Candy Kisses

Candy Kisses

Chapter Ten

“Protect Me From What I Want”
-- Placebo

A cool breeze stirred Marzi’s hair, causing several impudent strands to tickle his cheek. Groggily, Marzi tossed his head, trying to dislodge them, but the strands continued their mischief. Until, finally, they pestered him into a blurry state of wakefulness. Struggling for enough strength to open his eyes, Marzi tried to remember where he was. And with who. He’d played that guessing game often enough, after numerous wild nights, and he didn’t expect this time to be any different.

Another current of wind harassed him. Determined to subdue the rebellious strands of hair, Marzi tried to brush them back from his face. But his hand wouldn’t move. Puzzled, he tried harder, only to be rewarded by biting pain. An attempt to move his other hand yielded similar results. Slowly, Marzi realized that his arms had been spread out above his head, and his wrists tied to something, pulling his body into a Y-shape. Unusual. But not unprecedented. Still more curious than frightened, Marzi experimented with kicking his legs. Nothing impeded their movement. However, as they slid across the silk beneath them, he could tell that he was naked.

Pepper? Marzi inquired, hoping his sister might shed some light on the situation. But only silence answered him. And her failure to respond scared Marzi more than finding himself tied up. Pepper?!

Like an electrical shock, it all came back to him. He remembered drinking the drugged wine and collapsing on the floor of his apartment. He remembered lying in the center of a circle, with a large mirror held above him, while strange robed figures chanted. He remembered Pepper being torn from him with such violent force that he’d passed out. But why? He hadn’t known the men in the van. He hadn’t known the man who seemed to be in charge of them. There was only one person who wanted him bad enough to expend this kind of effort...

Marzi’s eyes snapped open. For an instant, they slid over the room’s familiar scenery, before turning to the man who stood beside the stained glass bed. Kale.

And yet, Marzi’s ex-lover seemed different. He still possessed his demonic bearing, a regal mixture of arrogance and sin, but shadows lingered under his eyes, and the flesh of his face was pulled more tightly across the bone beneath it, as if he had eaten little and slept less since their parting. Despite himself, Marzi felt a pang of concern. He wanted to get Kale a meal at their favorite restaurant, and then lie down beside him, kissing the tension from his body. But such thoughts were madness. Forcibly, Marzi reminded himself why he had left, why he didn’t give a damn if Kale lived or died.

Seeing Marzi awake, Kale smiled. “My treasure. You came back to me.”

Bitter laughter rose in Marzi’s throat. But the strip of duct tape across his mouth kept it from escaping. Instead, the sound rattled through his body, like handful of stones.

Kale sat down on the edge of the bed, and brushed his fingers across Marzi’s cheek, effortlessly taming the strands of hair that had tormented him. Gently, he tucked them back behind Marzi’s ear. “I imagine there’s a great deal you want to say to me. And, in a moment, I’ll let you. But first, I want you to understand the situation. Whatever remains of your sister is contained in a mirror that belongs to an associate of mine. I don’t know what sort of suffering can be inflicted on someone in her state, but I’m fairly sure he can find out, if I ask him to. Are we clear on that?”

Marzi glared at Kale. He didn’t want to give his ex-lover the satisfaction of an answer, but he had to protect Pepper. As much as he still could. Slowly, sullenly, he nodded.

“Good.”

With a swift motion, Kale ripped off the duct tape, and Marzi bit back a cry as the adhesive tore at his mouth. Then, the pain faded to a slight burn. “Nicholas?” he rasped, as soon as he could find his voice.

“The boy?” Kale shrugged. “From what I heard, when he found out what he’d done, he attacked my associate. Not a smart move. He’s probably dead. If he’s lucky.”

Marzi lowered his eyes. He remembered Nicholas on the day that he’d been hired, so flustered and amazed. So like a child. And even during his visit to Marzi’s apartment, when he must have already decided on his treachery, he still didn’t possess an aura of evil. Nothing evil could love Pepper like that. But innocence hadn’t been enough to protect Nicholas. It was never enough to protect anyone. “Everything you touch,” Marzi hissed. “Everything you touch, you poison.”

“Me? His fate rests on your conscience, Marzipan Penicandey. You never should have left me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Marzi snapped, momentarily forgetting Kale’s threat to harm Pepper. “You murdered my sister and damn near killed me. What did you expect me to do? Send you flowers?”

“I expected you to keep your promise.”

“My promise? Did I promise to let a psychotic demon cut out my sister’s heart and then feed it to me? Because I don’t recall saying that.”

