Beautiful Nightmares (The Asylum Trilogy) Page 2

  I face him. “No, no.” I lace my fingers through his. “Not in us or you. Don’t misunderstand me, love. I’m just disappointed that you won’t tell me where we’re going.”

  “Well then,” he says with the slightest bit of excitement in his voice. “I promise that this is the last time I keep plans from you.” There’s sincerity in his amber eyes. “From this day on, I promise to include you in any decision that involves the both of us.”

  I meet his gaze with a smile and rest my head on his shoulder. “Thank you,” I whisper.

  Elijah kisses my forehead and I close my eyes as an anxious feeling pumps through me. It’s me and him, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, til death do us part.

  Our journey as a married couple has just began.

  And I can’t wait until we arrive at the first stop of the many stops in the journey of our lives.

  Chapter Three

  ~Before~

  Elijah’s voice flits through the moist Hawaiian air.

  He sings with rasp.

  And grit.

  His fingers pluck the guitar strings in a precise pattern, never missing a strum or chord. I close my eyes feeling overwhelmed and at peace at the same time. I feel lost. In a daze. I feel like I’m drowning and the only time that I’ll be able to come up for air is when he stops.

  So he does.

  Without me asking him to, of course. Even though, at times it’s like I’m hypnotized by his musical abilities, I love to listen to him play.

  I love to listen to him sing.

  I lie on my side across from him on the blanket we spread out across the sand. I close my eyes for a second, and then open them to Elijah’s penetrating gaze. I let out a soft laugh and say, “What?”

  He twists his body, placing his guitar back in its case. “Nothing.” He fastens the snaps on the case and stands, the case in his left hand, his right hand extended toward me. “Well, what do you say, Mrs. Watson? Shall we retire for the evening?”

  I take his hand, smiling up at him as he helps me to my feet. “Would you like that, Mr. Watson?”

  His lips touch my ear and his voice has taken on a husky tone. “Very much, Mrs. Watson.” I bite my lips to keep the moan from exiting my throat. “Hmm.” Now there’s vibrato in his voice. “On second thought.” He eyes the blanket with a salacious grin. Warm breath slices through my pores like the sharpened blade of a carving knife. “I want you,” Elijah groans, his teeth nipping my lower earlobe. He drops his guitar case in the sand.

  “Here?” I gasp. “Now?” I scan the deserted beach, watching the waves with white crests as they crash into the sand.

  Elijah lets out a low, raspy chuckle and peels the dark curtain of my hair away from my shoulder blade before kissing the bare patch of skin next to my dress strap. I suck in a deep breath when I feel the warmth from his mouth on my body and shiver when that warmth surges through all of my appendages before nestling in the pit of my stomach. “But we’re in a public place.” I keep my voice low, hushed.

  “So.” I’m not facing him, but I hear the smile in his voice. No, it’s probably not a smile. It’s probably more of a greedy smirk. He sits back down on the blanket and give my arm a gentle tug. “Besides, we’re newlyweds. I think that entitles us to a few passionate yet exhibitionistic moments.”

  I hesitate and just stare at him. There’s a nagging, terrified voice sounding off in my mind. What if someone sees us? How mortifying would that be? What if we got in trouble by the hotel staff? I know this sounds juvenile, but still. This is a new experience for me so when weighing the pros and cons I have to lay out all possible scenarios.

  Elijah tugs on my arm a second time and I stumble forward, my knees hitting the sand. Reaching up, he steadies me, gripping my shoulders without force. “Am I being too insistent, Adelaide?” He lies down on his side and pats the empty spot in front of him. “If I am, I hope that you’ll tell me.” He lets out a soft sigh. “I just can’t help myself around you, Mrs. Watson. The want to have you all the time overwhelms me.”

