his teeth until he winces. That was a little bit too close to the truth, and his heart hammers against his ribs with the thrill of it.

“You get nightmares?” Your voice is soft, sweet. Melodic in a way that tickles against his skin like a caress.

“Doesn’t everybody?”

There’s silence for a long time, like you’re considering this instead of reading from a script, and Roman feels anticipation as he waits for your response.

“I suppose.” You say carefully. “Though usually the risk isn’t enough to stop people from wanting to sleep.”

Roman’ breath catches in his throat. “The risk. Right.”

He doesn’t say anything else, and you skim read through the script for the ‘filling pauses’ section. “Have you considered… a bedtime routine?”

Roman huffs a laugh. He doesn’t have a deep voice exactly, but it’s melodic and there’s a rough edge to it that sends a little flutter through your stomach. “Like I’m six?”

“No. I mean, well maybe. Just a routine. Drink something warm, dim the lights. Maybe take a bath.”

“Sounds nice,” Roman hums. “You thinking about me naked now?”

You scoff. “I don’t know what you look like, remember? And anyway, no.”

“No?” Roman feels the smile splitting across his face. It makes his cheeks hurt. He doesn’t smile much these days, or at least not genuinely. “What are you thinking about then?”

“I’m not the one paying three dollars a minute.”

“No, but I wanna know.” Roman does. He’s genuinely interested in the soft, sweet voice on the other side of the phone. You’re charming, and you don’t make him feel like he’s talking to a robot.

“What do you dream about?”

Roman licks over his lips, a million violent images flashing through his mind. “You wanna know all the gory details?”

“If you want to share them.”

“The last guy told me off.”

You tsk. “Well I won’t. You can tell me anything.”

Roman chuckles, the sound dark and low and shooting right through you. “I dream about people dying.”

“People you know? Loved ones?”

Roman thinks about that. “Loved ones.” He repeats. He thinks about his mother, his sister, his cousin. He thinks about their faces covered in blood, terror in their eyes, and his cock twitches. “Sometimes, I guess.”

“I think that’s normal.”

Roman bites back a smile as his hand wanders over the front of his loose pajama pants. Would you still think it’s normal if you knew how hard he’d gotten thinking about his mom being eviscerated? Probably fucking not.

“You think I’m normal?”

“There are worse things to be called.”

Roman hums, fingers slipping beneath his waistband to trail against his stiffening length. “Yeah? Like what?”

You hear it – the change in his breathing. The little hitch, the shallow in and out. You know the sound. You don’t work the graveyard shift at any phoneline open to the public and not get to know the sound of someone jerking off. You could hang up, report him. You’d be given to somebody else and this creep would get a warning, or a ban if he’s a repeat offender. But he hasn’t said anything creepy yet, and you’re invested in the conversation a little too much.

“You want me to call you names?” You let your own voice drop an octave, and the man on the other end of the phone sighs.

“Yeah.”

“Like… if I told you that having dreams about your loved ones dying is decidedly not normal? That it makes you a freak?”

The man makes a choked little sound, so close to a moan that your own breath hitches in your throat. “Yeah, I’m a freak.”

“That violent thoughts, even unconsciously, often lead to violent impulses… violent actions. That you might be dangerous.”

The man groans then, and you lick your lips. Your mouth feels impossibly dry, and your eyes dart side to side with paranoia that someone is listening. You know the calls are recorded, and that you’re so far off script now that you’d be fired if somebody heard you. If the caller reported you… but he isn’t going to.

“I think about them all cut up.” He whispers, and if you strain through the rough static of his breathing you can almost hear the slap of skin on skin as he touches himself. “I think about being the one holding the knife.”

“Sick.” You hiss, pressing your own thighs together. “You’re a sicko. A pervert. A freak.”

Roman cums with a whimper, shooting white over his fist and staining the soft satin of his sheets. “I am.” He gasps, smearing his release against the leg of his pajama pants before running his palm back through his hair. “That was… against the rules.” He huffs a laugh.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Roman pulls the phone away from his ear to stare at the screen for a moment. He wishes he knew what you looked like, especially right now. Because there’s no way in hell you hadn’t clocked what he was doing, and you hadn’t ended the call. You’d played along. “Right. Well, thanks. I feel better.”

“I bet you do.”

Roman feels a fresh bolt of heat run through his stomach and straight into his cock at the loaded, teasing tone. “Same time tomorrow?”

“Goodnight.”

*

The cafeteria is too fucking loud. People are still crying over Brooke Bluebell like she hadn’t been worm food for the better part of a month. It was all performative bullshit and Roman is in no mood to entertain another round of deifying the little slut. So he thumbs his smokes from his jacket and pushes on the fire exit to eat lunch in his car alone.

He’d been using JUST TALK for over a year, since the number had been handed out in one of his classes after a kid he didn’t know had died of cancer. Roman had rolled his eyes, but something about the concept had gotten under his skin. Being a GODFREY in a small town built by Godfreys meant anonymity was unattainable. Everywhere he went his own name was whispered back to him. Everything he did was reported back to his mother in one way or another. Roman had been suffocating under the weight of his own name since the moment he was born. Talking anonymously, in a space where he literally couldn’t give his name? Well, that was a hell of a concept, wasn’t it?

Not all of the operators had been good, and it was pretty annoying to have to wait a week before switching to another one when he really couldn’t get something going, but it was also kinda nice to have the routine of calling the same person for a couple of days. They always remembered what he’d said, and some of them even asked questions.

And it wasn’t that Roman liked to lie, it’s just that it was fun. It was fun to be this guy or that guy, to have problems he’d seen on TV shows. It was a little like roleplay, and Roman really liked roleplay in certain specific, clothing-optional situations.

He’d been a teen with a freshly pregnant, under-aged girlfriend. He’d been a homeless runaway, living on the railroads. He’d been a heroin addict on the verge of turning tricks. That one had been so fun he’d kept it up for three straight weeks, slowly horrifying the operators with his tales of debauchery and abuse.

Roman strokes his thumb over the blank screen on his phone. He shouldn’t call. He has the same timeslot every night. There’s no reason at all to suspect you’d be working. But he wants to hear your voice. He hits speed dial 3 and waits for the usual options, before selecting to continue his call from the previous day.

There’s silence, and then a ringing. Roman holds his breath, sandwich forgotten on his dashboard as his entire being hones into the sound of the ringing.

“You’re early.” Your voice, your voice slips through the receiver and Roman eases back against his seat, melting into the leather as his whole nervous system relaxes.

“I’m still gunna call tonight.”

“Double dipping.”

Roman laughs. “If you wanna call it that.”

“So what’s up?”

Roman hesitates. The words are on the tip of his tongue, the real words. “I’m on lunch. Bored.”

You roll your eyes, leaning back in your chair. “Rough day at the office?”

“Something like that. Dealing with other people’s bullshit is exhausting.”

You laugh then, and Roman feels a little giddy. “Preaching to the choir. Not that I mind.”

“I exhaust you, huh?”

You chew your lip for a moment, eyes flicking up as your supervisor walks past your cubicle. “Not at all, sir. I’m here to listen.”

Roman bristles. “Sir. Should I call you ma’am?”

“You can call me whatever you like.” You wince as soon as the words leave your mouth, knowing how they sound.

Roman feels his face flushing, and he tilts his rear-view mirror down to watch the spread of blood under his skin. “You called me a lot of names last night.”

“You asked me to.” Your face tingles with the embarrassment of remembering it. With the shame of what you did after, when you came on your own fingers in the shower before bed thinking about the breathy little sounds he’d made when you called him a freak.