“Have you forgotten so quickly?” Kale traced the outline of Marzi’s ear, before lingering on the gold hoop that pierced its lobe. Around and around, his fingers followed the metal band, as if chasing something forever beyond his reach. “The night when we consummated our desire? I told you that you were my lover, not my slave.”

A dull ache filled Marzi as he remembered happier times. Times when he had loved fiercely, and believed himself to be valued in return. Jerking away from Kale’s caress, Marzi turned his face toward the room’s open window, fixing his gaze on the empty sky beyond it. “I remember. I said that I was both. Forever.”

“Yes. That’s a promise of sorts, don’t you think?”

“Of sorts.” Marzi blinked into the breeze, hoping that it would carry away his tears before they could shame him by falling. “But a promise never binds just one person. By accepting my promise, you made one of your own. You promised that you would be a man worthy of my devotion.”

“And haven’t I been?”

“Haven’t you been?!” Marzi laughed, unable to keep a slightly hysterical note from entering his merriment. “What the hell do you think? When I was lying in the snow, scared and in pain –- when I was dying, for fuck’s sake -- all I wanted was to call your name. To beg you to come to me, to hold me, to comfort me. But I didn’t. Because I knew you wouldn’t come. How the hell do you think that felt?” Marzi shook his head. “Thank god I didn’t know what you’d done to Pepper, or I would have begged Sylvia to wrap her gloved hands around my throat and put me out of my misery.”

“And yet, you came back to me.”

“Stop saying that! I didn’t come back to you. Your goons kidnapped me and tied me to your bed.”

“That’s one way to look at it.” Catching Marzi’s chin between his fingers, Kale forced their eyes to meet. And again, Marzi found himself tumbling into Kale’s gaze, like a lemming leaping into a sea of green fire.

“However,” Kale continued, “perhaps there’s another explanation. Perhaps you wanted this. Perhaps your desire was so strong that you unconsciously twisted fate, until your longing brought you back to me.”

“I--” Marzi tried to protest. But Kale silenced him with a kiss, sticky and painful, as his lips pulled against the residue left behind by the duct tape. And Marzi clenched his eyes shut, trying to fight back the ripples of desire that Kale still stirred in him.

“You’re trembling, my treasure. Are you afraid of me?”

Marzi shook his head. “I was never afraid of you. Only of what my love for you might make me become.”

“Become?” Kale laughed. Leaning closer, he pressed his kisses to Marzi’s throat, his mouth as warm as wax trickling down the side of a candle. “I remember the first day I saw you in my club. You were wicked then, and you’re wicked now. How can you fear becoming what you already are?”

Biting his lip, Marzi swallowed a groan of desire. Desperately, he snatched hold of his anger, and his hatred, and his fear for Pepper, and he hurled them into his heart like hand-grenades, until they obliterated the feelings Kale had reawakened. “I. Am. Not. Wicked.”

“Oh? What gives you any hope of being good?”

Kale’s tongue snaked out of his mouth, flickering against Marzi’s skin, and Marzi struggled to think about anything else. Struggled to think of some answer to Kale’s question. Recently, there hadn’t been much evidence to support claims of saintliness. But things had been different, once. Marzi thought back to his childhood, to the feel of Pepper’s small hand in his, and her eyes looking up at him, as if he was the most strong and wonderful thing in the world. As if he was her own personal giant. Pepper had believed in him -- she still believed in him. And surely Pepper couldn’t be completely wrong.

Kale seemed to read his mind. “Your sister? Is that what you’re clinging to? Her blood is your blood, and she’s so good that you could never be evil? Is that it?” Kale’s mouth slipped lower, and as he dragged his teeth across one of Marzi’s nipples, Marzi bucked, unable to contain the cry that jumped from his throat. Kale waited until he fell back against the mattress, and then smiled a slow, evil smile. “I’m afraid that I have some bad news about your sister.”

“Shut up,” Marzi snarled, ashamed of the way his body responded to Kale’s touch. Ashamed of his flushed cheeks and fluttering breath. “Just shut up!”

But Kale ignored him. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it sooner, to be honest. I was a fool to have believed that you were truly related to her.”

“What do you mean ‘truly related’? She’s my sister!”

“By law, yes. But not by blood.” Kale’s tongue dipped into Marzi’s bellybutton, and a sensation like writhing snakes filled Marzi’s stomach. “It turns out that you’re not really a Penicandey at all, my little foundling.”

“You’re a liar!” Marzi thrashed against the ropes which bound his wrists to the headboard, not expecting to escape, but needing the pain to block out Kale’s words. To keep his mind from comprehending their horrible implications.

