Faithless (The Red Order Book 3) Read online

  Faithless

  E. S. Carter

  Faithless

  By E.S. Carter

  Copyright 2018 by E.S. Carter

  All rights reserved.

  Cover image and design by Cover Me Darling.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without expressed written permission from the author; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

  All trademarks contained in this book, are the property of the respective copyright holders and have been used without permission.

  **WARNING**

  Faithless is a dark standalone that follows on from the first two books in the ‘Red Order’ series – Feyness and Parasight.

  Readers of a sensitive disposition may want to step away from the book. Step away, nothing to see here.

  Readers who like to dance on the dark side, come on in and enjoy the ride.

  This book is for adult audiences only and, as such, may contain graphic violence and scenes of an explicit or sexual nature.

  Contents

  Quote

  Hello Again

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Playlist

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by E.S. Carter

  “Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean.” – David Searls

  Hello again.

  Are you here for more?

  More of the darkness?

  More of the depravity?

  You’re a greedy little thing, aren’t you?

  That’s okay, you can admit it. I can keep a secret.

  I’ll never tell a living soul.

  The dead, on the other hand…

  Prologue

  Luke

  Small. I need to make myself small.

  If I’m small, I’ll disappear, and this will all be a dream.

  The flesh under my cheek is icy cold. The body that once brimmed with love and warmth is now hard and unyielding. Her soft skin feels like that of a candle; waxy, almost sticky, and her scent—violets, always violets—has long ago faded. All I breathe is the stench of death. Decay. Old blood. Rotting flesh. The stink of my dried piss.

  She’s not here with me, but I can’t let her go.

  Here, in the dark, she’s all I have.

  Here, in the dark, is all that’s left of the good in my world.

  In the light is where evil lies with a familiar smile. A smile I am born to inherit. Waiting, always waiting.

  “I love you,” she says. “I’m so proud of you.”

  She cups my cheek, her thumb tracing the arch of my trembling lips and places the softest of soft kisses on my forehead.

  Violets. Violets everywhere.

  “Be better, Luke. Be better than them all. I have faith in you.”

  The basement door unlocks with a soft snick. The old door from my childhood, one that clanged and screeched in protest every time it opened was replaced years ago with a secure, bio-key, thick steel entry. But, as I use my thumbprint to disengage the locks, it’s the shrill scream of metal from my memories that I hear as a pinprick of light illuminates the stairway wall.

  The steps down into the darkness are also new. Solid. Dependable. I count them as I descend.

  One. Two. Three. Four.

  By five, I can hear her.

  Shallow breaths, almost a pant.

  Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.

  A pained moan, followed by a weak whimper.

  Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.

  An almost soundless scream, the crack of air through her lungs at the crescendo catches me low in my belly.

  Fourteen. Fifteen.

  My shoes hit the polished concrete floor, and she begins to beg.

  “Please, please, please, please, please.” Her words are muffled behind a gag but easy to interpret, and each breathless plea is a firm tug on my cock.

  I close my eyes and inhale the heady aroma of sex that lies thick and heavy in the cold air. I can taste it on my tongue. It glides down my parched throat like warm honey and awakens the beast inside. The one that craves this nectar. The one that thrives in the darkness.

  I flick a switch on the wall, and the bare bulb sizzles with electricity before illuminating a single bench in the centre of the room.

  She’s exactly as I left her a few hours ago.

  Naked. Bound. Gagged. Spread. Exposed. Vulnerable.

  Her entire body vibrates. Her skin taut across each of her delicate bones. Her chest rapidly rising and falling. Each rib beneath her pale, silky skin pronounced and seemingly about to snap.

  She blinks frantically at the light shining down on her, before another forced orgasm tears through her body and her entire form arches like a bow. Her back curves, lifting high enough from the leather of the bench for me to see light spill across the dimpled surface. Her arms and legs strain against their bindings, and I swear I can hear the flesh of her raw throat tearing from the force of her scream.

  The sound washes over me like an exquisite symphony, and I close my eyes to savour it, feeling all my senses come online to revel in this experience.

  The monster that dwells below the surface of my skin, hidden beneath the cloak of normalcy I wear and protected by my attractive veneer, claws at my chest demanding to be set free. He’s eager to taste the fruit of our spoils. He’s desperate to sink his teeth into her flesh and gorge his fill until his gluttonous appetite is sated.

  Not yet.

  Her body sags and twitches with aftershocks. Her back slowly lowering to the surface of the bench as the rigid arc made by her lithe form slowly crumbles under the weight of her fatigue. Both her arms and legs are lax against the restraints, and her head lolls to the side with spit pooling from beneath the red ball gag that spreads her mouth wide. It gathers in thick puddles before sliding across her skin and running in a viscous trail to the floor below.