“You always do what you’re told?” Roman feels his cock stirring to life again. He’s not about to jerk off in the middle of the day on school grounds, but his cock doesn’t seem to know that. He’s developing a pavlovian response to the sound of your voice after just two phone calls. It’s pathetic. He’s pretty sure he’s addicted.

“When I’m on the clock.” You drum your fingers against the desk. “All our calls are recorded you know.”

“I know.”

“You could get banned for… certain behaviors.”

Roman scoffs. “You could get fired for encouraging them.”

And you want to disagree with him, but he isn’t wrong. “How did you sleep last night?”

Roman sighs. “Like shit.”

“You take that bath?”

“No.” He shifts in his seat, relaxing against the headrest. “I had a dream though.”

“You wanna tell me about it?”

“No.” He sighs. “There’s this girl. Who died, near where I live.”

“In the dream?”

“In real life.” Roman swallows thickly, digging his nails into his thigh. “But I dreamed that I killed her. I gutted her like a deer and I ate her heart right out of her chest.”

“Sounds like a nightmare.”

“Didn’t feel like one.” Roman exhales shakily. “Woke up so hard I couldn’t think straight.”

You don’t need to ask him what he means. “Despite what I said last night… you can’t control your dreams. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Roman hums. “I wasn’t sad when she died. I knew her, but I wasn’t sad.”

“Death is complicated. Everybody handles it differently.”

“I went to the place where she it happened. Sat on the ground in the middle of the night. There was still blood in the dirt.”

You don’t dare even breathe.

“Laid there looking up at the sky, thinking about how it was the last thing she ever saw as that monster ripped out her insides. Thought about how much it must have hurt, how scared she must have been, and you know what?”

“What?” Your voice is barely above a whisper, but Roman doesn’t think it’s out of disgust. It sounds more like… reverence.

“I liked it.” Roman’s voice drops to a whisper too, matching yours.

“It…” you swallow as your throat catches. “It turned you on.”

“I really am a freak, aren’t I?” Roman mumbles.

You feel like all the air is being sucked out of your lungs and into the speaker. “There are worse things to be called.”

*

Everybody chatters around him as the final bell rings, talking excitedly about weekend plans and parties and whatever the fuck else they’ve got going on for the next two days.

“Why so blue?” Letha asks, falling into step beside her cousin as he trudges for the parking lot. “It’s Friday, didn’t you get the memo?”

Roman did. Friday meant the end of the week, of his week. It meant the end of his late night conversations with you, and Roman was so, so not ready for them to end. Not when he felt so entirely seen for the first time in his goddamn life.

“Are you going to Ashley Valentines party tonight?” Letha tries again.

“No.”

“You never come out anymore.” Letha’s voice is a little whiny, and Roman bites back a bitchy retort that she’d definitely make him regret.

“I just don’t feel like it Leth, alright? Drop it.”

Letha does, and she stops walking as Roman pushes out of the building, dropping him in the process. Roman pretends it doesn’t matter at all as he climbs into the driver’s seat of his jag and peels out of the lot.

“Hey, psycho,” your voice teases out of the receiver, and Roman feels the easy, automatic grin spreading over his face as he drops onto his bed. His pajama pants are already pulled half down, cock twitching against the strip of elastic at the sound of your voice. “How’s it going?”

Roman shrugs before remembering you can’t fucking see him. “It’s Friday.”

“Right. You wanna tell me about your weekend plans?”

Roman scowls down at the phone. Why is everybody treating the weekend like it’s some big special deal all of a sudden? Rubbing his face in the thing he’s about to lose. “It’s… I’ll get switched to somebody else tomorrow.”

“Oh.” The air leaks out of you like a cut balloon. “How does that… make you feel?”

Roman scoffs. “Quite frankly like shit.”

“Okay.” Your stomach flutters at his open admission. “Because you feel you’ve been able to open up to me?”

Roman makes a non-committal sound. “You’re easy to talk to. You aren’t trying to police me.”

“Well I’m glad you’ve been… satisfied with my services.” The implication is clear and you let it hang there.

Roman runs his fingers over the soft skin of his shaft, but his cock doesn’t so much as stir. He’s too fucking sad to jerk off, actually. “More than.” He says quietly. “I don’t want to stop talking.”

You chew your bottom lip for a moment, considering your options before resorting to the scripted response to client attachment like a goddamn coward. “The next operator will be perfectly qualified to discuss your concerns with you. I can leave notes on your file so you don’t have to explain everything again, and-“

“I don’t wanna stop talking to you.” His certainty bolts through you like electricity, and you press your knuckles against your mouth to suppress a sound that would be far from professional.

“The 7 day limit is in place to stop attachments from-“

“Stop reading from your fucking script.” Roman sucks in a breath. “Please.”

You spin in your office chair, fixing your gaze on a pushpin in the cushioned wall of your cubicle instead. “You’re not supposed to want to talk to a specific person. It isn’t about me.”

“Yeah, well.” Roman huffs. “We haven’t exactly been following all the rules of engagement, have we?”

“No, but the system will allocate you a new operator tomorrow. There isn’t anything-“

“You could give me your number. Your real number.”

Roman feels the silence stretching between you like a million tiny needles prickling over his skin.

“No.”

He actually, physically flinches at the word, even though your tone remains soft and even. It’s devastating, and Roman is almost dizzy with how relieved he is that you said no. Because as much as he doesn’t want to lose you, he isn’t at all ready for you to know who he is.

“But… you can extend your time with me. It’s on the website.” Your voice is strained, and Roman doesn’t stop to think about why as he puts the call on speaker and pulls up the JUSTTALK website.

“Holy shit.”

“It costs two bucks more.”

“I don’t give a fuck about the cost. I can just… request to keep you?”

You flush at his words. “It isn’t recommended.”

“But I can do it?” Roman’s thumb hovers over the request button.

“You can do it.”

*

Roman would have paid double, triple. He’d have paid whatever it cost, and when he calls Saturday night and you pick up with your usual biting greeting, he almost sobs with relief.

“Risky,” he teases. “What if my request hadn’t gone through and you just called a brand new user a psycho?”

You laugh. “I knew it was you. You might not have a name in the system, but you have a user ID.”

“Oh yeah? What’s mine?”

“197768.”

Roman hums. “So that’s what you moan when you’re touching yourself at night?”

You scoff, but your cheeks heat and a throb of arousal pulses between your legs. “Sure. And you’re moaning ‘Ohhh yeah, JUSTTALK operator who calls me a pervert, fuck me.” You put on an exaggerated moaning voice, and even though you laugh afterwards Roman is fucking floored. His cock is twitching to life, and he doesn’t even attempt to resist the impulse as he reaches into his pants and wraps a loose fist around himself.

“I mean, you’re not far off.” He mutters, jerking himself slowly, fingers teasing around the swelling head of his cock.

“I’m flattered.”

“Most girls would be freaked out. By a lot of stuff.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and you don’t need him to. “I’m not most girls.”

Roman huffs a laugh, rubbing his thumb viciously against his leaking slit until he winces. “No you most certainly are not. And thank fuck for that.”

You hear the change in the pattern of his breathing, and you wriggle in your seat. “What do you want to talk about?”

Roman makes a little sound in the back of his throat. “Another girl died.”

“In your dream or…”

“Both,” he spits, releasing his cock to dribble saliva onto his palm before returning to the slow, teasing squeezes up and down his length. “Same as before, some kind of animal. And then I’m the animal.”

“Right.” You whisper. “And it feels… you feel…”

“So fucking good,” he moans, picking up the pace. “I pry her ribs open with my bare hands and it’s so hot and wet and fucking tight.”

