Illusions of Evil (Illusions Series Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Author Note and Disclaimer:

  Other Books by Lily White

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  SNEAK PREVIEW: FEAR THE WICKED

  This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Illusions of Evil: Copyright © 2017 by Lily White

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, scanned, distributed in any printed or electronic form or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  www.lilywhitebooks.com

  A Dark Erotic Thriller by Lily White

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  Author Note and Disclaimer:

  This book is intended for entertainment purposes solely. This novel discusses sensitive subject matters. Readers who sensitive to triggers are advised to proceed with caution.

  The opinions given by the characters in this novel do not reflect those of the author. They are fictional characters with minds of their own.

  Other Books by Lily White

  Her Master’s Courtesan

  (Book 1 of the Masters Series)

  (Available on Smashwords)

  Her Master’s Teacher

  (Book 2 of the Masters Series)

  Her Master’s Christmas

  (Novella in the Masters Series)

  Her Master’s Redemption

  (Book 3 of the Masters Series)

  Target This

  Hard Roads

  Asylum

  Wake to Dream

  Four Crows

  “Present yourself across the altar, child. Remember what I have taught you.”

  Tears seeped from my clenched eyes.

  My pulse beat hard and fast.

  A shiver chased up my spine, but I was ready regardless.

  He was hovering over my body, preparing.

  “Your needs are his. You are the gift that will open the gates…”

  Trapping my bottom lip between my teeth, I laid my body down.

  “You were born for this. You are pure.”

  Lying prostrate in a candlelit room, my chest was pressed to the ground, and my arms were spread out as if I were flying.

  A blindfold covered my eyes stealing my sight. My forehead was pushed painfully tight to the floor. No person could question my faith. Not Elijah. Not my family. No one.

  Only I knew that I wasn’t the person I pretended to be.

  Large, warm hands explored my ankles and calves. Reaching my knees, they tugged the hem of my dress.

  Higher and higher he pulled, until frigid wind and warm breath mingled across my skin.

  My shame almost exposed, I dragged in a deep breath, my body prickling from the cold. Anticipation and fear collided as a wicked, ravenous storm inside me.

  Small flames illuminated the large space, large black candles that somehow stole the very light they gave off. Wind whispered through the large room despite the closed doors and sealed windows.

  A crowd had gathered, a sea of faces that included my parents, my brother, and my friends. They sat as silent witnesses watching me become lost to the moment.

  I lay in acceptance of the acts. I spread my body out in devotion.

  My faith was the tether keeping me still.

  A draft caressed my bottom, the tip of a thumb trailing up the cheeks. I shivered at the soft touch, my teeth clenched painfully tight, a sliver of anxious dread crawling along my spine. This moment would rid the sin from my body. His hand would force it to the surface, would expel it from my skin and destroy it with a blast of God’s light.

  Elijah’s knees lowered to the floor on either side of me. His hands touched me. His fingers gripped my hips, lifting just that part of me that spoke of good girls and poisonous kisses.

  I struggled to move from the position I’d held for over an hour.

  Was it normal not to be scared? I was exposed, helpless, and being touched in a room full of people.

  They could see every mark, could plainly witness my temptation.

  It wasn’t fear that ran through my blood at that moment. It was piety, it was trust, it was need. But fear was absent.

  What kind of person did that make me?

  Elijah’s voice was deep and calm – hypnotic in the soft accent to his words. Saturating the air, it vibrated against my skin, reminiscent of a whisper as he instructed the gathering to begin their part.

  Words rolled over their lips, notes softly hummed and rattled from their chests.

  They watched, they participated, and they stood behind us with blind eyes opened wide.

  Lowering his body over mine, Elijah’s lips touched the rim of my ear. He spoke to me alone, reminded me what he would do to make me his.

  I felt his knees move between mine, but I kept my toes pointed out as my legs were spread apart. My forehead pressed closer to the floor, the pain forcing tears from my eyes.

  Desire was my constant companion, the phantom that would drag me away from salvation’s gates.

  There was no question that I would fail.

  I was a sinner and he was pure. He just didn’t know it yet.

  Hands slid along my thighs, slowly moving over my hips. His fingers entwined with the fabric of my panties, slowly pulling, revealing me to his silver-blue eyes.

  I refused the urge to push away, to move, to escape.

