Birds of Paradise

by Anne Malcom

  Maybe it was because I was something less than a person. Something uglier. Maybe that was because in the midst of my disgust, a flickering of desire lightened at the bottom of my stomach.

  Cold hands circled my neck before going downward, underneath my shirt into the cups of my bra.

  The younger one smirked, sitting back in one of the armchairs, the leather creaking as he did so. The older one, in the slightly better suit to hide that slight paunch underneath it, was impassive. This didn’t excite him. This was of little consequence to him. I suspected he wouldn’t blink if Lukyan slit my throat right here and now, except to complain if Lukyan got blood on his suit.

  “So you’ve gotten the information we sent?” he asked in a bored tone.

  Lukyan’s hand kneaded at my breast before he tweaked my nipple roughly. I couldn’t mute my small cry, both in protest and in pleasure.

  “She’s a quiet one,” the younger man observed with a sick grin. He was no longer content sitting back and merely watching. Instead, he leaned forward, his hand settling on my knee so hard it seemed to cut into the bone.

  I gritted my teeth and Lukyan’s hand paused for less than a millisecond at my breast.

  “Yes, I got the information,” Lukyan said coolly, resuming at my nipple. “As I could’ve told you quite well over email.”

  “We prefer a more… personal touch.” The younger one’s hand pressed at my knee harshly so my legs would creak open to him. I bit my lip so hard blood spilled from it. “Does she play well with others?” he continued, as if I was a dog, or a young child to be lent out for a playdate.

  The kind of playdate that my marriage had been an extended version of.

  He leaned forward, his sweaty palm moving downward, catching on the fabric of my dress until he reached my ankle. I almost gagged when his skin touched mine, when his hand circled my ankle, squeezing painfully before working its way upward. Not quickly, slow enough to prolong my suffering of the knowledge of his destination.

  The air felt thick and hot, filled with a stench that didn’t have a smell more than a feeling. Like that vague switch in the air when a fly’s wings brushed its scent against your face, so you could experience the death and rot that they feasted on. That was inside them.

  That’s what was surrounding me now, with only Lukyan’s rough and cruel touch to chase it away.

  I counted my breaths, focusing on the length of the inhales and exhales.

  Lukyan’s palm moved across my breast and flattened over my thundering heart. It stayed there, dry, cold and heavy, almost crushing my ribs. But it was comforting.

  “She plays well with whoever I tell her to play with,” Lukyan replied, keeping his hand where it was until he felt my heartbeats slow.

  Then his presence left me altogether, and the only touch that overtook my senses was the one above my knee against my inner thigh. Panic arrested me, and I was sure I wouldn’t be able to do as Lukyan had asked, that I wasn’t strong enough for this. To let one single more monster touch my body, let it rot faster than it already was.

  “But we’re not here to share toys,” Lukyan said, rounding me and smoothly bumping the younger one’s hand purposefully. It was casual, almost thoughtless, but the underlying command, the deadly one, wasn’t lost on anyone in the room.

  There was a dangerous thickness hanging in the room while the young one didn’t move, didn’t take his beady eyes from me, nor his hand. Then he exhaled and the sense of rot intensified, accompanied by a sharp sting as he pressed the pads of his fingers into my inner thigh as hard as he could.

  I didn’t give him the satisfaction of crying out, though tears did threaten the corners of my eyes. I realized I probably should’ve let them fall, to add to the whole ‘victim’ act. But I couldn’t.

  I found I couldn’t act like the victim anymore, even if my life depended on it. My life depended on not being weak anymore. So I jutted my chin up in defiance, moved back in my seat purposefully, daintily—Mother would’ve been quite proud of how ladylike it was—placing my hands on my knees, one on top of the other, and meeting his stare.

  His fists clenched slightly at my wordless show of defiance, of strength. Not something he usually liked or kept in his victims, I was sure. And he had victims. Many.

  My blood boiled, and I had to dig my nails painfully into the top of my hand to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid like strangle him.

  Again, danger lurked in the air.

