by Lana Sky
It’s his eyes that save him.
“You think I’m sick,” he tells me, his voice a gruff composition of timbre and baritone. “You…you think I’m crazy.” He grabs my wrist, and I stare at his injured hand, the fingers tan against my skin.
Crazy. I almost wish I felt those things. Almost…
With a sigh, I force myself to swallow before disentangling my arm from his grip. Without a shred of hesitation, I run my fingers along his forehead, pushing the thick curls back from his face, further revealing that beautiful gaze. “I think you’re tired,” I tell him around another sigh. “I think…I think you’re exhausted.”
My heart pounds to punctuate the words I can’t say out loud. So am I. So am I.
“Exhausted.” He frowns.
It’s not the scathing assessment he wants. It’s not loathing. It’s not disgust. I’ve been willing to give him so many things these past few days, but this is the one thing I’m surprised to find I can’t. I can’t fear him. I can’t blame him.
My murderer.
My angel.
My monster.
His eyes tell the story he’s fought. The control he’s battled for so long.
“That’s how you learned to do the stitches,” I say carefully. But that’s only the half of it. It’s how he learned to stomach the horror he’s seen—by wearing masks. By finding his own release.
By dancing between heaven and hell on threadbare wings.
“Learned,” he scoffs, choking out a laugh that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Sick, huh? I’m fucking sick—”
“You’re not.” I dig my nails into his skin before he can argue. You’re not. My throat works woodenly. Another story time is in order, but I can’t seem to get the words out. “I…I did… I’ve done…”
His fingers clench, cutting me off. Minutes pass before he finally takes advantage of the resulting silence.
“It was almost a game, at first,” he says. “I wanted to know. After…after him. I wanted to know if I could do it again. If it was a fluke. If I really am…” He inhales sharply, shaking his head. “I remember now. The first time was some meth head who owed Arno money. Arno had already beaten the shit out of him, but I…I went into the room, and…he started laughing. Calling me names. The usual shit. It didn’t faze me. At least not until Darcy walked in by accident to get an extra case of beer and the bastard started listing out all the ways she could ‘make his day.’” He pauses again, his hand clutching mine so tightly that my fingers go numb.
I let them. The odd buzz eats its way up my arm, the same way his words eat through my soul.
“I carved a P into his forearm,” Espi says thickly. “For ‘pervert,’ the sick fuck. I stitched him up real nice after. Gave him a hit of dope. And in the end…I didn’t feel a goddamn thing.”
He’s lying. Or maybe he can’t admit the truth, not even to himself. He felt something, all right. The same thing I feel when Piotr’s near—that voice I can’t shake. That unholy itch I don’t ever want to scratch.
Power and fear combined is an awful fucking thing. My touch alone won’t make him forget his latest taste of it. I can’t help him with the physical scars, either, or even the mental pain. But I can at least help him find some way of release.
I take his hands in both of mine and guide them down to my hips. Our gazes reconnect as I step in closer, right between his legs. This is a new mask I’m putting on, a different woman from the three I’m used to playing. She’s a willing sacrifice, something I never offered even Piotr. Maybe it’s the only thing I have left—possession.
“Hate me,” I tell him. Not yourself. Use me. Punish me.
Recognition dawns upon him slowly though. He stands, using the motion to step in closer, drag me closer. He’s lost his halo once again, his eyes gleaming like indigo fire. Perfect. Beautiful. Consuming.
I’m still in awe when he spins me around and presses me up against the table, making me lean over it. My heart slams against my rib cage, harsh and violent. It remembers this position. The heavy hands against my lower back. The panting breaths grated out on the air as my panties are yanked down my legs, and some stranger’s cock is shoved inside me.
But never with permission. Never with this hungry, raw need.
I need him.
My palms flatten against the table’s surface as he peels my pants and my underwear down my legs. He takes his time, even though tension resonates through his skin. The anticipation—it’s different from anything I’ve ever felt. Even the terror doesn’t feel the same. When he finally trails a finger between my legs, I just moan, already wet. Already ready.