  I can feel a bonfire starting in my heart, working it’s way up to my cheeks. Desire singes my nerve endings and my whole body starts tingling. It’s crazy how this man can make me a mess inside. It’s crazy how he can make my mind hazy, my heart beat erratically, and how with a simple caress of a finger can make my whole body betray me. “But,” I hesitate, struggling to get the words out. I take a deep calming breath. “What if someone sees us?” I swallow a nervous quiver of fear that’s stuck in my throat.

  “I’ll keep my ears open,” he remarks, wearing a mischievous smirk so sinful and so sweet it could rot a person’s teeth. “I promise.” With his sincere declaration fresh in my mind, I lie down in front of him, my back against his chest. His heart pounds, a dull beating drum vibrating through my skin. I focus on that sound. The sound of his heartbeat and tune out the noise that the rushing waters of the Pacific Ocean are making. “I love you, Mrs. Watson,” he says against my ear. There’s a hungry rasp in his baritone voice. “I hope you know that.”

  “Of course I do,” I tell him. “I love you too.”

  He rests his chin in the crook of my neck and slips his left hand underneath my waist, pulling me closed. We’re so close that our bodies are like sheets of metal melted together. He holds me tight against his chest then slides his right hand underneath the skirt of my dress. His fingertips travel from my calf, up to my inner thigh, leaving goose bumps in their wake. His touch unglues me. It’s so soft. So intricate. So strategic. He knows exactly how to make me crumble beneath him. How to make me become and addict for him and only him.

  After sliding my underwear down to my knees, his teeth graze my jawline before his lips wrap around my lower right earlobe. My breaths are coming out hollow and raspy. I’m holding back a moan that I want to let out. I love him. I want him. I need him. Inside of my head. Inside of my body. I think of the way his voice silences every thought running laps through my mind.

  “Adelaide,” he murmurs, his hot breath caressing my ear. A growl leaves his lips as more hot air comes out of his mouth in torrents.

  And then…

  And then he spreads my legs, massaging my sex with two fingers. He leaves a trail of kisses from the curve of my neck down to my collarbone then kisses his way back up to my ear. “Do you want me inside of you, Adelaide?” He nips at my ear gently. “Hmm?”

  He’s such a tease. I’m already squirming beneath his grasp, breathing heavily into my armpit, and almost whimpering because I want to feel him inside of me. “Please don’t make me beg,” I groan, turning my head.

  Elijah begins to move his fingers, still in-between my legs in a circular motion. It’s driving me insane. “What was that, Mrs. Watson? Are you getting mouthy?” There’s cockiness in his tone and I open my mouth to comment, but I realize I have no words. I can’t speak. I’m silenced by his fingers against my flesh because I know if I tried to say anything, all I’d let out is a moan.

  Oh God.

  Oh God.

  Oh God.

  The second he removes his fingers, I feel like I’m receiving some cruel punishment. The area between my legs aches with want and I begin writhing my hips, wanting the release more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my entire life. “Please, Elijah. Please,” I say.

  I feel his hot, moist lips against my ear. “Beg me.”

  “You’re horrible,” I tell him. “You know that?”

  He lets out a husky laugh that echoes across the star-filled heavens and I huff in frustration as he nips at my earlobe with his teeth. The sounds of his zipper swells in my ears while he leaves a trail of strategic kisses along the curve of my neck. I fight back the cry I want to let out when I feel Elijah between my legs. His hips thrust back and forth slowly and my lips find his. “I love you,” he murmurs.

  “I love you too.”

  Those are the last things we say to each other. After that, we focus on enjoying the first night of our honeymoon and make love under the st
ars.

  Chapter Four

  ~After~

  Plain white walls.

  Plain white walls.

  Plain white walls.

  I am held prisoner in a cell with four plain white walls.

  One barred window.

  One barred window.

  One barred window.

  One barred window, reminding me that even though the landscape of Oak Hill is barren, discolored, and dead, that being outside and being able to frolic amongst the wiry tree branches, crisp fall air, and brown grass is a luxury that I’ll never receive.

