by Zara Cox
Her fingers twitch. A minuscule action. Her right arm lifts and curls behind her head. Her fingers brush her left jaw before they hook the thick swathe of hair and brush the mass to one side. A further expanse of silky, unblemished skin is exposed.
She starts to lower her arm. That’s when I notice that she’s favoring her left side, that arm a little less flexible than her right.
“Turn around, Cleo.”
She turns immediately, relief on her face. “Are you done?”
“No, baby, we’re just getting started. Take off your clothes.”
Her immediate loss of color tells me everything I need to know. “There’s no need.”
“There’s every need. If I’m going to take what you’re offering…if I’m going to fuck you tonight, then you’ll need to be naked. Or were you hoping I’d settle for watching you finger your pussy again?”
She shakes her head. “I…we don’t…I can take care of you.”
Several dozen images of just how she can take care of me whizz through my mind, even as I shake my head. “For you to achieve that to my satisfaction, you need to take off what you’re wearing.”
She wants to refuse. A flare of her nostrils ends with a twitch of a grimace a second before her right hand grips the panties, yanks them down her legs, and steps to one side.
For the third time in less than a week, Cleo McCarthy’s pussy is bared to me. Except, this time, the ferocity of my arousal is tempered by what she’s hiding beneath her teddy. What I can already see beneath the black lace edging up her left side.
Three purple bruises, edged in sickly yellow along one side of her ribcage. Bile and self-loathing rise along with blinding fury. “Motherfucker!”
Her teeth clench, whether from pain or in reaction to my rage, I don’t wait to find out.
Striding forward, I knock her hand out of the way, grab hold of the material between her breasts in both hands, and rip it in half.
Beauty. Indescribable beauty.
And ugliness.
I shudder at the sight of her. I shudder at the thought of what I did to her a few minutes ago on the floor, while she was wearing this suffering on her skin. “Jesus Christ, Cleo.”
“It looks worse than it is,” she blurts.
She stays for the shits and giggles.
The idea that she’s defending him makes every cell scream with homicidal fury. “Is that why you can’t lift your fucking arm or a take a full breath? I’m an ex-soldier, trained in combat and other types of shit you probably don’t want to know about. I sure as fuck know what a fist or a foot to the ribs looks like.”
Her lips compress, and her gaze slides away, and once again I’m left with trying to understand the incomprehensible. “Why? What the fuck is so special about a middle-aged thug that you can’t walk away from?”
Because that is what he is.
Finnan Rutherford was a common thug long before he bought a plane ticket and left the rough streets of Belfast behind him. Bespoke suits and a thousand fancy dinners haven’t changed his DNA. “Does he have something on you?”
“Haven’t we had this conversation before?” Her stillness and the boredom she tries to inject into her voice is telling.
“He does, doesn’t he?”
“Axel—”
“What is it?”
She pales. Her gaze flicks away then defiantly returns to mine. “It’s none of your business.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. All it’ll take is a phone call to him to make it my business.”
Fear skitters through her eyes, but her headshake is definitive. “He won’t tell you. What he wants from you has nothing to do with him and me.”
All it’ll take is a phone call to call her bluff, but I don’t trust myself to interact with Finnan right now. My repository for fucked-up bullshit is overflowing, and the sight of her battered body is too much to handle. I drag the tattered lingerie from her body with one hand while the other reaches for my phone.
B answers on the first ring. “Send up a first aid kit. Now, please.” I hang up.
“There’s no need—”
“I require your silence right now, Cleo. Look at me and nod your agreement to shutting the fuck up.”
She swallows and nods.
The kit arrives in minutes. “Lie on the bed.”
When she’s stretched out, I dig out the special cream and smear a large drop on my fingers. I don’t know where the hell B discovered it, but the cream numbs while providing exceptionally fast healing. An extremely useful resource in a BDSM club.
Cleo flinches when the cool cream touches her skin. I struggle not to grit my teeth as I massage the medication gently over her abused skin and watch the tension slowly leave her face.
When I’m sure the numbness is in full effect, I gently probe her ribs. Her breath hitches, but from the swift pebbling of her nipples, I’m certain it’s from something other than pain.
He didn’t break a rib.
I cap the tube, toss it away and rise. The closet that resembles the one from my childhood holds three dresses. I pick the one that’ll be least aggravating to put on and return to the bed.
“Sit up,” I command.
She slowly rises and drops her legs over the side of the bed.
“How do you feel?”
The breath she takes is a little deeper. “Better. Thanks.”
I hold out the dress. “Can you put this on by yourself?” I’m nearing the limits of touch-Cleo-without-exploding.
She takes it and eyes me. “Are we going somewhere?”
I bare my teeth in a sick smile that makes her eyes widen. I cup the erection that hasn’t abated despite the lunacy that permeates the room. My vision blurs for a second. “I’m fucked up enough to still want to fuck you black and blue on top of your black and blue. Putting clothes on that body might help with that problem.”
Her face heats up, and her eyes darken, and fuck if that doesn’t ramp up my temperature even higher. She pulls the black and white striped dress over her body and stands. It glides seductively over her hips to rest just above her knees. I mourn the loss of the sight of her pussy.