  I refused the urge to push back, begging for more.

  What I did didn’t matter. Within seconds
, the choice was no longer mine.

  The fighting started slowly, growing louder until one familiar voice rose above the others.

  There was a struggle above me and I was pulled from the floor. My feet barely held my weight when the blindfold was ripped from my head.

  Opening my eyes, I saw my brother’s face, his mouth open, anxiety, anger and fear rolling behind his eyes.

  Time snapped into place all at once. I heard one word that woke me from my stupor, a word that made me realize what I had to do.

  It was my brother’s voice that screamed, a voice that I trusted above all else.

  One final word breaking my faith.

  One warning that rang out above all.

  My brother wasn’t only fighting, he was screaming for me to run.

  SEDRA

  One Week Earlier…

  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. - Ephesians 5:24

  I remember it clearly. It was a day just like any other, a moment of serenity as I swung lazily on the tire swing hanging from the branch of a stately oak. I flew back and forth, my gaze on the lake next to our home.

  The sun beat down warming my tanned skin. The sky’s reflection glistened off the small breaking waves. Sunlight scattered a million sparkling diamonds to float serenely over the surface, a sight so beautiful you felt alive for having witnessed it.

  I was happy in that moment – ten years old and still believing in the magic that comes with childhood.

  It would all end that day.

  When I think back, I see my parents moving toward me, and my brother swinging beside me in slow motion. Smiles adorned their faces, their hands joined and my mother’s long cream skirt billowing out around her ankles as they walked. The light caught their faces in its grasp, my father’s bright blue eyes shining in promise.

  Jumping from my swing, I ran to them when I saw them. They were happy. My mom had picked wildflowers and placed them in her hair and mine once I was within arm’s reach. They called my brother over to tell us both about how they’d found us a new home – a new life.

  A life I never wanted.

  Things would be better. We’d have friends. We wouldn’t be isolated in the middle of nowhere at the only house we could afford.

  My parents wouldn’t have to work away from where we lived. There would be other children with whom to live and play. They promised that I’d find comfort - that I’d be safe - in this new life they’d arranged.

  I believed them, believed there was a better life awaiting us over several state lines. I was excited about a place more serene than the paradise we’d created in the woods by that beautiful lake.

  As I’ve said: I remember that day. Its details remain frozen exquisitely in my mind, a single solitary moment that became nothing more than a series of still photographs in my head.

  But it’s not that particular day that hurts. It’s the reason why I remember that day that gnaws at my heart and batters the surfaces of my thoughts.

  It was the last day I would have happiness – the last day before I met Elijah.

  Eleven years would pass to find me running, the muscles in my legs burning while my body was wrapped in a wet blanket of ice. The chill in the air tore through my clothes, shredding my skin to reach in and wrap possessively around my bones.

  Errant branches tugged at my hair, spindly fingers reaching out to stop me in my path. A storm rolled above, its thunder matching the beat of my labored breath.

  “The woods will eat you alive, Sedra.”

  My brother had warned me so many times when we were young. Ever my protector, he grabbed my arm or threw me over his shoulder to drag me back when I wanted to run. I was never allowed to explore beyond the barriers, never allowed to find my way.

  That all changed when I was challenged to prove my faith.

  A starving wolf chasing me down, the wind howled behind me. It carried the whispered words of the man I knew was coming for me.

  Elijah was twenty-five years old when I’d first arrived to the compound. He was thirty-six now, and somehow still looked the same.

  However, the eleven years I’d spent with the family had changed me in significant ways.

  Gone were the bouncing, mouse brown pigtails. Noticeably absent was the baby fat I’d always hated around my abdomen. My chest had grown and filled out. My legs had lengthened. And my face had thinned down until I was the spitting image of the young woman my mother had once been.

  Each year led me to this moment. Each day filled with the assurance that I had been born for one solitary purpose.

  The only problem was that nobody who knew that purpose had bothered to tell me.

  Until today.

  I was Elijah’s purity, his redemption and his grace. I was the woman who would help him realize his dream, the one who would walk beside him into the blessed arms of salvation.

  Elijah himself had told me this truth about my life. His voice was soft. His authority was unquestioned. And my devotion was strong when he chased me from the compound, forcing me into the woods wearing nothing but the blue, full-length dress all the women wore.