  Why?

  Because I’ve been a bad, bad girl.

  Disobedient.

  Hostile.

  “Bad girls get punished,” as Susan likes to put it.

  She thinks I’m a plague, infecting the other patients with my virus of rebellion all because I bit her fingers the last three times she’s tried to force my meds down my throat. A new patient named Honalee who has a loud and annoying habit of barking at the other patients witnessed my transgression and repeated it. According to Aurora, she broke the skin and as tough as she appears to be, apparently Susan doesn’t like bloody fingers.

  The stare-down she gave me after the Honalee incident made me feel like her eyes were the serrated knife and I was the block of cheddar cheese.

  I’ll never forget the way her eyes reminded me of steel. Shiny, metal, and hard. And I’ll never forget the way they cut right through me.

  Thanks to Honalee, I spent the next week in solitary confinement. And well, I’ve avoided her ever since.

  To me that doesn’t matter. They can punish me. They can shoot me up and strap me down. They can strip away my dignity. They can torture me slowly. Suffocate the girl I used to be out of me in small doses.

  It doesn’t matter.

  What they do to me will never matter.

  I won’t become the robot they want me to be.

  I’d rather die.

  I stand at the window with my hospital gown suctioned to my skin and shiver in silence as the cold bleeds through the thin panes of glass and washes over me. Damien’s voice cuts into my thoughts. “Come lie down with me, love.” This is a command, not a request and at the moment, I don’t feel like listening.

  Instead, I continue staring out the window and pump warmth back into my arms before folding them across my chest.

  I don’t want to lie down. I want to break free. And there’s a huge part of me that wants to bark out at him, “I thought you were supposed to save me.”

  Save me. Save me. Save me.

  He promised me so I begged for it.

  Pleaded.

  Hit my knees in a hysterical fit of madness and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed until my throat was raw and my voice was gone.

  He didn’t listen to me.

  Damien.

  He didn’t seem to care.

  I wept at his feet, full of love and sorrow and all I got from him was a smile and a hand through my matted down hair. It was a lifeless and cold gesture. On top of that, I know he’s the best kind of illusion and more than anything I wonder why I’m still seeing him.

  I banished him from my thoughts.

  Screamed at the top of my lungs for him to leave.

  I held the door to my cell open and ushered him out with urgency.

  It’s like my eyes and my mind are engaged in a wrestling match.

  What you’re seeing is real. No it’s not. What you’re seeing is real. No it’s not.

  There were moments over the last couple months where I thought he’d be gone for good because I hadn’t seen him, but then out of nowhere he always manages to pop back into my life.

  “Addy, love,” I hear him say.

  I fight off the urge to continue ignoring him and respond with a simple, “What?”

  “Aren’t you going to come lie down?”

  “No.” My answer is short, cold, and the tone of my voice is laced with a hint of frustration. “Please, Damien.” I glance over my shoulder and look him in the eye. “Go away.”

  He narrows his piercing blue eyes for a flicker of a second, then hops off the bed. A half smirk curls on his lips and he beckons me closer with a slight movement of his pointer finger. “Sometimes I like it when you’re difficult,” he tells me. “It makes things playful for me.” He takes a few steps closer. “And challenging.”

  I turn to face him and sneer. “Well sometimes I wish you’d actually listen when I tell you to go away.”

  In two strides, he’s standing before me. He peers down into my eyes and tucks a loose piece of hair behind my ear.

  He laughs and that makes me even more frustrated. “Stop it,” he teases. “I know you don’t want me to.”

  But that’s where he’s wrong.

  I used to think that I’d never want him to leave me.

  I used to hope and wish and pray that we would be forever and ever.

  And the sad reality is that we’re not.

  He’s dead.

  I can’t bring him back.

  “Damien,” I whisper. “Please go.”