I hear him swallow, unsteady, unsure, and I barely recognize the sound of my own voice when I grit out a plea. “It’s okay. I can—”
He slams into me, grunting with the effort. The pleasure… The pain. It takes him three thrusts before he finds his stride, setting a pace that has me writhing beneath him, my hair caught between his fingers, his mouth on my shoulder, teeth scraping, nails digging in.
He shows me more violence than he ever showed the man he tortured for Jose, ripping back every layer of his soul to reveal the mixture of light and dark underneath. I take it all in. Every inch. Every thrust. I let him use me as a receptacle for the twisted emotions he can’t bring himself to face. For everything he doesn’t want to feel.
Piotr used me in this way often. But it never felt like this.
I never grew hotter, wetter around him. My thoughts never splintered like shards of jagged glass, sinking in with every broken moan to leave his throat. Piotr never caressed me, even as he fucked. He never buried his mouth into the crook of my neck, murmuring a million words in a raspy cadence. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Fuck. I… I’m sorry. Sorry.
Back in those days, I never willingly came—so hard that I see stars. And, even in the breathless aftermath of his release, Piotr never spun me around, hauling me upright, forcing our lips to meld, kissing me. Long. Hard. Soft. Gentle pecks. Around my lips. Over them. Plunging his tongue inside.
I kiss him back, running my hands down his arms and over his shoulders. I arch my hips against his, riding out the remainder of his erection. I pant. I moan. I make hate to him, even if I don’t know how.
I cry out when he finally spills his release into me. Some part of me seems to be keeping a mental tally, and it woefully remarks, No condom.
On a bone-shattering sigh, he pulls back. “I…I didn’t mean to do that—”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I say automatically.
But it’s funny. I used to risk beatings to ensure that my johns wore condoms. Piotr was the only man I couldn’t sway, but he made sure to secure birth control for me, at least. In his own words, he wouldn’t put off fucking me for nine months out of the year.
“Do you…” He licks his lips and swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Do you have it covered?”
Is that guilt that sweeps through me on a dizzying wave? I shake my head. Chloe Parker didn’t care for the pills, those tiny multicolored reminders of hell. It was never an issue before, and only now does the danger, other than an STD, sink in. He could get me pregnant—if he hasn’t already.
Does that scare me? I think on the answer as he braces both hands on either side of me, leaning forward so that our foreheads connect, our bodies still entwined. The answer is probably more terrifying than the prospect. A baby—his baby, wouldn’t be Piotr’s, but something he could never taint. Someone he could never own. Mine.
“I know from Darcy that…that there are ways you could.” He breaks off without revealing exactly what. He sounds so damn tired.
I just tilt my head so that our lips touch, our breaths mingling, our air shared.
Five minutes. Ten minutes. We linger like this. But some emotions can’t be fucked out, requiring to be expelled another way.
“I never wanted to be a part of this shit.” He pulls back, gritting the words out toward the wall. The muscles in his forearms chord, and I can’t stop mysel
f from running my fingers along them, sensing the tension coiled underneath. “Arno. Mack. Dante. I never wanted a part of any of it.” He laughs coldly, shaking his head. “Funny how that turned out, huh?”
“What did you want?”
He looks down at me. Really looks as his eyes narrow and he processes the question. “I wanted to go to school. Do art. Be normal, whatever the fuck that means. But then Dante—” He breaks off, clenching his jaw as his halo flickers again. On. Off. On. “I couldn’t leave Arno to deal with his mess alone.”
There’s pain in the way he says it. He put his own dreams on hold for his friend. But that’s only half of it. The rest of the truth takes longer to spill out, lingering over his tongue.
“I got sucked in,” he admits. “This life… There are no consequences. No real rules. No law. It’s the only kind of environment where someone like Arno could ever judge someone like me.”
“You think he’s disappointed in you.”