You press your thighs together, shaking your head like you can clear the dark, sinful thoughts invading your own mind. “Your hands are your hands? Not… claws or anything?”

Roman scoffs. “No. My hands. It’s me. I’m ripping her apart, all that blood running down my arms. She’s still alive, but she isn’t screaming.”

“No?”

“No-oh,” Roman groans. “She’s moaning. She’s moaning like she’s getting fucked.”

“Oh.” You listen as his breathing becomes erratic, deep inhales and shaky exhales with the ghost of a whine in the undertones.

“Tell me it’s bad,” he whimpers. “Tell me I’m bad.”

You swallow thickly. “These thoughts are… they’re dangerous. They’re deviant.”

“Yeah,” he whispers.

“You should be disgusted with yourself.” Your fingers wander between your legs, pressing your palm harshly against the crotch of your jeans just for the barest relief from the awful, pulsing waves of your arousal. “I-I’m disgusted by you.”

“Yeah?” Roman groans. “You think I’m ugly?”

You pause, debating how far you’re going to let this go, but then he whimpers. “You’re ugly. You’re an ugly person. You’re thinking about a dead girl and you’re jerking off while you do it. You’re a freak.”

Roman cums with a strangled moan, squeezing his release harshly out to splash against his bedsheets before falling back onto the mattress. “Fuck.”

You suck in a deep breath, pushing it slowly out through your mouth. “You feel better?”

Roman huffs a laugh. “You sound tired.”

You hum. “It’s been a long day. I was on dayshift.”

Roman frowns. “It’s past ten. Isn’t this like, against labor laws or some shit?”

You twist your mouth to the side, considering how much to tell him. You don’t want him to read anything into it. “I stayed late.”

“Why?” Roman knows, he knows but he wants you to say it. Wants the words to sing through him in your voice.

“I wanted to talk to you, and you always call at nine forty-five.”

Roman’s heart flutters in his chest like it’s trying to escape, and he runs his hand through his hair, feeling flustered and nervous even though you can’t see him.

He imagines you sitting in your little cubicle, legs pressed together delicately as you worry the sleeves of your sweatshirt. Imagines you biting your lips until they’re ruddy. “Well, I won’t say I’m not glad for it. But I think you’ve earned your time off.”

“I know,” you sigh. “There’s a coffee place right near where I work that stays open really late and I think I’ll get a milkshake to reward myself.”

Roman smiles at the thought of it. “What’s your flavor?”

You hum. “Usually I’m straight up strawberry, but I feel like a twist tonight. Maybe something chocolate.”

“I’m so happy you’re not a vanilla girl.” He teases, and you laugh. “You should get going. Lombardos closes at ten-thirty.”

“Alright. Goodnight, psycho.”

He hangs up, and you’re halfway to the exit when you finally register what he said.

Roman pulls up your Instagram page, settling under his sheets and flicking through your latest post. You’d attended a concert with some friends over the weekend, and he’s a little hurt that you hadn’t told him about it. But then again, you never told him anything about yourself, and he had to remind himself that he wasn’t supposed to know, either.

You look happy in the pictures, grinning easily at the camera and wrapping your arms around your friends, and Roman caresses his thumb over a close up picture of your face with a smudge of sunscreen on your cheek. He could almost swipe it off, that’s how fucking real you look. Your face is momentarily obscured by a heart and Roman wonders whether he’s somehow manifesting his arousal through sheer will when he realizes.

He unlikes the picture with shaking fingers before throwing his phone across his bedroom and burying his face against his pillow with a frustrated scream.

*

Roman shuts himself in the bathroom and pulls his phone from his jeans. He’s three minutes late, and he feels the urgency in his bloodstream as he hits speed dial and drums his fingers against the edge of the bathtub.

“I thought maybe you’d forgotten about me.” You say, and Roman feels the tension relax from his shoulders.

“Never. There was a line for the bathroom.”

“Don’t tell me you called me from the toilet.”

“Alright, I won’t.”

“Please.”

“No.” He laughs. “I’m at a party. I’m in the bathroom but I’m not like, using the bathroom. Just wanted some privacy.”

“You know you can just not call if you’re busy. You don’t get charged for missing a day.”

Roman scoffs like you’ve said something stupid, because you have. “Like you wouldn’t cry yourself to sleep if I stood you up.”

It’s your turn to scoff, but your face heats with a pleasant warmth at his teasing. “What do you want to talk about?”

Roman hums. “I’m not in a position to… do what I usually do. So I wanna talk about you.”

You swallow. “That isn’t allowed.”

“You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to.”

“Alright.” You stick your finger through the fraying hole on the sleeve of your sweater. “Ask me.”

“Why do you work at the hotline?”

“Money is okay, and I like talking to people.”

“You work a lot.”

“Not a lot a lot. But sure. I have bills.”

“How old are you?” Roman already knows this, but he wants to see if you’ll lie.

“Old enough to have student loans.”

Roman grins at himself in the mirror like an idiot. “Psych major?”

“Lit.”

Roman knows this too, could pull up your fucking diploma on his phone right now if he wanted to. Your professors had praised your ‘fresh, unique tone’ and Roman agrees with them. Your tone gets him hard every single day, after all.

“You ever had a client pay for more time?”

You pause, and Roman holds his breath. He doesn’t know how he’ll feel if you say yes. “No.”

“Does it bother you that I’m still yours?”

You close your eyes, this conversation feeling much too intimate for the bleak strip lighting of your office and the low buzz of hollow chatter on all sides. “No.”

Roman swallows. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Do you think about me outside of work?” Roman’s voice shakes a little with how badly he wants the answer to be yes.

“I don’t even know what you look like.” Your voice is barely there, and Roman presses the phone so close to his ear that he hears the screen creak in protest.

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?” He demands.

“Yeah. I think about you outside of work.”

Roman sucks in a breath, his heart somersaulting up into his throat where he has to choke to force it back down. “I think about-“

“Roman there are other people out here!” Someone shouts from outside, banging on the door. Roman flinches, smothering the speaker with the palm of his hand.

“Gimme five goddamn seconds!” He shouts before lifting the phone to his ear again. “I gotta go.”

You don’t respond as he hangs up. The name reverberates around your skull. Logan. His name was Logan.

*

“No charge,” Ritchie says, holding his hand up when you pull your card from your purse.

“What?”

“Your drink is paid for.” You look around, following his eyes to the man sitting at a table by the window. He lifts his fingers in a little wiggle before burying his nose in his book.

“Weird.”

“I think it’s like a pay-it-forward thing. You could pay for the lady behind you.”

“Oh.” You consider this.

“She ordered a white mocha. Same price as your shake.”

“Oh. Alright.” You shrug, tapping your card on the machine and moving to the pick-up counter to wait for your drink. Ritchie leaves the register to deliver your drink personally with a wink. “The guy is staring at you by the way. Has been pretty much the whole time.”

You glance round, but his face is still obscured by his book. “Sure he has.”

Ritchie shrugs. “I’m just saying. He’s cute. And his card was all black. One of those premium accounts. He’s probably loaded.”

You roll your eyes. “I don’t need a sugar daddy. And besides, he looks younger than me. It’s probably his parents money.”

Ritchie shrugs again. “I wouldn’t kick him out of bed is all.”

“You wouldn’t kick Donald Trump out of bed.”

He grips his chest. “That’s crossing a line, bitch.”

You wince. “I know. I knew it as I said it. I’m sorry for putting that image in your head.”

