by Lana Sky
“Didn’t I?” A wicked, soulless smile shapes his mouth as he balances my chin on the palm of his hand. “Don’t fool yourself, little kitten. You were always a pawn.”
“Or a bullet,” I croak, shocked that I’m challenging him at all. “We were always playing Russian Roulette.”
He frowns at the comparison. Against me, his fingers twitch, part caress. Part lashing, his nails nipping deep. “And yet you still want to play?” he wonders.
“I could… If you tell me what you want from me.” I try my best to meet his stormy gaze without flinching. Maybe I succeed because he doesn’t hiss in disgust. For a second, I can glimpse a hint of the turmoil lurking beneath those dark irises. The pain. The frustration.
“What I want?” He shakes his head as a growl rips from his throat. Within a heartbeat, his entire posture changes. It’s like watching a chain on a raging, barking dog snap. He’s loose, barreling off in a random direction.
A thunderous sound echoes as he strikes the wall again. Again. Red streaks paint the surface when he withdraws, and the same liquid coats his knuckles, dripping onto the floor. Blood.
“I want to rip that bastard limb from limb. Can you give me that?” he demands. “Can you? I want to set his entire fucking empire on fire and force him to watch it burn. I want the power to destroy him! Can you give me that?”
“No,” I admit hoarsely. I sound like myself again, but when I approach him, I don’t hesitate to reach out, brushing his forearm. “I can’t. But I can give you something else.”
“Like what?” he snaps.
Lucius, in his own quiet way, gave me the answer.
“Control,” I say softly. “A release. You don’t have to keep this in—”
“Release.” His gaze cuts to me as calculating as a predator observing fresh, bleeding prey. “You want me to hurt you, little kotyonok?” His bloodied knuckles boldly brush my cheek, daring me to flinch. “I’m more than capable of doing so. You want to get off on my anger and then run like you didn’t enjoy every fucking second of it? Maybe that is why you stay—”
“No.” I reach up and settle my fingers over his scarred, bloodied ones. They twitch at the indignation of being trapped against my skin—but he doesn’t pull away. “I want to give you what you need.”
“Sex?” His accent thickens over that single word, stressing its pronunciation. Like that, he gives it another connotation that triggers an answering shiver through my entire body. Pain. “You think that’s what I need? That I won’t hurt you? Do you think that in this moment, if you beg me to stop that I will?”
I take in his unfocused, wild stare and manic grin. A part of me whispers in horror, No. He won’t stop. He’ll go too far again. He’s insane. He’ll more than hurt me. He’ll kill me.
For an instant, I’m in that cold, terrifying room with the plastic tarp all over again, watching him brandish a knife, knowing that he’s too far gone to reach. He’s nearly as unhinged now as he was then.
Do I trust him anyway?
“Yes.” I swallow hard and meet his gaze unflinchingly. “I know you will.”
His eyes narrow, displacing some of the anger with…shock? I can’t be certain because he snatches my jaw the next second, dragging me to him. He slams his mouth to mine, claiming my lips with devastating blows from his tongue. Sharp, his teeth sink into my bottom lip, making me jump. In retaliation, I grip his forearms, sensing the power coiled in every single muscle.
But the balance of power is his to claim this time. To do so, he shoves me back, tearing at my dress in the same ruthless movement.
“There have been things I’ve wanted to do to you,” he chokes out, grasping at any part of me he can reach. My breasts. Hips. Hair. His fingers claw at each additional piece of me, using them as a leash to yank me toward him. Harshly. Harder. Viciously.
“I’ve thought about it,” he adds, finding my ear. His teeth skewer the lobe, sowing another sharp burst of pain, scattering my senses further. “I’ll do it now.”
He backs away and grips my shoulders. A taste of his strength forces me down to my knees before him. I’m stunned by the shift in position, still struggling to keep up.
But knocking me off balance is his favorite part of the game.
“Stay,” he growls, turning on his heel. My heart stutters as I watch him follow the hall to the master suite. I ignore the devious suspicions running across my brain, taunting me with what he could be getting. Seconds later, he returns with something dangling from his right hand. Not a whip or a knife. This is something different. Long and heavy, it drags along the marble floor in his wake.