  “Are we going to talk business, or are you going to waste my time, Eli?” Lukyan asked calmly, pouring himself another drink. “You know I’m a man who despises wasting time.” The threat was all but painted with blood on the floor.

  I hid my satisfaction at the way the man jumped to attention, leaning back and giving me one last glare before focusing on Lukyan. “Of course, I wouldn’t dream of wasting your time, Oliver,” he said. “I value my life.”

  Lukyan tilted his head in speculation of the man much like he was a species of insect he couldn’t decide was a pest or too inconsequential to focus on. “And here I was thinking the opposite.”

  “The information,” the older man probed. “We have our wire transfer ready whenever your time allows you to send it.”

  Lukyan, of course, didn’t answer immediately. He spent a great deal of time looking at the younger man, then sipping at his vodka. Unhurried, without a care in the world. Like a man who controlled the world.

  He finally focused on the older man, reaching into his pocket to produce a sleek black phone. He tapped at the screen. “The information is now with you. And of course, I’ll be deleting any copies that remain on my person.” He glanced up. “Would you like to witness the process?”

  The older man waved his hand. “Of course not. You’re a man of your word.”

  “That I am,” Lukyan agreed with menace that settled on Eli, even though he hadn’t even looked at him.

  “As are we,” the older man said, tapping at his own phone as he stood up. “The wire transfer is completed.”

  Lukyan glanced downward at the screen once more. “Ah, so it is.”

  The older man glanced at me, and meeting his eyes was like venturing into an empty tomb at a graveyard. Impossibly cold and damp, full of a kind of death that seemed so permanent, so dangerous, it stuck to the pores of your skin.

  He was the most dangerous of the two. Because he knew not to act with menace or violence. In public, at least.

  I resisted the urge to shiver when he focused his attention on Eli, jerking his head for him to stand. The younger man did so with the air of a teenager who hated that they still had to listen to their parents.

  “We don’t want to waste any more of your time, and of course, we want to value your”—he looked to me again—“privacy. So we’ll be going. We appreciate your hospitality.”

  Lukyan nodded once, not making a move to show them out.

  Eli glanced at me, but his gaze no longer affected me after I’d been the focus of the true danger from his colleague.

  “Call me if you ever get bored with her,” he said. “Or even after you’re done.” His eyes ran up and down my body. I resumed my posture. “Doesn’t matter whether she’s breathing or not. I’ll still be able to… utilize her.”

  This time I did shiver. Because this wasn’t a taunt or a threat. This was a real request, one of a man who had a sickening and very real fetish.

  Lukyan didn’t reply. Instead he nodded once to the older man. “Morris, I hope we don’t cross paths again.”

  Morris nodded back, something on his face betraying a sort of resignation, and let out a small sigh.

  I didn’t quite understand until the roar of a gunshot chased away the remnants of the soft sigh.

  The low thump of a body hitting the carpet seemed to be more forceful than the sound of the bullet that put it there.

  I regarded Eli’s lifeless stare, focused on my ankles. A thin stream of blood escaped from his temple. I demurely moved my feet so they were out of the direc
tion of the stream, but otherwise I didn’t move nor speak.

  Morris didn’t even glance at the body. Nothing about his demeanor changed. “Be well, Oliver,” he said. And then he left without a backward glance, leaving the man he came in with dead on the floor like a serving plate someone might accidentally on purpose abandon at a dinner party because they didn’t like it.

  Once the sound of his footsteps was chased away by the dim slam of the front doors, there was only silence left.

  Lukyan finished his drink and unbuttoned his suit jacket. He didn’t glance at me at all. Instead he walked over to the bar cart, placed his empty glass on it and then walked back.

  The body in the room ceased to exist.

  For him, at least.

  I had a strange flashback of that time in the kitchen with my mother. It chilled my blood.

  “Would you like to change for dinner?” he asked.

  I blinked my gaze away from death’s unyielding stare to another stare, even more unyielding than death. I was going to ask about Eli. About why he killed him. About what that meant about the future safety. About those oceans of blood. Maybe scream about it. Throw up, perhaps.