  Her lower body continues to spasm. Her concave stomach convulsing with every pulse of the high-powered Hitachi wand strapped between her legs and pressed firmly against her exposed cunt. She’s a glorious sight to behold as the broad head of the vibrator continues to buzz aggressively at her red, swollen, and over sensitised flesh. Flesh that is spread wide, vulnerable, and open with no way to escape the stimulation.

  I conceal the shiver that races down my spine and settles in my balls by taking a long step forward and running the tip of my pointer finger over her hip and down the outside of her thigh. She yelps from the contact. Her body has been overstimulated for hours, making that one small touch feel like lightning.

  I smile the smile of a Hunter, and her watery green eyes widen at my show of teeth. I likely look feral, and she whimpers softly behind the hard rubber ball that stretches her lips tight, their corners cracking and exposing thin slivers of wine-red blood.

  I lick my lips, the taste of her on my tongue sure to be the first delight in my upcoming all you can eat buffet.

  My eyes lift from hers, and I scan the periphery of the room, my gaze tracking the shadows. Shadows that move and keen and whimper. Shadows that c
url in on themselves to make them appear smaller. Shadows that cling to the cold bare walls, pressing themselves into the rough surface, trying to escape my perusal.

  But they can’t escape. They belong here. They belong to me. And I will toy, and break, and fuck every last one of them until they are no longer useful.

  Starting with this one.

  I wrap my hand in her tangled, dirty blonde hair and I tug.

  She cries out like a lamb but is soon silent when I whisper in her ear, “Which hole, love? The one currently on fire, burning up with the heat of a dozen orgasms? Or the one puckered and tight, a channel of strangling heat that waits for my cock to stretch it wide?”

  I run the tips of my fingers over the strained skin of her mouth, tracing the dry cracks in her lips, and seeking the contrasting puddles of wetness. I find a pool of spit running from the corner of her mouth and I use it to lubricate the flesh around her gag.

  “Or I can take you here and fuck your dry throat. I bet you’d drink me down like I’m water in a parched desert. Wouldn’t you, love?”

  I lift my head and look down at her. Her pupils are blown, and her nostrils flare with every breath. The vibrations still torturing her body travel from her to me. They crawl up my arm like an army of ants, entering my skin via my greedy fingers as they tighten automatically in her hair.

  “What’s it to be, love? I’ll let you choose.”

  She doesn’t answer—oh, yeah, she can’t.

  Her eyes blink, her soul begs, but nothing other than a guttural moan escapes her lips, the rubber ball gag mutating it into a weak, wounded sound that one would expect to hear from a dying animal.

  La petite mort—the little death.

  I can feel it coming for her again as I first unbuckle my belt, and then the leather strap of her gag.

  Pure happenstance that I should think of the French term for an orgasm as another ravages Margaux’s body, and the coincidence makes me smile, allowing her a single, lung-filling breath.

  She gasps and gulps down unrestricted air as her whole body tenses, but before she can screech out her painful release, I flick the lever on the side of the bench and the surface below her head falls away. Her head drops back with nothing to support it, her neck stretches awkwardly, and her mouth opens wide in a combination of shock and a silent scream. Before her next blink, I have her face in my hands as I plunge my cock straight to the back of her throat.

  The sudden intrusion into her scream-abused channel has her fighting against her restraints, her eyes impossibly wide, her throat convulsing deliciously around my length as I choke her without caution. I don’t even need to pump as she unintentionally milks me with her inner muscles. The long, thick shape of my cock visible under her delicate skin, her throat stuffed to bursting.

  She writhes and splutters pathetically, but has nowhere to go. Her body is clamped to my bench, and her airway is blocked by my cock. I still, resisting the urge to thrust as I use a single finger to trace the outline of my broad head, pressing down at the tip and sending her gag reflex into overdrive. The sensation of pure ecstasy combined with the visual of my cock deep in her throat—hidden by tight flesh, yet fully visible—is pushing me closer and closer to the edge.

  I battle the dive into darkness a little longer, revelling in the moment her body begins to give up its fight.

  “Je t’en prie. Je t’en supplie. Je t’implore. Je te pleure.” I can imagine her pleading. My pretty, blonde French girl who wanted to walk on the dark side, yet never dreamed how dark that side of me was. And who could blame her? I looked the part. I wore my skin well. But as my mask fell away piece by piece with every thrash of her naked body and every contraction of her throat, Luke Hunter flaked off my skin like old varnish, exposing the real man beneath—the monster who craved depravity and destruction.

  And she could see me now.

  She could see every single part of me, and I knew I was a sight to behold.

  My mask was stripped away, my cloak of normalcy had been discarded, she saw me, and it was enough to send her over the edge from the little death, to the I will beg for death.

