IMPERFECT MONSTER

by Bene, Jennifer

  “They might get out,” I finished.

  “I won’t let that happen, belleza. Just the possibility of them being a threat to you, of them seeking you out… it’s too much. I would never be able to sleep, I would never be able to watch you drive off to work. I’d always wonder if you would come home. I’d always wonder if you’d still be safe when I got home.”

  “Andre…”

  “I will never let them hurt you again.” It was a statement, said in that tone that still brought a frisson of what I would describe as fear if I didn’t know that Andre would never really hurt me. But he would kill for me, if I said the word.

  It was a heady power, knowing that the man that held me and kissed me would orchestrate the deaths of each of the men who had hurt me, and all I had to do was say it. Agree. Take back my pleas to let the courts handle it.

  But the courts aren’t handling it.

  Rage sparked somewhere in all of the anxiety and fear, and it flared up like a wildfire, burning and singeing as it rampaged inside me. A single flash of that horrible night, of screaming as Paulo laughed, and I knew I’d made my decision. “Kill them.”

  Andre jerked in the chair, reaching up to gently cup my face so that he could look into my eyes, his gaze flicking between them as he studied me. “Are you sure?”

  “I’d do it myself if that was possible, but I can’t get to them. Neither can you, not directly, but… I know you have connections. People who can.”

  “I need you to say it, belleza. Look me in the eyes so I know you mean it.”

  Shifting to look directly into his face, I let the anger burn, let my hate of those bastards off the leash. Not just for what they’d done to me, but for everything they’d made Andre do, for everything they’d done to him, and to so many others. To Chris. “I want them to die, mi amado. I want them to die painfully, bleeding and afraid of the end.”

  “Thank you,” he whispered just before he kissed me. Raw and hungry, devouring me as he nipped my lips and lifted me.

  We had to break the kiss so I could lean down to open the door, but then he kicked it wide and sat me down on the first available surface. Our kitchen table. Standing between my thighs he started to kiss me again, rough, but in control — but all I wanted was for him to lose control and give me that escape from all the memories and rage swirling inside me.

  “How did I get so lucky to find you?” Andre growled, grabbing my shirt to rip it over my head and toss it somewhere, his hands returning to my breasts, molding them through the bra until I reached back to unsnap it. Gone in a second, his fingers caught my nipples, twisting until I hissed air through my teeth and whimpered, feeling the hot spikes of pain spreading over my nerves. Nails digging into his arms I arched my back, leaning closer, hungry for more. Needing to lose myself in this, in him.

  “You saved me,” I whispered and he shoved something out of the way before he pinned me back to the table by my throat. Wild darkness in his eyes, a flash of the Andre I’d first met. Dangerous, sexy, and absolutely deadly.

  I was soaking through my panties in a second.

  “I didn’t save you, belleza, I took you. There’s a difference.” His words were low, rumbling, making his accent thicker as he skimmed my ribs with his mouth, biting down occasionally just to make me yelp.

  “I wanted you.”

  “You were terrified of me,” he corrected, looking up at me before he released my throat and grabbed onto my jeans. Pulling the button free and the zipper down, he grabbed onto the waist and hauled them down with my underwear. Shoes knocked free, jeans yanked off, he pushed my knees wide. “All I wanted was to see you, to taste you.”

  “To protect me.” I tried to argue, to remind him of how he’d pulled Diego off me, but then he was between my thighs, licking and sucking at my clit until I was crying out, one hand fisted in his hair — which I would have never dared to do in that godforsaken basement.

  “I wanted you for myself.” Sliding two fingers inside me, and then three, he propped one hand on the table so he could watch me writhe. He thrust them inside me, teasing, angling his touch until he found my g-spot with impossibly perfect precision, and suddenly I was panting and moaning and begging.

  Close, so fucking close, and I was about to come when he pulled his fingers free.

  “FUCK!” I growled, grabbing for his shirt to pull him on top of me, kissing him hard, tasting myself as I rolled my hips against him, moaning into the kiss. “Don’t tease me, not now.”

  “You know this isn’t your choice, belleza.” Grinning, he stood up, breaking my hold on his shirt like it was nothing, and then he flipped me to my stomach, pressing me into the table. “You’re mine, remember?” He nipped my waist as he caught my hand and pinned it to the middle of my back. “Bought and paid for.”

  Those words still turned me on. It made no sense, a lot of shit with Andre and I didn’t make sense, but all that mattered was that it worked. We worked, and we never had to pretend to be someone else. Not with each other.

  We were a little fucked up, far from perfect, but I loved him, his dark side, and he loved me.

  “Tell me you’re going to kill them.” I spoke with my cheek against the smooth, pale wood of the table, and I grinned when I heard his groan.

  “I’m going to reach out to my contacts”—he hauled me to the edge of the table, my breasts aching as my body dragged over the wood—“and I’m going to find someone with connections inside the county jail.”

  “Yeah?” I encouraged him to continue, aroused beyond explanation as he spoke of death and unzipped his jeans.