  But instead I stood, rounding the chair so it sat between me and Lukyan.

  Somehow, the body in the room didn’t exist anymore. Not for Lukyan, not for me. Because Lukyan was more than that. More than death. And the shame and hurt coiled into every part of me was more urgent than a dead psychopath on the ground.

  “T-the way you did that, tr-treated me,” I stuttered, my voice small and raw and utterly weak.

  I hated that the depth of this effect seeped into my tone and leaked into the air, confronting me with my own weakness. I met his eyes through the fog. I restrained my flinch at his unfeeling expression and the fact that it was still hauntingly beautiful, even when etched with disinterest.

  “You acted like I was nothing.” It was barely a whisper at this point, and my hands were clenched so tightly into fists my nails scored the inside of my palms.

  His cool gaze never lowered from mine.

  “It hurt,” I rasped.

  Something flickered. Like the heat reflecting off a hot road in the summer, glimmering in a mirage before flickering back into nonexistence. I could’ve imagined it. It could’ve been a trick of the light. It was so fleeting, to grab onto it was like clutching smoke. But I tried.

  “I hurt your feelings,” he deduced, voice a low tremor that vibrated the room. That jarred the marrow of my bones with how distant it was from this room. From me.

  I managed a stiff nod, still clutching the hope that this was an act. Ignoring the more likely possibility that how he treated me in front of those men was the glimpse behind the curtain at what an act everything before it had been.

  “I don’t give a shit about your feelings,” he said.

  I did flinch that time.

  Another flicker. It lasted longer but remained incorporeal.

  “If it’s a choice between saving your life or preserving your feelings, I’ll choose your life. Always, solnyshko.” He stepped forward, and despite his icy tone and marble-glazed stare, the air around us blazed with heat as he brushed my body with his. “I’ll live with you being pissed at me, hurt by me, even hating me. But I won’t live with you dead. It’s that simple. Your feelings don’t factor into this. You do. And you’ll need to learn that I’ll do anything to keep you alive, even if it means killing what we have between us. Even if it means destroying your soul. I’ll do it.”

  “I think—” I swallowed. “—you’ve already done that.”

  He regarded me with the same cold blank look, not depicting any sort of feeling or reaction from the words. “No, solnyshko. You’ll know when I do it. No thinking about it.”

  My stomach dipped as he knelt in front of me, like he was a man praying, worshipping. They fastened over the exact spot Eli’s grip had bruised. His thumb moved over the tender skin. “I think the thing that’s troubling you the most about what just happened is not that it hurt you or sickened you,” he murmured from below me, his hand moving upward. “It’s that it excited you.”

  I choked on the air around us, the stuff that was swirling with death, fear, filth, and most of all, sex.

  Unlike Eli’s, his hands didn’t move slowly. They quickly snaked up my legs, one brushing at the electrified skin, one bunching at my dress and yanking it upward. The cold air kissed at my hips, at my panties when he yanked it over my hips, his palm ghosting over my sex before continuing up my stomach.

  My dress was over my head and fluttering to the floor before I could rightly understand he’d managed to navigate my slip too. The same with my bra. My nipples stiffened in the open air, screaming out for Lukyan’s attention.

  His thumb brushed my areola before he pinched my nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Hard.

  I cried out. Both in pleasure and in pain.

  I could make that sound now. There was only Lukyan and a dead man to hear me. Wetness pooled between my legs.

  His mouth ghosted toward my neck, his teeth meeting the skin first. More pain. My panties soaked with the power of my sickening arousal.

  “Didn’t you, solnyshko?” he asked.

  My breath was coming too harshly for me to answer, my brain too scrambled by his words.

  “What happened to you before scarred you,” he rasped.

  My stomach churned with acid of the memories he was wrenching to the surface, the ones I’d been trying to shove down. He noticed my change, but he didn’t stop. He palmed my breast, softly this time.

  “It’s a fact. You’re strong enough to overcome it.”