“I’ll forgive you if you go thank the hot boytoy for buying your drink.”

“I’m not that sorry.”

“C’mon. My cable got cut off, I’m dying for entertainment.”

“No way. He’ll probably think I’m a total freak, and he’s reading. I don’t wanna disturb him.”

“I’ll slip you an extra shot of espresso whenever you work the morning shift.”

You sigh, thinking about the sweet, sweet rush of caffeine that free boost will give you. “Fine.”

You approach the table slowly, your feet trudging like a condemned woman on her way to the gallows. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but the barista mentioned that you paid for my drink and I just wanted to say-“

The man drops his book, and the words die on your tongue. Piercing green eyes bore into you, and his full, pretty mouth quirks into a playful smirk. He’s hot. He is ridiculously, tongue-tyingly hot. “Don’t mention it.”

You feel a blush creeping across your face as your stomach flips over. This is pathetic. You’ve never had such a visceral experience to just talking with a guy before. Well, except for…

“It was really nice of you, that’s all. So thanks. I’ll let you get back to your book.”

You turn, and you freeze at the feeling of his fingers wrapping around your wrist. Big hands, the backs of them littered with raised veins. Long fingers pressing against the point of your pulse until you’re lightheaded.

“Why don’t you join me?”

“I have to get to work.”

Roman’s smile tightens. He knows you don’t start until noon today. You have hours, and there’s a laptop in your tote bag. You come to this coffee shop three mornings a week to work on a screenplay you’ve been writing for over a year. But he can’t know that, and you cant know that he knows that, so he forces his fingers to release you instead of pulling you into his lap like he wants to. “Suit yourself.”

You step away, your legs wobbling like your bones are dissolving under the weight of his unblinking stare. Hungry. That’s what he looks like, with those enormous eyes in his angular face. He looks hungry. The butterflies flittering uneasily in your stomach seem to ignite under his gaze, and you rush for the exit without looking back.

Roman’s sitting in the parking lot outside the JUST TALK offices when he calls you. You’re only thirty minutes into your shift, but he’d skipped school to see you in person this morning and he doesn’t have anything better to do until four, so he calls you.

“It’s been a while since you’ve called so early.”

“Yeah, well.” Roman’s surprised by the agitation in his own voice at hearing your light-hearted teasing. You’d been so cold and squirmy this morning, and it pissed him off. Hadn’t you felt it? The connection between the two of you, the obvious, aching tension? Because Roman had. He’d felt it the moment you’d stepped into the coffee shop behind him. He’d felt your pulse under his own skin for every agonizing second, but you’d walked away from him like he was a stranger. And it pissed him off.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah.”

There’s silence as you try to think of what to say. He’s never called in a mood like this before, and you find yourself flicking back through the fucking script to figure out a way to snap him out of it.

“Has something happened? We can talk about it.”

Roman huffs. “There’s this girl.”

Your stomach twists uncomfortably. You don’t want to hear about a girl. You remember the voice through his speaker at the party, and you wonder if she’s the girl, and you hate her.

“And you’ve had… something’s happened with her?”

“No.” Roman’s tone is clipped, annoyed. “She totally fucking aired me.”

“Oh.” You feel relief and guilt wash through you, one after the other after the other. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“You’re sorry. Yeah.” Roman rolls his eyes, though you can’t see it. “I mean, what does a guy have to do, right?”

“Right.”

“Like, look. I get girls, okay? It’s never been like, a problem for me.”

“No, I wouldn’t think so.”

“No.” Roman agrees, shifting in his seat and drumming his fingers against his steering wheel in agitation. “Not to like… I’ve never had a girlfriend or anything.”

You blink. “Then what do you-“

“Fucking.” He says. “I’ve fucked a lot of girls. A lot.”

You swallow thickly, hating the way your clit throbs in response. “Okay.”

“But this girl is… different.” He sighs heavily, and you feel that awful gnawing jealousy again.

“What makes her different?”

“She sees me. Like, who I am. On the inside.”

“Like how… I do?”

His breath hitches, and you listen to the silence with your heart in your throat. “Yeah. She sees the ugly parts.”

“And… she doesn’t want you?”

Roman leans forward, pressing his forehead harshly into the stretched leather of the steering wheel between his fists. “I thought maybe she did.”

“So what changed? If she’d given you indication that she did like you, why would she change her mind?”

Roman considers this. Nothing had changed, really. He called you every night, he revealed every violent, despicable thing he wanted to do, and you listened. You let him. And here you were, still fucking listening.

“It’s my face.”

“Your face.”

“She… doesn’t like the way I look. She likes talking to me, but she doesn’t like the way I look. Like I can fucking do anything about that.”

You shake your head, brows furrowing. It almost sounds like he’s talking about… but he can’t be. You don’t have a damned clue what he looks like. You’d considered trying to find him, but knowing his name was Logan and that he lived somewhere in Pennsylvania was less than nothing to go on.

“I find that hard to believe. I think you might have to just suck it up and confront her.”

Roman scoffs. “Oh yeah, that’ll fucking help.”

“It would provide some clarity.” You argue. “Sometimes you have to be brave, right?”

“Oh right, like you’d know anything about it.” He scoffs. “Been working on that fucking thing for a year and it’s never left your goddamn drafts.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I have to go. I’ll call tomorrow, don’t stay late today because I’m not calling back.”

He hangs up, and you feel the absurd sting of tears in your eyes as you wait for your next call to connect.

*

It isn’t the same guy. It can’t be. But his eyes are impossible to forget. They seem to glow in the neon lights of the club, fixed on you as you dance with a girlfriend. There’s too much alcohol in your bloodstream, and the music thumps through your veins as you sway in time with the beat.

“Do you see that guy by the bar?” You ask your friend. “Don’t make it obvious.”

She swings her head dramatically, and you roll your eyes as she fixes on the man. “Oh, shit. Yeah.”

“He’s looking over here, right?”

“He’s looking at you.”

“I thought so. I think I’ve seen him before.”

“Yeah?” Mary tilts her head to the side, assessing him, and the man’s mouth splits into a smirk visible all the way across the club floor. “He looks… off.”

He chooses that moment to push away from the bar and move closer, seamlessly slipping through the packed mass of bodies until he’s standing right in front of you.

“Hi.”His voice is low, the teasing smirk still plastered on his full mouth. Pretty. Predatory.

“Hi.” You manage.

“Can I buy you a drink? Just you.”

You swallow, feeling a fluttering of unease in your stomach. “I’m with a friend.”

“I’m sure she’ll survive without you.”

“Actually, no.” Mary grabs your arm, yanking you half behind her. “She isn’t interested. Fuck off before I call security.”

Roman feels the rage wash over him in a cool, impenetrable wave as you’re dragged away from him. You shoot him a look, something tense on your face, but you don’t pull away from your bitch fucking friend. You don’t come back to him, and the rage soaks into his bones with a deadly, precise inevitability.

He’s smoking, leaning against the wall of the club as people spill out. He watches you get into a cab, watches you wave frantically out of the window as your friend laughs on the sidewalk. You’re drunk. You’re blackout drunk, and the urge to get in his car and follow you home is almost overwhelming. But then your friend pulls out her phone, and he sees her smug bitch face lit by the screen, and the rage rattles his bones with such force he jerks away from the wall and stomps towards her on mechanical legs.

“You all alone?” Her head shoots up, her face tensing as she takes him in.

“I’m waiting for my Uber.”

“It isn’t safe out here for a pretty girl to be on her own.”