She glances toward the closet. “What about…umm…panties?”
I raise an eyebrow. “What about them?”
“Am I going to wear any?”
“No. It’s going to be a long trip. I’m leaving my options open on that score just in case I have an urge to finger you at some point tonight.”
The moment she steps into her heels, I place my hand on the small of her back and steer her toward the door.
“You still haven’t said where we’re going.”
“You know where the fuck we’re going. Where we’ve been headed since you showed up. You’ve pushed hard and bravo, sweetheart, I’ve cracked. So we’re going to Connecticut. To see your…” Every description of who he is to her sticks in my throat. Every reminder of who he is to me burns a path of rage through me. “I was going to leave him to stew for a while longer, but this,” I drift a hand down her side, “has got my attention. So yeah, we’re most definitely going to see Finnan.”
I watch her intently, searching for signs of triumph.
But either she’s mastered the perfect poker face in the last decade or whatever game plan she’s pursuing isn’t realized yet. She chews on her lower lip in the time it takes for us to reach the elevator.
“You should be happy, Cleo,” I whisper in her ear. “Ecstatic.”
“Are you…Is he going to like what you have to say?”
I laugh, deeply and bitterly. In all this, she still only cares about him.
“That depends on whether he’s grown wiser and smarter with age or not. Either way, it’ll be an offer he won’t be in a position to refuse.”
PART TWO
CLEO
Chapter Eleven
FRONT-ROW SEATS
Axel’s video was the first one Finnan made me watch. Those twenty-one minutes in Finnan Rutherford’s study when I was seve
nteen changed my life forever. It also placed Axel’s existence in my hands.
Because that life belongs to me. Only me.
I alone will determine when and how the life of the man who killed my father, and tried to kill my mother, ultimately ends. It won’t end tonight. Not if I have anything to do with it. Not until he’s faced every single atrocity he’s committed.
I watch his rigid profile now as he accelerates his sports car up the long drive leading to the Connecticut property. In the early hours of the morning, despite the heavy traffic in Manhattan, the drive took a little over ninety minutes with little conversation save for a query as to which brand of water I preferred when we stopped at a gas station.
He returned with two bottles and uncapped one for me, even going as far as to produce a handkerchief to mop me up when I spilled a few drops.
Gentle. Sexy monster. Caring. Cold-blooded psychopath.
Detachedly, I wonder how many other personalities he hides behind that pulse-wrecking, drop-dead-gorgeous face. Since hearing the name, I’ve googled Taranahar a few dozen times. All the articles I came across recounted atrocities of unthinkable proportions, a few less discreet sites throwing in harrowing pictures of mangled bodies.
Atrocities Axel is elbow deep in. It’s not a leap to pin such barbarism on him. He killed my father, a man he knew was dear to me. He tried to kill my mother, although he has no idea he didn’t succeed. Has no idea she’s lying in a hospital bed thirty miles from here, kept alive by my total compliance and Finnan Rutherford’s whim and blackmail.
Gentle. Sinister. Devilishly beautiful. Murderer.
I drag my gaze from the many-faceted devil as he pulls up in front of the mansion. Grim jawed, he casts a mocking glance at the house he grew up in.
“A marked difference from the last time I visited. Shall we?”
He snaps my seat belt free and steps out of the car. I track his imposing figure, dressed in black designer pants, a light gray V-neck tee and black leather jacket. Despite the July heat, he looks effortlessly cool and sexy as he rounds the hood to open my door.
Chivalrous monster.
Somewhere on a dark night a million years ago, I swore I was done trying to figure him out. But as I take his hand and step out, as he keeps hold of my hand and pins my body to the car, I find myself desperately trying to read him, trying to understand where it all went wrong for him. Where it went wrong for us. Was there ever any hope or was I always completely doomed right from the start?
“Still so serious,” he murmurs, his breath caressing my cheek. “Whatever he’s holding over you must be huge if you look like I’ve brought you to the gallows rather than to the home you’re mistress of.” Despite his mocking words and the lazy thrust of his hips against mine, his eyes are knife sharp, vigilantly cataloguing my every expression. “Care to tell me what it is?”
“No. I just want this visit to be over and done with.”
“Don’t worry, it will be.” He raises the hand still clutching mine, a curious fascination on his face as he slowly links our fingers. Palm to palm, heat singes from one to the other, as if trying to meld our flesh. “I’m not leaving here until I get what I want.”
The sound of a bolt sliding back draws our attention to the double doors of the house. Still gripping my hand, Axel drags me up the short flight of steps, situated between two imposing columns, just as Ronan opens the door.
Although equal in height and stature, Axel cuts a more imperious figure, his military training adding a dangerous edge to an already menacing package. The two men face off for a charged minute before Ronan steps to one side.
Axel strolls in, conducts a sweeping inspection of the marble-floored entry hallway, the grand staircase and light oak-paneled walls. The drapes that hang on either side of the cathedral-like windows are monstrously heavy and haven’t been changed in years.
“I absolutely loathe what you’ve done with the place,” he drawls. “Is this the current trend these days? Perhaps I need to renew my subscription to Thug Homes Monthly.”