  As her fingers twitched weakly, and her body abandoned its fight, I gave two brutal pumps of my hips into her lax mouth, pulled out, and rained my release over her pale skin and blue lips, painting her with my cum like a perverse masterpiece.

  Fuck, she looked beautiful like that.

  I wanted to run my fingers through the sticky strings splattered over her creamy skin. I wanted to feed it to her open mouth until she awoke from whatever nightmare I’d sent her into.

  You see, I wasn’t like the monsters we hunted.

  I didn’t kill my pets.

  I loved them the only way I knew how.

  These women were free to leave any time they wished, but they needed this as much as me, and there was a power in that knowledge. A power I abused freely.

  A power that sometimes threatened to consume me.

  But I didn’t let it.

  I knew my place just as my pets knew theirs.

  Maybe one day I’d find someone to challenge that power. Maybe, I already had.

  I sure as shit wouldn’t be tamed like Cole or Grim, and I would never, never give up my basement.

  She was here with me, always—the woman I refused to let go.

  I defiled her memory with my basest needs and then begged for forgiveness afterwards.

  It was always the same.

  Each visit and each minute spent with my pets left me torn open and raw. The pink and tender skin revealed beneath the cloak I wore in the world, was sensitive and sore.

  She always found me here afterwards. I was an eternal disappointment to her. My aching and ragged flesh longed for her to soothe it, but she never once did. Instead, her gaze was like a thousand tiny knives tearing at my newly exposed skin until I was the one begging—begging her to stop. Imploring her to forgive me.

  And that’s where I am now, on my knees, my head tipped to the dark ceiling, the bare bulb shining behind my closed lids like a spotlight when he calls.

  The man that infects everything.

  The one that makes my skin itch—both as a man or a monster.

  The man who has the audacity to look at me like I’m his prey.

  Yeah. He’ll soon find out who the prey is in this scenario.

  “James, I’d say it was always a pleasure, but you’re interrupting something. What is it you want?”

  My tone is bored and laced with arrogance despite the agony of my sore skin as it weeps under the harsh single lightbulb.

  I glance to my pet, Margaux. So delicious, so open and ready for me to take however I wish. I focus on her and I wait, pretending whatever he says next won’t affect me.

  “You…”

  One

  Luke

  “Were you going to leave without saying goodbye, brother?”

  My gaze is fixed on the array of guns laid out before me, my fingers tracing the hard yet sensual lines of a Beretta 92FS before settling on the small and sleek Walther Polizei Pistole Kurz.

  Without turning, and with my fingers adeptly checking the single-column magazine of my chosen weapon, I answer flatly, “As the leader of the Red Order, I didn’t realise I had to report my movements to my presumed dead brother.” I flick a glance at him over my shoulder before adding, “I must’ve missed that memo. I’ll be sure to chastise Diana for failing to fulfil her job role.”

  With quick movements—ones I could do with my eyes closed—I load the Walther PPK, grab a few more magazines and a silencer, and slip the ammo into the bag at my feet, before sliding my Pretty Polly Killer into the holster concealed under my suit jacket.

  Cole’s response is to remain silent, but I can still feel his gaze on my back.

  “What, brother?” I demand, my patience quickly thinning as I spin to face him. “Whatever you have to say spit it out.”

  His long, leonine hair is tied back today, his clear blue eyes assessing, and although he hasn’t yet
replied, he’s smug. The corner of his lips twitch, and his left brow rises slightly. He knows I’m on edge, he can feel it as well as I can. He’s the only person—other than Grim—who sees what I look like beneath my mask. He understands me almost as well as I know myself. And, in turn, I understand him. I know what makes him tick and I know why he’s followed me to my armoury. He’s here because I’ve kept this trip quiet. The fact I haven’t told him about it is more telling than if I’d given him the information freely. Usually, I have nothing to hide from Cole. We have a bond born not only of brothers—of blood—but one forged in the darkness and paid for with the ultimate price.

  The fucker smirks at me, and I fight back the urge to react.

  “There’s nothing to spit out,” Cole states calmly. His body is relaxed against the door frame, his eyes sparkling with mirth. “I’m an open book, brother. You, on the other hand, are so close to the edge the cracks are showing. Do you think, after all this time, I don’t see you, Luke?”

  It’s my turn for silence. The short, square edges of my fingernails carve grooves into my palms as his smirk gets bigger and the urge to beat him gets stronger.

  “Is James Cooper part of this covert trip?” he asks after a beat. His long, broad frame shifts in the doorway, his body language expressing his nonchalance. But Cole is anything but indifferent right now. His question is locked, loaded, and ready to cause deadly impact.

  I swallow down a sneer and turn back to my guns dismissing him and his question.