  Our leader, Elijah, was a mystery covered by fantastical deceit and beautiful lies. Every night, eloquent poison would drip from his perfect lips, words so mesmerizing that it was easy for every person who came to know him to fall for the man who would eventually guide their lives.

  For my parents, devotion to him had been instantaneous.

  But for me, it had been a struggle.

  Attempting to appear as if I’d believed as strongly as the others, I’d worked the gardens during the day and attended the nightly meetings where Elijah would preach his gospel of truth – his calling for a revolution against the evil that plagued our lives. I’d listened, nodding when it was necessary, and I’d repeated back whatever phrases were expected of me.

  Even that hadn’t been enough for me to truly believe, at least not yet, so I ran.

  My dress snagged on bushes as I pushed through the pitch black forest, sounds whispering to me from the distance. The rustling of the wind through the trees overshadowed an owl’s haunting song.

  I wanted to cry, wanted to curl up into a ball on the ground and cover my face to block out the nightmare of being forced out alone with no instructions but to find my path and discover my destiny.

  A crack of lightning flashed above me, the responding thunder shaking the ground at my feet. Rain pounded across the canopy of the trees, the sounds I’d heard previously drowned out as it fell. I was helpless and alone, cold and afraid.

  I didn’t belong here. I didn’t know where I was going, much less what I was supposed to be seeking. The rain poured harder, stealing what little bit of sight I had left. My heart pounded against the walls of my chest as my body shook, partially from cold, but mostly from the abject terror that paralyzed me.

  Dropping to the ground, I gathered my dress around me to keep it from becoming soaked in the puddles of water. Leaning my head against a tree, I tilted my face into the deluge of wet misery that was relentless in its force. I could have drowned there and not cared. Cast out and lost, I was a woman left to the elements, her life nothing more than a game to the man who’d ordered her exile.

  Tears fell from my eyes and were lost in the rain that drenched my skin. As if beaten by the fists of the people I thought loved me, my heart ached in my chest. My stomach felt like it carried the weight of a hundred heavy stones.

  I’d stopped running after only a few hours. The skin on my feet was bruised by the rocks and underbrush I’d pushed through while getting lost in a world I’d never known.

  “Have you given up so soon, Sedra? I thought you had more spirit than that.”

  My body jumped before my brain could place the voice. Opening my eyes, I was lost to the thick curtains of rain pouring down. Shaking from the cold, I was lifted by two large arms, the warmth of a man’s chest pressing against my body as I was carried to a place much darker th
an the woods where I’d become lost.

  The pace of his body was slow but steady, a gentle bouncing motion that made me curl into his warmth, lulled into a feeling of safety because I was no longer alone.

  The sound of creaking wood shook me from my stupor, my eyes opening once more to see the interior of a small wooden shed. Candlelight flickered softly inside. I shivered when the door closed behind us, the wind reaching out one last time, angry that I’d been pulled from its frigid grasp.

  Although my vision was still blurry from the water that dripped from my lashes, I could make out the dancing flames of a small fire. Beside the fire was a platform covered in fur blankets that stood two feet off the ground.

  “I’m going to put you on your feet now. Hold on to my shoulders in case you lose your balance.”

  A dark whisper, his soft voice brushed across my senses. I shivered more, but not from the cold. Only Elijah had this effect on me. Simultaneously desirous and fearful, I always froze in front of him, completely losing my ability to function on any normal level.

  His arm pulled out from beneath my legs, his other wrapped firmly around my body as he lowered me to my feet. Gripping my fingers over his shoulders, I wobbled on shaky knees, my body leaning forward like a moth drawn to his scorching flame.

  Releasing me, he steadied me by placing his hands on my shoulders. The silence was deafening, but he broke it with a melodic voice, a deep baritone rumble that could both frighten and soothe me.

  “You’re soaked to the bone, beautiful girl. We need to remove your dress.”

  His hands released my shoulders and my knees buckled beneath me. Elijah caught me quickly, laughing softly before picking me up and carrying me to a wall.

  Pressing me against the surface, his hips touched mine. Tremors ran over my bones and skin. My eyelids fluttered and my breath was stolen to feel him so hard where he touched me.

  I was scared, so scared that I didn’t know what was worse: the storm that awaited me in the pitch black woods, or the dangerous man who now caged me against a thin, wooden barrier.