“But with Africa,” Rhys continued. “Soon you’ll be earning enough that this entire problem will seem like nothing. There have been some problems, however…” While Rhys continued, Anteros focused on the monitor. For a second, Frankie looked straight at the camera, straight at it, her stare level and knowing. It was as if she was locking eyes with Anteros. Then she turned back to Gabby and laughed.
Gabby got up minutes later, on schedule. Anteros had only planned for a fifteen-minute visit. When Gabby left through the door, Frankie's joy dimmed like a slowly dying light bulb.
Anteros stood up from his desk, declaring the meeting over.
Rhys’s eyes widened and he sputtered in disbelief. “Forgive me, Mr. Drago—uh, Boss—but there is still plenty to discuss. I’m not sure you fully heard me before. There is the matter with Lucia and—”
Ignoring him, Anteros walked out of the office, pushing Rhys along with him. “Lucia is dying in Italy and I don’t believe in ghosts.” Lucia often stirred the pot from Sicily, but she was not a real threat to him or to anyone. She was older than Lucio, an unmarried woman with no children, and stuck in Sicily. The most she could do was complain.
“But…” Rhys started.
“I’m sure whatever you have to say can wait.” Anteros looked to Rhys, eyes hard, indicating it wasn’t up for debate.
“Yes, Boss.” Rhys lowered his head. “It can wait.”
“Nikolai can show you out.” Anteros gestured to Nikolai, who was waiting by the stairs, then walked beyond him. He could punish Nikolai later, deal with whatever Rhys was worried about another time. He stalked down the hallway room with single minded-intent and pushed open his door. Frankie jumped up, still holding the sheets against her chest. He prowled over to her.
“I think you owe me,” he growled into her ear.
“Please…” she whispered. “I’m on my period.”
Frankie slunk in a corner against the opposite side of the shower, back practically melding with the wall of rocks and stone. His shower was more than big enough for two, it could comfortably fit five and had, on occasion. Her apparent need for space was obvious, but she wasn’t hiding from him. Where her small hands used to immediately reach to cover her petite breasts and slit, now they just hung down by her sides.
Progress.
A ghost of a smile came to his lips, but just as quickly, Anteros clenched his jaw. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. In a few days he would have to kill her.
This was just about scratching an itch.
“I’ve never seen your bathroom,” she commented, cutting off his train of thought. She looked around the shower, pulling her lip between her teeth. “This is nice. Swankier than mine. Didn’t think that was possible.” Looking away, she brought one arm in front of her chest and tugged at her other arm.
She was nervous.
Anteros motioned with his hand. “Come.” Frankie chewed on her lip, but did not fight back—at least, not entirely. She took a step forward but didn’t come all the way. She paused, looking up where she stood directly beneath two rain showerheads.
She looked back to him. “Are you going turn on the shower or…”
“It will turn on when I tell it to,” he said tersely.
“Oh.” She shifted, tugging on her arm again. “How sci-fi.” Anteros fisted then unclenched his palm. Her standing there was maddening. It was like a drop of heroin in his blood—enough to grip, tether, and tease him, but not enough to bring him to salvation. It cemented with bitter certainty what her death would feel like, reminding him what he would need to do before then.
There was only so much time he had left with her; he would have to use up every bit of her until she was nothing save a husk, until his blood was so saturated with her that it wouldn’t matter that she was gone.
“I’m not going to do anything you don’t want,” he stated, voice hoarse. Her eyes flashed, but she only bit her lip harder, those full, ruby lips.
“Frankie,” Anteros said, deciding to close the distance himself. “Shower on,” Anteros said with authority, eyes still on her. A mist of warm water fell. The mist turned into a sprinkle, which then became a steady stream. She blinked up at him, droplets sticking to her eyelashes like dew on grass.
God, she was beautiful under the water, her honey skin glistening. The water made her hair stick to her face and he pushed it behind her ear.
“You’re goddamn gorgeous,” Anteros growled, crushing his lips against hers. He pushed Frankie against the wall, hands splayed at her sides, feeling the ridges of the tile. Next, he ran his fingers over her wet ass as water slipped off it like a waterfall. Round, shiny, he gripped it, hard.
He turned her jaw so he could see her face, kiss her neck, kiss her jaw. His fingers dipped lower and spread her wide. Her hands splayed up and down his arms, going around his neck and then to his back, as if frenzied in their passion.
Frankie let out a groan that transformed into a mewling, whimpering sound as Anteros slid his rigid length up and down against her, moving with the intimate folds of her. Gripping his shoulders tight, her nails dug deep, as if she could force some part of him inside her. And fuck, he really wanted to be inside of her. Wanted every part of her marked by him so that there was no doubt who she belonged to.
Using his hands, Anteros spread her ass wide, and her leg wrapped around his. He slid his cock harder against her, pressing against her nub. She groaned and gripped him tighter. Anteros could tell Frankie was ready by the way she moaned and held him. He could take her and have her writhing in ecstasy, but there was something that was pressing on him, something that had been pressing on him since the day he’d cooked and fed her dinner.