  I’m trying hard not to make eye contact with him. It’s at that moment that I usually lose control of my emotions. The moment I start swimming in his pools of blue, my thoughts don’t exist anymore. I drown slowly.

  Sink into the sapphire depths.

  Before I can remind myself of how to swim, I’m almost at the bottom of the ocean floor.

  I tilt my head to the side and dip my chin down, staring at a visible crack in the concrete floor. Don’t look at him.

  I can’t.

  I won’t.

  I refuse.

  “Adelaide,” he muses in a sing-song voice. My eyes snap shut when I feel two of his fingers tilting my chin up. “Look me, love.”

  I clamp my mouth shut refusing to utter the words I’m holding back.

  No.

  Damn it.

  No.

  Not now.

  Not ever.

  He.

  Can’t.

  Make.

  Me.

  He has this way of hypnotizing me. He’s like a magician wowing me and mesmerizing me with his bag of tricks. Well, he used to anyway. It’s different now. I’ve been the only audience member to watch his show for far too long now and I’m putting an end to it.

  Right here.

  Right now.

  Jerking my head to the side and stepping to the left I move away from him. I keep my eyes closed and keep walking and walking and walking until I back myself into a corner. The wall feels like an ice cube against the back of my neck and I press my lips together to keep my teeth from chattering.

  “What are you doing, love?” Damien asks, a spike of confusion in his tone.

  I don’t respond verbally. Instead I shake my head. I should know better than to refuse him.

  He follows me.

  Always.

  Once he told me he’d follow me anywhere.

  He’s in front of me in a second, pressing his hips against mine and pinning me against the wall. He plants his nose in my hair. I inhale his familiar scent and I can feel my self-control collapsing. My eyelids flutter. My body relaxes. I fight the urge to plant my face in the curve of his neck and kiss his bare skin. “See,” he tells me, a hint of amusement in his voice, “I know you can’t resist me.”

  Sometimes I hate it how he acts like he’s so sure of himself. When he acts like this, it makes me want to the opposite of what he wants me to. I have my own mind. I can think how I want to think. Do what I want to do. “Stop,” I say. My voice comes out shaky and breathless because I can feel my body betraying me.

  He plants his lips against my ear and his fingertips slide up my hospital gown, resting on my upper thighs. “No,” he says in a low, flat voice.

  Slowly, I’m succumbing to the madness of his touch. I shiver with want as his fingertips climb further up my thigh and dip beneath the band of my underwear. I tilt my head back, resting it in the corner of two of the four while wa
lls in my room and exhale when Damien places his moist lips against the curve of my neck.

  This is not happening.

  This is not happening.

  Maybe before…

  But not now.

  I’m losing control of the situation and it’s driving me batty.

  There’s a tug of war between my head and heart going on inside of my body. In the end, though, my head wins.

  I wait until Damien backs away the slightest bit before crouching down in front of him. I pull my knees to my chest and scream. It’s a scream filled with angst and frustration. It is loud, piercing, and deafening and cause the metal bars to rattle against my lonely window.

  Damien glares at me. “What are you doing?” There’s panic laced in the tone of his voice. “Addy, what are you doing?”

  I stare up at him through a bevy of tear-stained eyelashes and scream again.

  “You’re being ridiculous,” he snaps, raising his voice drown out my screams. “I am a part of you! Nothing is going to change that!”

  I close my eyes tight when I hear the lock on my cell door click. Lowering my head, I rest it in between my knees to catch my breath. I open my eyes and notice a nurse that I don’t know making her way toward me.

  And I also happen to notice that Damien is gone.

  Chapter Five

  ~Before~

  I’ve officially been married for three whole months.

  And my marriage to Elijah has been blissful and perfect up to this point.

  My life is no longer dark and depressing. It’s bright and sunny and beautiful.

  I used to think that I’d have a gray cloud of misery following me around forever, but I was wrong.

  So very, very wrong.

  I like to think of myself and Elijah as a couple of teenagers in love.