  “And then each and every fucking one of them is going to die. Slowly…” Andre teased his cock at my entrance, and I lifted my hips, wordlessly begging him to fuck me. “Painfully…”

  “Yes…” I purred, knowing just how wrong it was for me to want this so badly. Knowing that I was getting even more wet just imagining him doing it with a handful of phone calls, a swap of favors, a stack of cash from the stash he’d hidden from the authorities. “Tell me, please.”

  Andre slammed inside me, not bothering with condoms anymore now that I had the birth control implant, and we were everything to each other. It was as sinfully perfect as it always was, but even more so as his grip tightened painfully on my wrist, making me whine as he slammed into me again. Hips bruising against the edge of the table, I didn’t give a fuck. I wanted more, I wanted him to tell me everything, all of it, while he was inside me. While it hurt in all the right ways.

  “Please!” I shouted as he pulled almost all of the way out to drive in hard again, making me ache just a little as he bottomed out — my favorite.

  “It will probably be a shiv. A razorblade at the end of a toothbrush. They won’t even see it coming.” He started to fuck me in steady, hard thrusts, and I rolled my hips as much as I could, tilting to get him deeper, whining when he pushed my wrist up my back just to hear me cry out in pain.

  “All of them?” I asked, breathless, moaning, half-delirious in that golden space between pleasure and pain.

  “Tell me what you want, belleza. It’s yours.” Andre nipped at my ribs, thumb stroking my tender wrist, but he didn’t let me move. He held me in place, driving his thick cock into me over and over until I was murmuring with the promise of release, trying to focus enough to answer.

  “Both of them have to die slow. Violated and in pain.”

  “I’ll tell them,” he answered. Gifting me violence and death like others brought home flowers, but this was what I wanted. Needed. Growling behind me, he slammed in hard, and I almost came, that glittering edge of bliss so fucking close I could taste it — but then he held still. “And the others? José? Samuel?”

  “Dead. That’s all I want.” I licked my lips, panting. “Except I want you to fuck me, Andre. Please?”

  “I love you, Nicky,” he groaned and released my wrist to slip his touch between my thighs. Deftly teasing my clit as he started to move again, fucking me in deep strokes that sent me higher and
higher, until I couldn’t do anything but say his name. Over, and over, and over, until the tension finally snapped and I screamed in pleasure and pain as he joined me a second later and bit down on my shoulder.

  Dizzying waves crashed inside me, the orgasm so destructive to my thoughts that for a solid minute the world faded to white noise and I floated. Unaware of the hard table underneath me, or Andre’s heavy body against my back. It was glorious freedom, from all the shit, from every dark spot in our lives.

  As he kissed my skin, stroking me with his large hands, I stayed as still as I could. Not wanting to feel him slip from me yet. I wanted the connection, wanted the world to say blurred for just a little while longer.

  “I love you, Andre,” I whispered, and he hummed against my back as he kissed along my spine. Finally, he slid from me, but he immediately pulled me up from the table to hold me close. We half-stumbled to the couch, lying down in a tangle of limbs, with me half on top of him, but I didn’t complain. I had his body against mine, his heart beating under my cheek, and his promise to get the revenge we both craved.

  “Once they’re gone, I think they’ll let us move home,” he mumbled, running his fingers up and down my side.

  “Think they’ll suspect anything?” I asked, snuggling closer to my not-so-good guy, who treated me like something precious, who made me feel loved instead of just saying it.

  “How could I be involved, belleza? I live in Missouri with my wife and work construction. What could I possibly do to a man like Paulo García from a thousand miles away?” There was a cold edge to his tone still, even with the sated rumble after we’d both come hard, and I couldn’t help but smile.

  “It will be such a tragedy, not to see them brought to justice.”

  Andre wrapped his arms around me, squeezing me closer as his body shook with a soft chuckle. “Oh, sí, belleza, such a tragedy. We will be so disappointed that they didn’t live to see life in prison for their crimes.”

  “Disappointed, yes,” I repeated, hiding my grin against his ribs as I felt the rage purr inside. Andre always described his as a black ocean inside him, a bottomless well of anger and violence, but I’d managed to find my own. That had been Paulo and Luis’ gift to me. To be capable of being a monster when I needed it. To go cold when I needed it. It was a source of strength, something to push back the fear when I remembered the other side of life that I had only caught a glimpse of, but it was something Andre knew too well. The darkness would never leave him, and I didn’t want it to. I liked him dangerous. I liked him tattooed and violent and insanely protective.

  It turned me on.

  Leaning up I kissed him, and when he grinned at me, wild and free, I felt so damn lucky to have walked into that house and into his arms. It had been scary, and horrible at times, but sometimes we had to walk through Hell to find our salvation, and I was his, and he was mine. Forever.

  As he shifted to lean over me, kissing down my throat, his fingers dipping between my thighs to find the soaking wet mix of the two of us, I moaned and whispered his name. When he said my name back, his breath moving over my skin, I loved him all the more. For protecting me, for doing whatever it took to keep us both alive, for refusing to let me go even when it would have been easier, for fucking fighting for me — and I knew he always would.