A rope? No. Craning my neck, I can make out gleaming links of metal forming a slender, but still substantial chain. Alarm prickles through my belly. Only God knows where he had it hidden up until now.
“Up,” he commands, bending his fingers in a curt motion. “Look at me.”
I look up, desperately hunting his expression for any sign of…something. Malice? Rage? His mouth flattens into a firm, cold line, withholding any hint of his intentions from me.
Slowly, I shift on my knees, wincing as my weight bears down against the hard, unyielding marble. The icy cool contrasts with the heat sweltering beneath my skin, growing hotter, the more my brain scrambles to reconcile his aim with the length of chain.
With one hand, he sweeps the hair from my face and cradles my throat. His thumb caresses my quivering windpipe. It would be so easy for him to crush it. Break me. He strokes me instead, tracing a path from my collar down to my left breast.
A gasp escapes me as he teases the aching peak with the tip of his nail, coaxing the flesh to stiffen. He’s gentler than he’s ever been—even as his eyes bore into me ruthlessly. My back arches, my body heating to his touch. I can’t deny the reaction he inspires within me—burning, vicious need. Aware of his effect on me, he nods, a satisfied hum reverberating through his chest.
Without warning, he crouches and grips one end of the chain. I only make out something small and silver attached to the end of it before he brings it to my breast. To tease me, like he did once with ice?
No. Fire sears through my nipple so intense I cry out, jerking back. I don’t even go an inch before his opposite hand snatches a fistful of my hair, locking me in place.
“Don’t.” The low, dangerous rasp in his voice, spurs my heartbeat into a frantic rhythm. “Don’t move. Don’t look down—” He captures my chin, smoothing his fingers against the flesh. “You look at me.”
Him. A man so alarmingly on-edge that his body sways with every breath. Alight, his eyes lazily dip lower, relishing in the freedom he’s denied me. Whatever he sees makes him groan, biting his lip between clenched teeth.
“You are so beautiful,” he praises thickly. “Like this. Red. Swollen. Bitten…” He drags his thumb over the stinging wound in my lip, left by his teeth. “Mine.”
My body radiates with tension as he reaches down, lifting the chain in his fist. Fuck. My eyelids flutter. I feel every twitch in every goddamn link. Through my nipple, down my spine, into my core. Slick with moisture, my inner thighs rub together as my cheeks catch fire. I’ve never felt… Ever. My thoughts dissipate as my breaths feather. Already I’m drugged on this pain.
“You enjoy even this,” he remarks, sounding smug. “Fuck, I knew you would. But stay with me, kotyonok—” He tugs again…harder. “We aren’t done yet.”
A whine tears from my throat, high-pitched, and broken. I can’t think. His face is my only anchor to sanity. In a beautiful display of flesh and bone, he eyes me reverently, his lips parted, eyes wide and unfocused.
“You can take this for me,” he suspects. “You will. So good…”
He doesn’t sound angry anymore, but a part of me clenches in anticipation of the emotion that replaces it. Hunger. Excitement. Lust.
His nostrils flare as he fingers the chain again, keeping it raised within my line of sight. Each deliberate caress roils through me, raising goosebumps over my sweat-misted skin.
The reaction must cement some dark suspicion of his because he nods. “You can handle more.”
Handle… Can I? He doesn’t give me a chance to decide. The chain rustles, tugging…pulling. I grit my teeth, hissing out a breath. I don’t register what he’s done until it’s too late.
He lifts the chain higher, displaying it curved around his finger, held taut at both ends. And an inferno rips through my body. My head swims, my heart pounding madly. I can taste my pulse in my fucking throat, hammering through each nipple. He did something to them. Clamped them, I realize as my eyes rebel against his command, glancing down. Metal beads surround both peaks, crushing them into tiny points.
And the resulting sensation intoxicates me.