She looks again, her expression guarded but curious as she rakes her eyes over him. Roman wonders if his mask is in place, the pretty, disarming boy mask. Her mouth lifts into a suggestive smile, and his shoulders relax. “I thought you were interested in my friend.”

Roman shakes his head. “Just following girl code. Gotta get with your friends, right?”

She rolls her eyes, but she takes a half-step forward. Roman smells alcohol on her breath as her fingers slip into the front of his jacket to caress against the hard planes of his chest, and she hums appreciatively. “If you wanna be my lover.”

Roman doesn’t have to force the smirk. He doesn’t have to force himself to get hard either, his cock is jumping to attention at the thought of all the things he’s going to do to this stuck-up fucking bitch. “My lucky night I guess.”

*

The sound of the connection in your headset splits through your skull, and you suppress a whimper as the first call of the evening connects. It’s almost impossible, listening to the woman sob in a high-pitched voice about her husband leaving her when you’re nursing the worst hangover of your life. But you force yourself to keep going, to focus, to say the right things, and eventually the headache begins to ease.

You see his number flash up on your screen and accept the call almost too eagerly. “Thank God.”

The man chuckles. “You missed me?”

“It’s been a long night.”

Roman hums his agreement as his fingers wander absently up and down the exposed flesh beside him. “You’re on the late shift.”

“Yeah. I needed it, too. I went out last night. Like properly.”

“Oh yeah? How was it?”

“It was fine. My friend really wanted to try this club in the city. Not really my thing, but I had fun. I got drunk.”

Roman laughs. “I bet you did.” There’s silence for a beat. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I want to talk about?”

There’s an edge to his voice, and you straighten in your seat. “Right! Right, sorry. What do you want to talk about tonight?”

“I saw the girl again. You know, the girl.”

“I see. How did it go?”

Roman scoffs. “Worse than last time.”

“I’m sorry. I… do you think maybe it’s time to let this one go?”

“No fuckin way.” Roman’s shaking his head even though you can’t see it. “I’m just getting started.”

You don’t know why his words send a shiver down your spine, or why you enjoy it. “What will you do next, then?”

“I fucked her friend last night.”

You suck in a breath. “Oh. How was it?”

Roman hums, eyes raking over the body in bed beside him as he runs his finger down her bare spine. “Clarifying.”

“Clarifying?” You repeat, your mouth feeling thick and dry, like its stuffed with cottonwool. Jealousy. You’re jealous again. Jesus Christ.

“I learned something about myself with her.”

“What’s that?”

He hums, his fingers dipping below the line of the sheet to slick through the ruin of her ass. His nails trace the edge of a bitemark, the perfect, incriminating indent of his teeth, and he sighs. “I’m not just a freak.”

“No?” Your voice is breathy, and Roman feels his cock stir at the sound of it combined with the feeling of blood and viscera coating his fingers.

“No.” He repeats softly. “I’m a monster.”

*

You’re woken from a dead sleep early on Sunday morning, and you answer in sheer confusion at the unknown number flashing up on your screen. Mary never made it home from the club, and her roommate calls you because apparently you may well have been the last person to see her. Guilt churns like nausea in your guts as you recall climbing into a cab and not fighting her when she said she’s wait for an Uber. She lived on the other side of town, and in your drunken state it had made sense. You hadn’t thought about the danger of it.

“Do you have any idea what might have happened to her?”

“No. I… she was fine when I left.”

“When you left her alone outside a club in a bad part of town. Jesus.” The roommate spits. You chew your bottom lip into your mouth and don’t bother to defend yourself, because she’s right.

You wander into work on autopilot, sitting at your desk and staring blankly at the screen until Jacob pops his head up. “You okay?”

“My friend is missing. We went out in the city on Friday night and she never made it home.”

“Fuck.” Jacob walks around the partition, leaning on the shared wall and fixing you with a look of genuine concern. “Should you be here? You should go home.”

“No, I need to be here. He’ll-“ You break off, your face flushing, and Jacob shoots you a knowing look.

“Your mystery man. He’s stuck with you for almost a month. Never happened in company history you know. Big bosses will cut him off soon.”

You nod mechanically. “We’ve built… a rapport.”

“You know the conversation isn’t supposed to go both ways. You’re not supposed to get attached to the users.”

“I know.” You sigh. “I know. I’ll end it soon. He’s just… I’ve been helping him. It feels good to help.” You’re pretty sure you’ve just helped him get sicker, but there’s no point telling Jacob that. He wouldn’t understand, not when you barely understood it yourself.

His call comes at exactly nine forty five. “Hey.”

Roman can feel the difference in just the single word. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure.” He scoffs. “You sound… different.”

“I’m just having… a bad day. Sorry. What do you want to talk about?”

Roman wants to ask you about your bad day. But he doesn’t. He can’t. It’ll get him fucking hard, and you sound too sad to be into it tonight.

“I had a fight with my mom today.” You blink. He’s never mentioned his mother before, except in passing.

“What happened?”

“She chewed me out over the fucking trash.”

“Alright.” You settle more comfortably into your seat. “Walk me through it.”

Roman is pleased to go through the motions, because you sound a little more like yourself as he talks. “I was taking the trash out. But apparently there’s some rule about the recycling, right? So you can’t mix shit up and you gotta wash the gunk out of things or some shit.”

You picture him, the blurry, man-shaped thing you see when you think about your mysterious Logan, squabbling over colored trash bags and you smile.

Roman remembers the sharp slap of his mothers fingers against his cheek and the bite of her nails in his flesh as she scratched her displeasure into his face. He’d gotten blood on the carpet. He’d dumped dismembered body parts in the household waste, when all corpses had to go through Pryce at the White Tower. He’d made a fucking mess and Olivia had been pissed she had to clean it up. Beyond pissed, actually.

“Did you make up?”

Roman hums, considering. He’d curled up on the floor at her feet and pressed his bruising cheek to her knee, and Olivia had caressed her fingers through his hair, singing a low, melodic song in a language he couldn’t understand. “In our way.”

“What about the girl? Any updates on that front? Did she find out you’d… been with her friend?”

Roman chuckles. “Not yet. I think it’ll… motivate her to chase me down.”

“I’m not sure it works like that.”

“No? Enlighten me.” Roman stretches out on his bed, nuzzling his nose against the dry blood stiffening his sheets. The girl really had screamed like a stuck pig when he’d gutted her. He’d been so hard, but with all her blubbering he hadn’t wanted to fuck her, like at all. So he’d coated his cock in her blood and jerked off as she died, and he’d thought about you. About how you’d look on your knees, licking all that mess off his cock and begging him to do you next.

“Girl code.” You say, and Roman freezes at the memory of using those exact words on your bitch friend before he’d taken her home and cut her open. “If you slept with my friend? You’d be dead to me.”

Roman feels a chill run through him. An actual, dread-laced chill. “You can’t mean that.”

“I completely mean that.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Roman’s hand shakes as he pulls the phone away from his face and presses his knuckles against his teeth. How had he fucked up this badly? Why hadn’t he run his plan past Letha or one of the other girls at school? How had he fucked up this badly?

“Well, shit. I guess I shouldn’t tell her then.”

“The friend will.”

On this, Roman feels certain he has the upper hand. “Well, then I’ll deal with it.”

“You seem awfully calm about it.”

Roman shrugs. “I’m Zen, baby.”

You flush at the pet name. “That’s good. I feel like you weren’t… Zen a few weeks ago when we first started talking.”

Roman glances up at the tentative knock on his door, face dropping into a scowl as Anna shuffles in with an armful of clean linens. “Mrs Godfrey says I must change the sheets.”

“I have to go.” He doesn’t wait for you to say goodbye before he hangs up.