A muscle ticks in Ronan’s jaw. “The place hasn’t changed since Ma died, and you know it. And is that all you’ve got? Cheap shots at the decor?”
Axel’s mocking façade drops for a second, and he looks almost disappointed. “You stuck around, brother, despite my warning. You want to see what I’ve got? You just earned yourself a front row seat.”
Ronan swears under his breath before his gaze drops to our linked hands. “Good to see where your fucking loyalties lie, you little slut,” he sneers at me.
In a split second, Axel transforms from bored guest to lethal weapon, ferocious brutality seeping from every pore.
“Call her that again, Ronan. I fucking dare you,” he invites, his voice baby soft with absolute malevolence.
The change is frightening, curiously mesmerizing. I want to look away, ignore the eldest Rutherford son the way I’ve done for more years than I care to count. But this version of Axel—savage defender, blind champion—triggers a long-buried memory. One that captures my attention and refuses to let go.
Axel and I on a beach…a different version of casual conversation with dangerous subtexts folded into malignant subtexts.
I mean it, Cleo. I see so much as a scratch on you, someone will fucking die.
That was one of a few conversations in the same vein. I listened to them with a giddy little flame in my heart, convinced they fell from the lips of my one true love. The one who would protect me, cherish me above everything else.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Axel told me he would kill for me. What I didn’t realize was that he meant it literally. Or cold-bloodedly. Or that the victim he picked would be one who mattered to me.
Worst of all, that the life-changing event would matter so little to him that he could carry on with his life as if it never occurred.
I watch him square off with his brother now, and my heart shreds with hopelessness.
“She’s not worth a one-dollar dare,” Ronan tosses out. “She never was. Too bad you’re too blind to see that.”
Axel delivers a chilling smile I feel in my bones. “You see blindness. I see the final act in a script I couldn’t have written better if I had a host of heavenly angels wielding the pen.”
My heart lurches despite the fact that this is what I’ve wanted all along—the Rutherfords at each other’s throats, destroying each other the way Axel destroyed my family.
Ronan is eyeing him, wariness I’ve only seen him exhibit around Finnan crawling over him. After a minute, having failed to decipher the cryptic meaning, his eyes narrow. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Front-row seat,” Axel repeats.
Chapter Twelve
THE DEAL
Axel
A door opens at the far end of the hallway. I watch Ronan turn to face the approaching footsteps, his expression morphing into one of fear-tinged compliance.
I stay where I am, my back to my father, my hand gripping Cleo’s tightly. Maybe too tightly. She flinches and tries to pull away. I turn to her. “Stay.”
Whatever she sees in my face makes her eyes widen and her mouth close.
What I feel is naked loathing so depraved that I wonder how the lethal force of it doesn’t consume me. Again, she tries to disentangle her fingers from mine.
I let go of her hand for two reasons.
Delivering pain that isn’t sexually oriented or has pleasure balancing it out was never my thing. And I need all my functioning faculties to deal with Finnan.
More than the cold fear of walking into my first ambush in the urban battlefields of Fallujah, more than the harrowing nightmare of waking up the morning after blood was forced on my hands…this is going to be by far my deadliest battle.
And it’s one I intend to win.
My abs clench with revulsion as I sense him behind me. As I hear him breathe the free air that his greed has helped snuff out of so many.
“Since it seems that you don�
�t intend to grace me with your hallowed presence, I’m forced to come to you.”
I turn. Face the embodiment of every evil that lurks beneath my own skin. I don’t make excuses for what I am.
“Are you going to stand there like a deaf mute, boy?” The distinct Northern Irish brogue Finnan wears with pride curls around every word.
“I find it saves me a lot of time and effort to contribute only when there’s actually something useful to say. You taking a walk from your den to your hallway doesn’t constitute a useful conversation topic for me.”
The muted curse comes from Ronan, the shocked gasp from the woman I intend to reclaim this very night.
Finnan smiles. A white, ample smile that slashes his weathered cheeks. But only his lips smile. Eyes the same color as mine remain flint hard. Coldly toxic. The way they’ve been every time he’s looked at me.
I used to think he deliberately withheld any show of positive emotion until it was earned. Time and experience and the evidence within my own twisted DNA has proven that he’s incapable of it.
He fingers the cuffs of his dress shirt with almost bored strokes. But although he seems well put together, there’s a bagginess to his clothes that suggests he’s lost weight. Or lost the patronage of his favorite bespoke suit maker. The millions he spent trying to keep himself out of jail have taken a toll on his bank account. I know that for a fact.
“You’re still throwing those feeble fists like you used to do when you were a baby, and your ma, God rest her soul, tried to give you a bath. It does the heart good to see some things never change.”
I let loose a smile of my own as the familiar promise of combat oils my limbs. “You know what does my heart good? You. Thinking everything that has led to this has been a tantrum. I implore you to keep thinking that way. Believe that there’s even a single scenario where you triumph.”
“I don’t need to. You will do all of the heavy lifting for me. Same as you’ve always done.” His gaze flicks to Cleo, and I hear her sharp inhalation. Whatever passes between them ends when his eyes return to me.