“I warned you.” Maxim tugs a fraction harder. I whimper, digging my nails into my hips—it’s the only way to stop myself from reaching for the chain. Tugging it back. Tugging it more. God, I can’t think.
“Do you want me to stop?” he wonders. How his voice cuts through my broken, splintered brain? I’ll never know.
“Yes…” I croak, but just as quickly, I stammer, “N-No…”
He winds the chain between two fingers, and I go rigid, shaking my head frantically.
“No! No!”
“You want it.” He tugs so hard my body lurches across the marble. As if from far away, I hear a scream echo off the walls, nearly drowned out by my own hammering heartbeat. The next thing I know, I’m quivering in a ball, my head resting against a thick, hard thigh propped beneath it. Soothing and tender, warm fingers run through my hair as a deep voice offers endless praise.
“So good for me. Always so good… More than I wanted—always more I want to do to you. But fuck you make me…”
Crazy. In the same way, he makes me mindless. His words dissolve into meaningless grunts as he slides his hand between my legs, hissing at what he finds.
Soaking, aching flesh—his to claim. His to take.
He has me in his arms within seconds, moving too quickly for me to process his next actions in order. We’re racing down the hall. Then crashing inside the bedroom. I’ve barely regained my senses when I land on the bed face down as his weight slams against my back.
Panic sets in before I can smother it. He’s crushing me. But then his fingers sink into my hair, grasping a fistful that he uses to wrench my head back, allowing me to suck in air as he nudges my legs apart. I quake from head to fucking toe, assaulted by too many sensations at once to pinpoint them individually. His weight. His skin rasping over mine. The pull of the chain swaying against my chest, enhancing every single fucking movement to an agonizing degree.
And finally, his cock rips into me, demolishing every other feeling like a wrecking ball.
My eyelids flutter as I focus solely on breathing, allowing my body to adjust to his size. Massive. He thrusts in hard without restraint, hissing out his pleasure. Jolted by every bucking motion of his hips, I wind up lying on parts of the chain, straining others, and I lose track of the sounds I make. My throat aches, throbbing and raw as he grips my hips, fucking me in earnest.
If I were a normal lover, he would hurt me, there is no question. But his voice drips into my ear, an awed growl, revealing the difference that makes me just as deranged as he is. “So wet for me.” He inhales sharply and then groans with another brutal thrust. “Always so wet for me.”
His mouth finds my ear, nipping at the lobe as his mangled, grunted words punctuate the movement of our bodies. “You know what I need, don’t you? You give it to me. You take me… Fuck! You aim to tame me…”
I close my eyes, savoring the violent contrast of gnashing teeth, and broken groans, and sweat as his body ruthlessly claims mine. The sex isn’t about pleasure—I know that. I’m climaxing anyway, biting a mouthful of sheets to silence my cries as every muscle goes taut. I see stars, speckling my vision as he grunts, slamming inside me one final time.
His release is that in every sense of the word. The tension leaves him as he collapses beside me. His fingers remain in my hair, preventing me from facing him. The heat and sweat of his body assault me in an overwhelming barrage as his mouth finds my shoulder, his teeth teasing the flesh.
“You can fuck me like this,” he says, almost amused despite the growl reverberating in my skin. “Let me use you any way I fucking want—” His finger slips beneath me, teasing a length of the chain just enough to make me shudder. “But if I offer you more, you hesitate. And yet when I refuse to give you an empty fucking vow…you challenge me.”
I’m too exhausted to move, awed by his tone—part sated lust, part smoldering fury.
“Do you want me to marry you?” he wonders musingly. “Or collar you? State your preference now, so I know whether to offer you a ring or a leash. Say it. No?” He chuckles while I pant, too breathless to reply. “I’ll tell you what it is you crave. Ignorance. For years you wore yourself down caring for your siblings. They’ve drained you—so you chase any vice you can find to take the pain of it all away. To let the world crush you rather than spend your energy carrying the weight of it on your shoulders. I make it easy for you.” His lips brush my shoulder, a mocking kiss. “Don’t I? You question my intentions for marrying you, but I have no doubts as to what I want. But what is it you want from me? Tell me what happened at the club was a lie.”