“I don’t want them changed.”

“Please Master Godfrey.” She sounds exasperated. “Mrs Godfrey says there’s a smell.”

Roman knows there’s a smell. It isn’t just blood matted into his sheets, it’s bile and piss and all the disgusting, beautiful things he’d pulled out of the girl. He isn’t ready to part with any of it. “You can tell her that it’s none of her goddamn business what I do. This is my house. My sheets. My fucking rules. Now get the fuck out of here before I have you fired.”

Anna’s face crumples, her withered hands fisting the sheets as she spins on her heel and flees from the room. Roman doesn’t feel bad about it, Anna’s been a cunt as long as he’s known her. He does regret hanging up on you, but he decides he’s going to make you laugh tomorrow. He wants to hear that pretty sound again, just for him. He wants you to tell him he’s disgusting so he can cum all over the corpse-mess on his bed. Then maybe he’ll let the old bitch change his sheets.

*

“Good evening, you’re through to the JUST TALK hotline. How are you doing?”

Roman freezes. He’s pretty sure his heart actually stops at the unfamiliar voice on the other end of the phone. “Who are you?”

“I’m not at liberty to disclose my name, sir. I’m here for you, to talk about anything you might be thinking about or feeling.”

“No, I know that. Where’s… my usual operator.”

“Oh.” There’s some clicking as the guy mumbles under his breath. “Looks like she’s out sick, sir.”

“Sick.” Roman repeats the word, and it tastes wrong in his mouth. “How sick?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m paying a premium rate to talk just to her.”

“Oh. I can get the extra refunded to you sir, that’s not a problem.”

“I don’t want a refund, I wanna talk to my goddamn operator.”

“I…” he stammers. “I’m sure she’ll be back soon.”

“Soon isn’t now you fucking moron.” He spits.

“Sir, if you continue to use abusive language I will end the call.”

“You continue to call me sir and I’ll end you, you worthless piece of-“

Three short beeps cut him off as the operator terminates the call, and Roman launches his phone across the room with a frustrated growl. Where the fuck were you? Where the fuck were you?

Roman pulls up your socials, all of them. He pulls up your friends, your family, your co-workers. He pulls up the CCTV camera in the lobby of your building. He pulls up the employee sign-in record at JUSTTALK. He scans through every single piece of information he can find, searching for a glimpse of you in the grainy footage, but you’re nowhere. He’s restless, furious, panicked in a way that frightens him, and he’s throwing on his jeans and stomping out to his car before he can even really think about it.

The drive into the city doesn’t take long, and Roman parks outside your building. He counts windows until he finds yours. He’s been here before, of course. Sat out here with a thermos of coffee and watched your shadow flit around behind the curtains. There’s no sign of movement now, but your light is on. The soft, yellow glow of your bedside lamp. You’re in, and you’re awake. Are you sick? Are you sick of him?

Roman can’t stop himself now. He wouldn’t, even if he possessed the self-restraint needed to think rationally. He’d never denied himself a single thing, nobody ever had, and he wasn’t about to start. You belonged to him. You’d belonged to him since the first time you’d picked up his call and coaxed his darkness out of him. “The demons don’t go back in the box,” he mutters to himself as he pushes open the door to your building. No lock, no security. Any fucking weirdo coulda walked in, anytime.

Roman grits his teeth on the elevator ride up. “Can’t just close that fuckin lid, Pandora,” he spits, and the elderly woman in the back of the elevator presses herself further against the wall like his madness is catching.

Roman stomps out at your floor, pacing to the end of the dingy hall and knocking on your door. There’s shuffling inside and then you open it. You don’t have a spyhole, and you don’t have the chain on. Any fucking weirdo coulda walked in, anytime. Roman shoves against the door, wrapping an arm around your waist and hauling you further into the apartment as he kicks the door closed behind him. You scream, and he takes pleasure, great fucking pleasure in clapping his palm over your mouth and feeling the hot press of your lips against his skin. “Shut up.”

Your eyes narrow, arms and legs thrashing and clawing and kicking at him, but Roman pins you against his body. He doesn’t even feel it, really. He’s too overwhelmed with the sensation of holding you. He’d imagined it a hundred times, and you’d only been struggling like this in some of his darker fantasies. But it was always you, and his cock twitches thickly in his pants as you wriggle against him. “Shut up,” he says again.

He doesn’t need directions to you bedroom. He pulls you inside and closes the door, depositing you on the bed and climbing on top of you with his knees either side of you on the mattress. “If I take my hand away, will you scream?”

You shake your head no, and Roman sort-of doesn’t believe you but he’s been missing the sound of your voice all goddamn day, so he lets you go.

You open your mouth, and close it again. You know him. The guy from the bar. The guy from the coffee shop. Those green eyes sparkle in the low light of your bedroom, and something sick and slow pulses through you. “I know you.”

The man grins, his full lips splitting open at the corners in a smile that’s a little too wide to be reassuring. “And I know you.”

“You were at the club the other night.”

Roman rolls his eyes. “Lets not play this game.”

You suck your lower lip against your teeth, and Roman dips his head to press his own mouth to yours. You freeze at the feeling of his plush lips as his tongue licks against your teeth. He slides one hand into your hair, tugging your head back to give him better access as he settles his weight on your thighs, and you gasp at the feeling of his hard cock pressing against your stomach.

The man groans, licking into your mouth with a hot, curling pressure that sends a bolt of pleasure through you. You aren’t supposed to like this. You can’t like it.

You try to pull back, but he won’t let you. His tongue pushes into your throat, choking you and you whimper into his mouth before sucking his tongue firmly against your teeth and biting down. Your stomach rolls over at the give as you sink into the meat of it and blood fills your mouth.

The man moans throatily, dropping over you and pinning your back to the bed as he settles more firmly between your legs and grinds against your panties. You’re wearing just those and a vest, and you wish you’d opted for fleece pajamas even as your clit throbs at the friction of his jeans against you.

He pulls away from the kiss, mouth streaked with blood and glistening with saliva, and he winks. He winks, rutting his hips against yours. Fury rushes in, drowning out the lust and the panic, and you gather a wet lump of saliva in your mouth and spit right into his face.

He freezes, blinking through the film of stringy spit and his own blood as the taste of you drips into his mouth. “Freak.” He mutters before diving back in, parting your lips so he can push his ragged, bitten tongue into your mouth again. His free hand travels down between your bodies, pushing your underwear aside so he can press two long fingers into you.

You’re unprepared for the stretch and it burns, but he curls his fingers expertly as he massages your sensitive walls and you flutter your muscles around the digits. “There you go,” he coos against your mouth. “Knew you wanted it.”

You whimper, the sound a desperate declaration of how much your body does want it and a desperate plea of how much you don’t. “Please don’t.” You hate that you said please. You hate that you don’t mean it.

“We’ve had this dance coming since the beginning,” he whispers back, thumb stretching up to rub rough little circles against your clit as he continues to curl and drag his fingers in and out of you. “I’m giving you what we both want.”

You close your eyes as tears stream down your face, pooling at your temples. The man groans, and you feel his tongue trace over the salty streak on the side of your face. He pulls his fingers out of you, and you watch in horrified fascination as he sucks them into his mouth, his green eyes darkening as his pupils expand. “Why me?”

The man leans back, fingers deftly undoing his jeans and pushing them down. He drops over you again, brushing the leaking head of his cock through your folds, rubbing your clit with his sensitive slit before positioning himself at your entrance. You feel the stretch, and you brace for the jolt of pain that comes with his first, long thrust.