  The comfort of his grip on my breast disappeared in search of pleasure. His fingers dipped into my still-wet panties, my clit already throbbing, aching for him despite the thin film of filth he was tugging at from the shadowed corners of my mind.

  “You’re strong enough to let me overcome it,” he murmured against my neck. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not going to inform everything that comes after it. It means your tastes are darker now. There’s a need inside you that you’re too afraid to satisfy because it comes from him.”

  I cried out as he entered me with his fingers. A single tear trailed down my cheek. One that took with it all my preconceptions that I could separate my trauma with my pleasure. That it wouldn’t always be here, between us. Something lightened inside me with that tear. With acceptance of my forced depravity.

  “But solnyshko, I’m not afraid,” Lukyan said, his strong voice building up my resolve at the same time it stoked my desire. “Not of your darkness. And I’ll satisfy it. I’ll let you consume my darkness.”

  His fingers moved against me as he nipped at my bottom lip with his teeth. Coppery-smelling warmth trickled down my chin as he broke the skin. His tongue lapped up the liquid, my insides pulsing against his fingers with the gesture. With him coaxing out my monster, showing me he liked it.

  “I’ll let it consume me,” he said, lips against mine, his hardness spearing into my stomach.

  Despite being seconds away from climax, my inner fury took over. The monster he’d been leading into the darkness that was this moment emerged. And attacked.

  We were both on the floor before I quite knew what happened. Eye level with the corpse I’d been so obsessed with moments ago. I barely even glanced at it. My eyes were on Lukyan. On his slightly widened and dark irises, full of hunger.

  He was on his back, splayed out to where I’d pushed him. Where I put him. My blood ran hot with the power of my control. I attached my mouth to his, controlling the kiss, commanding it as my fingers snaked into his hair, yanking at the strands, testing their strength. I rubbed myself against his hardness, fervently, fanatically, the friction of our clothed arousal pushing me over the edge. He grunted as I climaxed on top of him, with no connection but our eyes and our mouths.

  Everything else become dreamlike yet stark at the edges. My knees were stiff, but somehow I was confidently able to push myself to
my feet, to stand over him and hook my thumbs around my panties and take them off, letting them fall beside his palm. He immediately clenched them in his fist, his cock straining in his slacks as he did so.

  I smiled at him, my foot going to his chest, exerting enough pressure to toy with pain. His swift intake of breath told me this. The way his hand circled my bare ankle, moving it to press it harder told me he liked it. The pain.

  He exerted enough pressure to move the angle of my foot so my legs were splayed. I was exposed to him, his gaze seeing into me.

  The grip tightened again, this time not to move me gently but to yank me down. My knees hit the floor painfully but not enough to give me pause—he’d placed his hands on my hips before I made impact.

  He moved me slightly so my knees were on either side of his head, his face inches away from my pussy, his eyes devouring it before his mouth could even begin.

  My breathing was nothing more than swift intakes and outtakes of air, everything focused on his gaze, my position of power and servitude.

  Then he yanked me down. Right down. So I made the most deliciously perfect contact with his mouth in the most deliciously perfect spot.

  He didn’t let me ride his face. His hands bit into my hips, yanking them up and down so I had the power and he had the control.

  Even my monster didn’t care at that moment. Nothing mattered but the harsh and violent rhythm he was making me keep. It might’ve been hours like that. Long enough for the bones in my knees and shins to scream out in pain, long enough for the delicate nerve endings in my clit to cry out for an end and then beg for more.

  I didn’t care about any of it. My mind was on Lukyan. So it all but exploded when he lifted me, set me on my hands and knees, and with no warning but the unzipping of his pants, entered me.

  I screamed with the intense and deep angle and what it did to my already tender body. Lukyan grunted in response, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t need to. He knew I could handle pain. He knew I needed it now.

  Agony exploded in my head as he gripped my ponytail, yanking my head backward so his mouth brushed against my cheek. The angle showed me what he wanted from me. What he wanted me to see.