Kale sat up, and laid a gentle finger across Marzi’s lips. “Now, my treasure, you know that isn’t true. I’ve never lied to you. It may please certain people to believe that I bungled the ritual because of incompetence, but the truth is that it didn’t work because you aren’t Pepper’s birth sibling. You’re adopted. And I think that opens all sorts of fascinating possibilities, don’t you?”

Marzi screwed his eyes shut, trying to lose himself in the darkness. But Kale refused to let him escape. Shifting his position on the bed, Kale touched his mouth to Marzi’s fingers, slowly suckling each one, before he lowered his affections to Marzi’s wrist. As Kale’s kisses pressed against flesh so recently rubbed raw, the mixture of pleasure and pain made Marzi want to scream. But he could barely whimper.

“No records exist to say who your true parents were. But I suspect that you may have demon blood. Not as strong a taint as I carry, but some. Perhaps that’s why your real parents got rid of you. Perhaps, even as a baby, they could tell what you are.”

“No!” Marzi tossed his head from side to side, trying to knock Kale’s words out of it.

“It’s possible,” Kale assured. “And lucky for them if they did. Think about the people who had the misfortune of being close to you. Your adopted parents are dead. Your sister is mostly dead. Your friend Nicholas might as well be dead. Why do you think that is? Why do you think god would hurt so many innocent people? Unless, maybe, it wasn’t god at all. Maybe it was you.”

“No! I’m not like you!” Pepper? Tell me it’s not true! Tell me that I’m your brother, not the spawn of something darker. All the things I’ve done, all the people I’ve hurt -- tell me those were just youthful mistakes, not steps in a destiny I don’t want to have. Oh god, please tell me! But his sister couldn’t answer him. And god chose not to.

Kale pressed his mouth against Marzi’s ear, his words dripping into it like poison. At the same time, he reached down, and closed his hand around Marzi’s erection, stroking it as he whispered. “You see, my treasure, I know you. I know the people you went to, the things you did to try to forget me. But you couldn’t. My blood calls out to you, just like yours calls out to me. Because we are the same.”

“...no...”

“Alright. Prove to me that you’re good. Tell me to stop. Tell me to untie you and let you go. Surely that’s what any decent person would do if they woke up and found themselves in the bed of their sister’s murderer.”

Marzi opened him mouth, and tried to make the words come. But he couldn’t. He needed what Kale was doing to him -- needed the sweat to hide his tears, needed the uneven intake of breath to disguise his shaky sobs. Needed the lust to block out a despair so ravenous it threatened to devour his heart. He wanted it. Kale was right. He wanted something that no decent person should ever want. He must be tainted. He must be damned.

“I thought not,” Kale gloated. “In a few minutes, you’ll beg me to fuck you. And if it makes you feel better, you can tell yourself that you’re doing it because I have you tied up. Tell yourself that you’re doing it because I have power over your sister. But deep down, both you and I know the real reason. You’re doing it because you want it. You’ll always want it, my treasure. And you’ll always be wicked.”

Kale’s grip tightened around Marzi’s cock, and Marzi arched his hips, thrusting into Kale’s hand. No longer thinking, no longer trying to refute Kale’s words. Just trying to lose his mind in the pleasure until he forgot they’d ever been spoken.

Kale nodded. “Tell me that you want me.”

Marzi slammed his head against a pillow, burying as much of his face in it as he could. As if that could keep the words from coming. But they came anyway, carrying a truth he could no longer deny. “I want you.”

Kale’s hand moved faster, driving Marzi toward orgasm. “Tell me that you need me.”

“I-I need--” Marzi panted, the words scraping his throat like he’d swallowed broken glass. “I need you.”

“Tell me that you love me.”

“I--! Oh fuck! Fuck! Y-yes. I love you. Oh fuck, I love you!”

Fire ripped through Marzi’s body, and he shrieked as he came, spilling his seed over Kale’s fingers. Then he sunk back against the mattress, exhausted and disgusted with himself.

“And now,” Kale purred, smiling like a cat that had just swallowed the family’s pet fish, “tell me what you’d like me to do to you.”

Marzi glared at his ex-lover. He could remember when this had been offered as a gift of love and trust. Now, it was just hatred and self-loathing, but he doubted that Kale would notice the difference. And Marzi no longer cared. He was ready for the pain, ready for the oblivion. If hell was his birthright, why shouldn’t it start now? “Fuck me,” he hissed, spreading his legs. “Please, my love. Fuck me.”