He bottoms out with a low moan, feeling your muscles stretch around his considerable length. “Shit.”

“Shit,” you whisper, blinking through the pain to hone in on the deep, throbbing pressure as he fills you.

“Why you?” He asks, chuckling like it’s funny. “Why you?”

He pulls half out and pushes back in, the drag of every ridge and vein on his cock caressing against your walls with the slow in and out rhythm of his thrusts. “Like it could be anyone else.”

You squeeze around him, and his jaw goes slack. You take the moment of distraction to reach up, palm splaying open as you slap him as hard as you can. His head cracks to the side, cheek pinking immediately with an imprint of your fingers. He freezes for a moment, before a savage grin splits his face. “Oh, sweetheart.” He coos, wrapping his own hand around your throat and squeezing until your vision explodes in a dazzling display of purples and blacks. “Don’t start something you can’t finish.”

He doesn’t fuck you gently after that. His hips slam against you over and over, his rhythm an unforgiving, brutal pace. His cock batters against your cervix with every thrust, sending bolts of pain through you as you clench and unclench around him. You gasp for air, and he licks into your mouth again, tasting the fear and the want and the ragged, stolen whispers of breath leaking out of you.

“Tell me how much you like it.” He spits, releasing your throat.

You cough, sucking in mouthfuls of air that taste like his blood. “I… I like it.”

He grunts, and you feel his cock twitching inside you as his orgasm nears.

“Tell me I’m a freak. Tell me I’m disgusting.”

A sob bubbles past your lips instead. “You… can’t… be.”

“Tell me I’m ugly,” he moans, dipping his head to nuzzle the tip of his nose against your jaw.

“No, no, no,” you whimper, shaking your head until his face is little more than a blur of pinkish flesh and green flashes. “You can’t be…. No, no, no.”

“Tell me I’m ugly,” he whimpers. “Tell me you hate me.”

You open and close your mouth, willing it to say the words he wants to hear so this can be over.

“I k- I killed her,” he stammers, reaching down to rub against your clit.

Your eyes roll back as your stomach turns over. “Noooo,” you wail.

“I fucking tore her guts out. Your bitchy fucking friend.”

You sob, your clit pulsing under the expert attention of his fingers as he shifts his hips, driving his cock against your most sensitive spot with every thrust.

“She cried for you when she died,” he moans. “Begged me not to- shitttt,” you feel the hot pulses as he comes inside you, spilling white hot deeper than anyone had ever been before. His thumb is a slick blur against you as he steals your release, your body arching off the bed as you shudder and cry through every blissful, awful wave of it.

Roman watches this, drinks in the sight greedily as he commits it to memory. You look so pretty when you cum. He’d known you would, lips parted in a gasp, eyes wet and wild and full of terror. Your cunt pulses around his softening cock and he winces as he withdraws from your heat.

He leans up to press a kiss to your forehead, thumb still rubbing over your clit as you jerk away from the overstimulation.

“Please,” you whisper.

Roman hums, dragging his wet fingers up your torso and pressing them to your throat. “Clarifying.”

“What are you… oh. Oh no.”

Roman chuckles, bringing his fingers to your lips and tracing the shape of the word no. “I’m a monster.”

You don’t want to believe him. You don’t want to believe that any of this is happening, even as the dull ache between your legs and the slick drying on your thighs scream the truth at you. Mary’s body, or at least part of it, had been found in a municipal waste truck in Hemlock County, a clear twenty miles from where she’d last been seen. She’d been dismembered, disemboweled, and whilst you didn’t know the details, her roommate had been sure to inform you that she’d been in such bad shape the police wouldn’t let her parents ID the body. Too traumatizing. “Why her?”

Roman sucks his fingers into his own mouth, eyes rolling back at the taste of you. “She got in the way.”

You think about every conversation you’d ever had with your mystery caller. The girl who’d snubbed him. The friend he’d fucked in retaliation. Sick! Psycho! Pervert!

“You didn’t have to kill her.”

Roman rolls to the side, twirling a strand of your hair around his fingers like you’re lovers in bed and not at all like he’d just raped you. “No, I know. I just wanted to.”

“I’ll call the cops.”

Roman hums, reaching for your chin and turning your face to his. “No, you won’t. And even if you did nobody would believe you. I’m a ghost. I’m a number in your fucking hotline. What are you gunna tell them?”

You swallow thickly. “I know your name.”

He freezes, his expression fixed. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you whisper, even though you’re quite possibly signing your own death warrant. “It’s Logan.”

*

Mary would have hated all the fucking black. She’d have liked that there were so many people, that it was standing room only in the back of the packed chapel. She’d have liked that the guys from her college football team showed up, even if none of them ever gave her the time of day whilst she was alive. She’d have liked the flowers, though lilies made her sneeze.

You shift in your seat against the uncomfortable pew, your fingers stiff where her mom grips them. You were her best friend. It was right that you sat in the front row. It was right that you gave a tearful eulogy. You felt wrong. You felt like a traitor. You were a traitor. Because your murderous phantom had kissed you softly and slipped out of your apartment after you’d spoken his name out loud, and you hadn’t called the cops. It had been two weeks and you hadn’t called the cops.

The guilt is overwhelming. You’d stopped eating, you barely spoke. People looked at you with sympathy, like you were deserving of it. Her mom had wrapped her arms around you and sobbed, promising that she’d stay in touch to help you through the grief like it wasn’t all your fucking fault that her daughter was dead. Like your encouragement of the embodiment of evil hadn’t put her firmly in his crosshairs.

After the service, you slip away from the crowds because you simply can’t take another moment of all that grief. You light a little candle at the alter for Saint Jude, because you’re a hopeless cause and at this point being iced by a Higher Power would be a fucking blessing, when you catch sight of the confession booths tucked away in the back of the chapel.

You’re not religious. But grief does funny things to a person, and guilt makes you half-mad as you rise from your stiff knees and shuffle towards the wooden boxes. You slip inside, settling into the cramped, dark space. The partition opens, and you can see the distorted image of the priest through the decorative wooden paneling.

“I’m not a Catholic.” You blurt.

“God doesn’t need you to be.”

“Okay.” You sigh. “Okay. I’ve only seen this in the movies. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

The priest chuckles. “I suppose I don’t need to ask how long it’s been since your last confession. First time?”

“First time.” You repeat quietly.

“So what do you want to talk about?” You feel a sick smile spread across your face at the familiar phrasing. How many times had you said exactly those words to lost souls seeking absolution? How had you ended up on the other side of it?

“It’s been a hard day.”

“You’re here for the funeral? Of the girl.” The priest’s voice is gruff.

“Yes. I… she was my best friend.”

“And you’re feeling… grief?”

You swallow. “Guilt.” The word hisses out of you through the puncture of your heart. “It’s my fault she died.”

“Why do you think that, my child?”

You sob then. Maybe it’s the way he says it, maybe it’s the lack of air in the booth. Maybe it’s just about damn time that you shed a few tears for Mary. “She was killed by a monster. And it was… he was supposed to kill me instead.”

“He?”

“That’s the other thing,” you say bitterly. “I know who did it. I know who killed my friend.”

“And you haven’t gone to the police?”

You suck in a breath. “No. I know what you must think of me.”

The priest says nothing, and you feel an awful jolt of regret run through you as you peer into the emptiness of the other side of the booth. He was probably racing to Mary’s mother to tell her exactly what kind of awful, sick freak was sitting in his confession box. The door is slipped open and a man forces his way inside, long fingers cupping your jaw and tilting your head up as he presses his plush lips to yours with a soft moan.