Was it? The other day feels like another lifetime now—coming to him of my own volition. Promising complete and total surrender. Have I been lying all along like Lucius insinuated?
“No,” I admit, uttering the truth as much to myself as to him. “I meant it.”
“So perhaps it isn’t fear then,” he suspects with a puzzled grunt. “Tell me what you want from this, if protection isn’t good enough to tempt you.”
“I want…” Not for the first time, I don’t even recognize the sound of my own voice. This new, braver stranger must have been born in the aftermath of Sevastyn’s death—like watching the whole gory affair killed something inside of me as well. Or awoke something. Something so deviant it thrills at the agony only he can arouse within my body. “I want clarity,” I tell him. “About everything.”
Everything I can discover about Maxim Koslov and what makes him tick—and not out of mere curiosity either. Maybe because his anger matches mine—the horrific magnification of the twisted shit I never faced within myself before him. The flaws only he has ever called me out on.
The selfishness.
The self-hatred.
The blind, consuming rage.
I could be the world’s most pathetic masochist, thriving off the manifestations of my own internal bullshit. But I’d be lying to myself if I accept that explanation—the easy solution to what exactly draws me to him.
Because even now, I’m not really afraid. My heart may be racing, palms sweating, and my entire body tense on red alert. But deep down, the real name to call this emotion by could be…excitement. Guilt. Jealousy.
As long as he feels the twisted, dark shit festering beneath the surface of his soul…
I don’t have to face my own.
“Clarity, how? Answer me.” He grips my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze, but there’s no real strength in the contact. He merely eyes me as if I’m a mirror, utilized the same way I might be using him.
Is there any true connection mingled within it all?
I want to say no. But my heart pounds against my ribs, hammering out a silent answer—liar, liar, liar.
“Marriage is status to you. But…” I lick my lower lip, tasting my answer before I have the strength to utter it out loud. “I don’t even know what it is to me. My mother didn’t exactly model healthy relationships.”
Though what does that say about not only me? Daisy, Mikie, and the others have never known stability either. A loving mother is a foreign concept in our world, let alone a father.
“You value your name, but I value my family. I don’t want to make the same mistakes Melanie did.”
And what little I know of marriage comes right from her
playbook. Melanie had been married at least four or five times. Hell, to be honest, I’ve lost count. In her view, being a wife was nothing more than a fashionable accessory. A game. A way to chase off boredom.
But I’ve never even had a serious boyfriend. I’ve had partners. Clients. Johns.
I’ve had Maxim.
Only one of those options has lasted longer than a handful of hours at a time.
“Deep, down, I always told myself that I never wanted more,” I confess. “That life was enough. Scraping by and depending only on myself was enough. I don’t know anything else.”
“But I can teach you, little kotyonok,” he finally says, satisfied by my answer. “There is so much I have yet to teach you.”
He nudges me onto my side, tracing my sore nipple with the tip of his thumb. In one swift motion, he releases the clamp, and my head swims.
“Holy shit!” I nearly crawl off the fucking bed to escape the unbearable sting—he has to press on my hip just to keep me in place.
“It will hurt,” he warns, soothing the abused flesh as blood rushes back to the area. “I think you might enjoy this more than a whipping.” He spares a glance at my trembling knees, fighting to stay together. “Next time, I will...”
He trails off, letting my twisted imagination fill in the gap.
A whine breaks from me as he releases the second clamp, but then his hands settle over my hips, drawing me into him.
“I can show you the lengths a man will go to in order to prove his claim to the entire fucking world,” he swears. “But I won’t call you my wife without the power that title deserves. I won’t.” He drags his fingers along the side of my face, down to my throat. “So if you want it…then fight with me for it.”
“How?”
“There is someone I could use as an ally,” he admits, and I marvel at the change in his tone. Gone is the bitter anger. He’s the composed, calculating game master again. One with a new strategy in mind. “Finding him will be difficult,” he adds. “But if you want a partnership? Then come with me when I eventually do track him down.”