  Today, tomorrow, forever.

  And he’d do the same if we ever started a family. As his lips found mine again, making me smile into the kiss, I promised myself I’d remember to tell him we could get married. For real. Because I wanted him, I wanted a life with him. I wanted all of it.

  I just needed to nap first, and then I could think about the future, because we had one. We had whatever we wanted in life. Andre would kill to ensure that, to pave the way for us to have the life we wanted. A life with his family, a life in Miami, a life together. And maybe, someday, a family of our own. It would surely make Mamá happy, and I couldn’t resist imagining what a little boy would look like with my eyes, and Andre’s dark hair and mischievous smile.

  We’d be a mess, every one of us, but I would be with Andre, and there would be love, and family, and it would be perfectly imperfect. What else could I want from this life, but that?

  THE END

  END NOTES & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I had no idea just how much I’d fall in love with Andre and Nicky when I first wrote the novella of this story for a boxset that has since come down, but by the end of the novella I knew I needed to tell their whole story. Not just because they wouldn’t stop talking to me, but also because of all of the wonderful readers and bloggers out there who took the time to give ‘Monster’ a shout out in reviews, and to message me when that boxset came down to tell me they needed to know the end. Truthfully, how could I deny you? Or myself?

  So, first, I have to thank every one of you that supported Andre and Nicky when they first showed up. You made this book a priority for 2018, and look at that. It came out in January!

  Next, obviously, I have to thank my incredible PA, Michelle Brown, who is always there to support me and give me a boost of confidence and tell me to get my ass off social media and fucking WRITE. Yeah, yeah, lady. I’m taking time away from putting together the final draft of this book just to thank you, and you can’t do anything about it! Niki Roge has to get a shout out too, because she helps Michelle and I do everything we do, without her I would have been all alone at my first major signing, so… it’s love. You gotta admit. These two ladies make all the gears turn behind the scenes, and I love them both! Circle of Trust 4 Ever.

  Laura Hidalgo, girrrrlllll… you know how hard I love you by now. We were meant to meet, and the way that you pulled this cover out of the ether to somehow create exactly what I dreamed of (only a thousand times better) is exactly why you’re one of the best damn cover designers on the planet, and I am just lucky to know you.

  Ohhhhh, Myra Danvers and Addison Cain. Did you think I’d leave you two out of this? Hell no. Without your eye for story tweaks, your love of the dark and twisty, and helping me trim down when I get super into a scene, this book would have been a mess. Not sure what I’d do without my chaos demon and my dark soul sister. I love you both!

  Measha Stone gets a warm, fuzzy, anxiety filled shout-out for reading through this mess when it was completely unedited, and still telling me the sweetest things to help me crawl out of my fear-filled hole and make deadline. Love you, lady.

  I’m sneaking in a thank you for my Dom for always supporting my writing, loving my anti-heroes, and encouraging me to keep going. He’s pretty fantastic, and provides some excellent inspiration.

  To my ARC team, I hope you’re ready for a wild year, because we’re just getting started, and I’ve got lots more dark and devious and sexy stuff to put on your kindles. So, hang in there through all of my crazy, okay?

  Finally, all of the lovely individuals on the Dirty Subs street team, those in the Dark Haven, and those in the Dark and Dirty Romance Book Club thank you guys for helping me to spread the word, helping new readers find me, and for supporting me!

  You lovelies make this adventure worth every minute.

  About the Author

  Jennifer Bene is a USA Today bestselling author of dark romance. She’s been in the Amazon Top 50, and had #1 top-selling books in BDSM, Suspense, Thrillers, Horror, and more. While she’s been writing for years, it's always been the dark stuff that makes her tingly, so her books are full of aggressive alpha males, feisty women who may or may not have a submissive streak, and intense, psychological story lines. Don’t worry though, she always insists on having a nice little happily-ever-after, because without the dark we'd never appreciate the light.

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  https://jenniferbene.com/

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  Books by Jennifer Bene

  Dark / BDSM Romance:

  Security Binds Her (Thalia Book 1)


  Striking a Balance (Thalia Book 2)

  Salvaged by Love (Thalia Book 3)

  Of Fog and Fire (Parts I & II)

  Taken by the Enemy

  Lethal Sin (Dangerous Games Book 1)

  Early Sins (Dangerous Games Book 0)

  Black Light: Exposed (Black Light Series Book 2)

  Tying the Knot (Thalia Book 4)

  Destruction (Fragile Ties Series Book 1)

  Imperfect Monster

  Dark / Paranormal Romance:

  Fae (Daughters of Eltera Book 1)

  Tara (Daughters of Eltera Book 2)

  BDSM Erotic Romance Novellas:

  The Invitation

  The Rite

  Christmas at Purgatory (Thalia Extra #1)

  Reunited

  Anthology Appearances:

  Black Light: Valentine Roulette (Black Light Series Book 3)

  Black Light: Roulette Redux (Coming February 2018)