You squeal in surprise and he swallows the sound, pulling away to stare at you with such intense devotion it makes you dizzy. “I knew you wouldn’t.”

The floor bottoms out as you go limp, terror and trauma overwhelming your nervous system as the man, your phantom caller, drops to his knees and shoves the skirt of your dress up around your hips. “Oh, I knew it. I knew you’d be faithful.”

Your head drops back against the solid wooden wall of the booth as he nuzzles his face against the front of your underwear, his teeth nipping at the fabric only to let it snap back against your rapidly dampening core.

“You can’t be here,” you moan, and he traces over your clit with his tongue before hooking his fingers into your underwear and dragging it roughly down and off. The damp cotton disappears into the folds of his robes, and the man lifts his head to smirk at you. He’s even wearing the fucking collar. Nice touch. “You can’t be here.”

He dips his head again, licking a slow, languid stripe through your folds and your eyes shutter closed as your lips part around a gasp. His hands curl around your thighs, forcing your legs wider as he burrows his face against you.

You don’t mean to, but your hips lift to grind against him, finding a rhythm that ruts your clit against his tongue as he sucks and laps against you. He moans, the sound sending vibrations through your clit, and you whimper as your fingers fly into his hair and pull.

Roman pulls away from you, licking your slick from his lips as he lifts your thighs over his shoulders. He untangles your fingers from his hair and pins your hands to the seat either side of you, pressing your wrists harshly into the wood as he buries his face in your cunt again.

You whimper, hips lifting to meet his eager tongue as he flicks it against your clit in sharp little motions. He watches your arousal soak into the dark wood beneath you, and he’s jealous of the surface for getting to taste so much of you. So much of what belongs to him. Roman dips his head lower to push his tongue into you, feeling your muscles quiver around him as your arousal fills his mouth and you grind your clit into his nose. He’s drowning in you, relishing in every delicious drop of devotion you offer him as your orgasm nears. You didn’t call the cops. You didn’t tell on him for any of it.

He’d known, obviously. He’d been watching every day, he’d had your phone tapped. But to hear you say it. To hear you confess it. To know how you’d fallen apart over what he’d done, and still protected him? You loved him. It was fucking clear. It was plain as day. You’d seen all the ugly parts of him and you loved him anyway.

“Please,” you whisper, and Roman withdraws his tongue from your hole to lap at your aching, swollen clit again.

“Please what?”

“I… I don’t want this.” You gasp, even as your hips lift towards his mouth.

Roman smirks. “Your pussies begging for me.” He releases one of your hands so he can sink two fingers into you, feeling how you grip around him. “See? She’s so desperate to be filled up.”

Tears streak down your face as he returns his lips to your clit, sucking the sensitive bud into his mouth and dragging his teeth lightly against it. There isn’t any point in denying it again, not when he’s so determined. Not when he eats you like a man starved.

Your orgasm crashes over you suddenly, washing through you and relaxing every muscle in your body as you grind up against his face and he curls his fingers inside you over and over again, drawing the wet gushes of your cum into his mouth.

You drop, sweating and boneless against the wood, and Roman presses a soft kiss to your clit before pushing your legs closed. He rests his chin on your knee. “One hell of a confession.”

You laugh, a little burst of deranged hysteria bubbling out of you. “One hell of a priest.”

The man grins, parting his lips to press his teeth against your knee, and you remember the details from the police report. Bitemarks so deep you could make out each individual tooth.

Nausea blasts through you and you gag, pushing past him and out of the booth, stumbling into the near-empty church. Most of the funeral-goers will have moved on to Mary’s parent’s house now, and they’ll be wondering where you are. You think about Mary’s mom, her kind, worried expression, and you wretch the meagre contents of your stomach up into a decorative urn. Puking in holy relics? Yet another hole punched in your ticket to hell.

Fingers lace into your hair, and you’re pulled against a warm, firm torso as he walks you back towards the confession booth. “No,” you moan.

“Yes,” he coos, reaching around to cup your breast through your dress. “I’m still fucking hard.”

You don’t fight it as he pushes you to your knees. The booth on the priest’s side is roomier than the confessor’s, but he still presses you close to him as he guides his cock to the seam of your lips and paints them with the slick of his precum. “Open up,” he murmurs. “Time for your sacrament.”

Heat throbs between your legs as he pushes the thick head of his cock into your mouth.

Roman sighs at the feeling, his eyes fixed on your face as you stretch around him. Your eyes water, and he scratches his nails against your scalp affectionately before forcing your head down until his cock pushes into your throat.

You gag, slicking his cock with spit, and Roman moans as he thrusts up into your mouth. “I missed you,” he groans, hips snapping against your face as your nose nuzzles into the rough thatch of hair at the base of his cock. “Missed talking to you every day.”

You groan around his cock, sending vibrations down his length, and Roman lets out a shaky chuckle. “Wanted to climb through my fucking phone like that bitch from the ring,” he babbles, tightening his fingers in your hair as he fucks your face harder, faster. “Every time you asked me what I wanted to talk about I thought about this. Fucking your pretty fucking mouth for three bucks a minute.”

Your throat contracts tightly around his length as you choke, and Roman’s eyes roll back at the feeling of your muscles spasming around him. “You coulda gone to the cops,” he spits, reaching his fingers down to brush against your throat. He feels the bulge of the head of his cock and he lets out a moan that borders on a sob. He’s never been this turned on in his whole fucking life. Not even when he was elbow-deep in that bitches guts. Not even when he got to fuck you. “But you didn’t.”

He grips your throat, pressing down hard to feel the grind of his own cock through your flesh as he fucks your mouth harder still. “Because you want me. You need this. You wanted me to come back for you.”

He’s rambling now, delirious with pleasure as his orgasm peaks. “Like I wouldn’t. Like you aren’t mine. Like you can put the demon back in the goddamn box,” he moans, and you feel the acid burn as he cums down your throat, pulsing his load directly into you like the blood of Christ. An unholy sacrament indeed.

He sags back against his seat, dragging his cock out of your mouth with a lurid wet pop, and you drop forward, dry-heaving against the floor. “I…” Your voice is wrecked, completely destroyed by the battering your throat has taken. You look up at him, at this godless, soulless appetite of a man, and your clit throbs traitorously as he licks over his swollen lips.

“I would have told.” You croak.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know your name. I’d have told if I did.”

He hums, pressing his thumb into your mouth like a communion wafer. “Roman.” He says softly. “Roman Godfrey.”

The name sinks into you. Roman Godfrey. You’d been close, but Roman made more sense. Roman Godfrey suited the man sitting in front of you. “Roman.” You repeat it, muffled by the press of his thumb to your tongue, and he smiles.

*

You stare down at your phone screen. There are children playing in the park, their high-pitched squeals of delight sending lances of adrenaline through you as you jump at each new sound. You jump at everything, these days. Every time a door opens, or closes. Every time somebody talks too close or laughs too loudly you spin, looking for him. Roman Godfrey. Heir apparent to the helm of one of the most successful companies in the world. Prince of Hemlock Grove. Murderer. Rapist. Yours.

You dial the three digits as you have a million times, and you let them sit there. 911. Make the call. Say his name. Bring this to an end. Your thumb hovers over the call button, right as your phone starts to ring. You jump out of your skin at the unexpected buzzing, the unknown number flashing up on the screen. You don’t need to wonder who it is. You don’t need to ask how he got your number. You could decline the call. You could decline the call and give his name to the cops and bring this to an end. You chew your lip into your mouth, indecision warring with cowardice warring with exhaustion warring with something darker, and you sigh.