He sighs and rakes his fingers through his hair. “I wanted to go to France one day, you know?” he says. It seems like he’s speaking to me, but the eye contact is merely for my benefit. The words come from his soul. “I thought I could make a living drawing tourists around Paris. Learn from some pretentious fucking art school. I even took classes.” He laughs. “I’d grown up drawing on the back of notebooks and napkins, whatever I could get my hands on. But these people… They had ‘art tutors.’ They took trips to Europe to learn how to copy shit from fancy art museums. Their stuff was a mockery of what they thought looked pretty. It didn’t contain an ounce of their soul. Their pain. So I dropped out, and…”
His gaze drifts down to my face, and his thumb grazes the corner of my mouth, feeling the wet hint of himself lingering there. He opens his mouth. To talk, I think. To reveal more of his past. In the end, he just kisses me again, more deeply than before.
We wind up flat against the tabletop, with me on top of him, writhing to feel him harden up against my thigh. This time, it’s quick. We both use each other, grinding ourselves into one another’s skin. When we finally break apart, panting, I don’t know what makes me say it, my cheek partially pressed against the cold tile floor.
“You had dreams. I had…goals. A checklist of things I had to do in order to make it through each day.” I can see them flit across my mind, even now. Obey. Resist. Submit. Survive. Over and over like clockwork.
He stiffens up beside me, running his hand down my back. “With Vlad?”
I inhale the question and exhale the truth. I tell him everything. Every dark, twisted, sordid detail save Piotr’s return. I don’t hold a single damn thing back. I spill it all. He breathes it in. Like smoke. Like nicotine. He’s high on me, hating the buzz even as it burns through him.
My face feels wet when I finally trail off, and he’s holding me, his body braced overtop mine, his breath warm on my shoulder. It’s enough. Against Piotr and his madness, his touch is enough. I can overcome it, just for now. I can relish the sore ache of him and the brutal spice of his scent. I don’t have to worry about the consequences.
I don’t even have to feel. I let him own me, this angel. For a brief moment, he flies me out of hell.
Arno isn’t content to just call this time. He attempts to break the front door down, and Espisido has barely managed to draw his pants up by the time he barrels inside.
“Espi…” His gaze flickers over in my direction. “Can we talk in fucking private?”
“No.” Espi reenters the kitchen to grab his shirt from the floor and pulls it on over his head. “Anything you want to say to me, you can say here.” There’s no anger lacing his tone. That’s because I’m carrying it all. His confessions linger on the air like wild electricity, sparking and alive.
“Fine, then.” Arno slams the door behind him and stalks forward. He has his head lowered, but it’s only when he comes closer that I recognize the motion as more contrite than aggressive. “About what happened back there… I’m sorry if things got a little—”
“It’s okay,” Espi says. He even looks like he means it. Twenty sordid minutes could purge him of his darkness and let him pretend again.
Am I jealous? Impressed? I’m too tired to tell, haunted by my own demons. Piotr’s waiting. With Anna? Or chains…
“Did Jose get what he wanted?”
Arno’s eyes flash a dangerous green. “Oh, hell yeah,” he says. “More than enough. He, um, persuaded Mack a little bit more to make sure he wasn’t fucking around. We think we know which warehouse will be hit next. The plan is we get there tonight. Ambush.”
Espi sighs, his jaw clenched. “Do you think Dante—”
“Don’t know,” Arno says tightly, cutting him off. “If you need anything, see Francisco. He’ll stay back at the—”
“I’m not letting you go there alone.” It’s final. Decided.
Arno doesn’t bother to argue as Espisido slips his jacket on and pulls the zipper up to his chin. He looks back at me, his eyes questioning.
It takes everything I have in me to shake my head.
Arno observes the exchange with barely any reaction. “You ready?” he asks.
Espisido follows him.
Once they’re what Arno must assume is out of my earshot, I hear him say, “We have got to work on your taste in women.”
This is when I realize I’m not wearing my sweatpants. Or underwear. With I sigh, I sink to the floor and fish them from the tile. Then I creep into the bathroom and shower, doing my best to scrub myself clean, wiping away every last drop of him. I have to make myself presentable, after all. There isn’t time to savor—but I do anyway.
It could be the last time I have the luxury. So I relish the feel of him inside me. The aching soreness that flares whenever I move. I let it wash the taint of my past away for a little while before I’m finally forced to shut the water off, face the world again, and redress in the same clothes. I blindly return to the kitchen and pull drawers open at random, searching. Hunting. It isn’t until I’m standing on tiptoe and lowering a black case from the top of the fridge that I find two knives, thin and made of steel. They fit easily inside the pocket of a borrowed sweatshirt. I take a syringe too, filling it to the brim with liquid from a vial.
I blink a burning sting back. There isn’t time for guilt.
I replace the case and then leave the house, locking the door behind me. It’s a long, quiet walk to the hotel where Piotr is waiting. This time, I don’t placate myself with fantasies of killing him. I just remember…everything. The pain, the beatings, the fear. Mainly the fear. The way he used to hold me, the words he would murmur into my skin. The way my heart used to crave his approval. Was that love?
If so, then I prefer hate. Caressing fingers and searing looks. Letting my body go wild. Not having a checklist of requirements to tick off with every encounter. Smile. Simper. Wider. More. Let him touch you. Moan—but not too loudly.
I let the darkness of those days sober me from the very last dose of my latest addiction. He leaves me for good the moment I enter the lobby of the hotel. Or does he? A man is lingering near the entrance, his head covered by a low hood. He’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt in a building that caters to men who lap at the Petrovs’ wealth. Did Piotr change the uniform of his soldat?
I try to catch a glimpse of his face and flinch. Flashing blue—but the features are all wrong, what little I see of them. The body is too big. But those eyes…
I step closer, aiming for another look, but he turns and crosses over to the other part of the lobby. I dig my nails into my palms to keep myself from following. I’m stalling. The delay only buys me a precious few seconds of sanity before I take the elevator up. The door to the suite is unlocked once again, but this time, I find five guards lounging in the entryway.
One of them spots me and reaches for his gun. “Name?”
I don’t bother to give him one. Rather by recognition or sheer confusion, he doesn’t pull the trigger as I brush past. Piotr is waiting for me in h
is study, but tonight…he isn’t alone.
My nostrils flare, catching a feminine scent that belongs only in my memories. Not here. Sweet like roses. Soft like the sunshine we used to play in as children. Anna. Her presence floods my body seconds before I register her standing there beside his desk.
Her slight frame is balancing upon an impossibly high pair of white heels. He dressed her head to toe in the color—a gown that swallows her slender body, formed of swaths of white chiffon and lace. The maid must have arranged her flaming hair into a single braid that drapes her shoulder.
But no amount of expensive silk or hairdressing could disguise what lurks behind those unique navy eyes. Nothing. Blank. Emptiness.
“Do you like your present, Ksei?” Piotr gestures from my sister to me. There’s something in his other hand. Round. Metallic. He raises it when I don’t answer and strikes a button on the front with his thumb.
A buzzing sound hums in my eardrums. Then Anna jerks back, her fingers twitching at her sides. There’s something around her neck that I notice only now. It’s tucked against the neckline of her dress. A thin strip of black leather, secured by a metal buckle. A collar.
“Say your name,” Piotr commands.
“Anna,” the girl says woodenly on cue.
God. It’s exactly how I always imagined her sounding had she lived to be old enough. Soft. Delicate. Little Anna. Everything is the same but the pain.
“What the hell is this?”
“Tsk tsk,” Piotr remarks, shaking his head. Seven years later and I still recognize the dangerous signs of his disappointment. So does Anna. She inhales sharply as he speaks again. “Your full name.”
“Annastasia Olenova.” She sounds so young. So terrified.
“What are you doing?” I don’t know how I speak. Piotr’s last assault was child’s play. This is death. My heart stops beating. My lungs seize. Somehow, I’m still standing. Still able to listen.