He’d tried to push it away, but it was in the back of his mind. He wondered on the days she looked paler, wondered if she was tired not because of staying up late, wondered always.
With a frustrated groan, Anteros let her go. “Can it come back?”
“W-what?” Frankie sounded lost, her breathy stutter heated as if caught in the steam. It drifted over the sound of water splashing against the tile at their feet. She looked up at him, not fully comprehending what he was saying.
He hissed. She must be an angel, or else a succubus, wet and swollen and fucking irresistible. Her chest was rising and falling in heavy breaths, her nipples pointed. She watched him as if under a spell, blue eyes somehow brighter in the mist.
“Your sickness,” he clarified. “Can it come back?” Anteros had been pushing thoughts of her sickness away because it was so fucking pointless. Either way, she was dead, so why even bother. If he kept digging, kept experimenting with the need to know, it would lead to nothing good. Still, it was like an arrow in his side.
She blinked, realizing his meaning. “No. I mean, maybe. Doctors say I’m normal now but I don’t feel normal. I don’t really trust them—the doctors.”
That didn’t really assuage his worries. “Can you die?”
She shook her head. “That was never the problem. Most days, I wished I could die.” She finished on a whisper, as if embarrassed or ashamed. What she’d just revealed did the exact opposite, however—it was a revelation. Finally he understood why when he looked into her crystal depths, a warrior stared back. Anteros stared into her eyes as the water rushed over them, hot and slick.
Something was happening to him. The thing he’d managed to ignore, shove back, and deny since the day she’d told him to take her was becoming undeniable.
She was going to fucking ruin him.
If he wanted to survive, he should turn off the water and get the fuck out.
“I knew it…” She stepped back. “You think I’m fucking broken—”
Anteros wasn’t sure what he grabbed first—her hair, her waist, hips, face, jaw—just that he touched all of her within seconds. In the same moment he captured her lips with her sigh, he entered her.
Anteros broke the kiss, pressing his forehead to hers. “Sei divina il mio cuore.” He pulled out, getting ready to plunge
back in, when he noticed something. His brow furrowed against her, the lines in his forehead growing deeper and deeper with the realization.
“You lied,” he said against her lips, forehead pressed still. She regarded him with a lusty haze over her eyes, not fully understanding. “I assume your hope was that if you told me you were bleeding, I wouldn’t touch you.”
Recognition dawned across her features. “I…” Frankie stuttered, slipping against the stone as Anteros pushed away. They faced each other, water pouring down, her hair falling flat against her face. She closed her mouth, offering no further explanation, and then her features went stone.
Whatever had passed between them was buried.
Anteros walked out of the shower, not bothering to turn it off.
Twenty-Three
I gripped the icy cold steel of the bench, watching Gabby’s blonde mane get farther and farther away until it completely disappeared out of the park. I knew what I was doing had to be done. I knew that.
It didn’t make it any easier.
December was nearing its end and I should have been grateful. The month was almost over and I would be free, but my throat constricted at the thought. Never seeing Beast again, never sleeping in his bed, it was almost unfathomable. Somewhere during the month I’d become tethered, but that’s exactly why it had to happen. Being tethered to a man who saw that rope as nothing more than a thing to jerk was worse than tying it around my neck, it was worse than cutting it completely.
When I’d spoken to Nikolai that night in his room, I’d knocked down the last domino. Whatever they needed from me—anything—I’d do. I just needed to get away from him. Call me the fucking queen, I didn’t care. The longer I stayed with him, the closer to oblivion I got. I could feel it.
The previous night had simply reaffirmed it. When I was alone with the Beast, I changed. I became someone I wasn’t, someone who begged and craved him. I desperately wanted him inside me. Even now, sitting on the bench, I was hollow without him. He’d never come back to the shower, and I’d been left to think how once again he’d taken all of my cards, left me feeling powerless and alone.
And that wasn’t okay.
To my surprise, Nikolai had said no at first. He didn’t think I was “in it” one hundred percent. I remembered stumbling a little bit when he’d said that. Did he know? Could he see the war going on inside of me? The fight against the tiny faction in my brain that told me You don’t just want him, you need him.
But no, he couldn’t.
Nikolai assumed I feared the pain the Beast could inflict, was worried that fear would cripple or paralyze me. Really it was the opposite. I was crippled by a constant state of chaos and lust and pleasure and…and…
Swallowing, I stood up, grabbing my burnt orange Hermès purse off the bench. There was no one else in the park now that Gabby had gone. It was private, the same one where we’d met when she was planning to kill her husband. I waited for her to disappear into the crowd and then looked away, at the park, at the bare trees covered only with snow.
Nikolai told me that Gabby was being sold to some douche in Africa to, I was sure, further manipulate me. On the outside it looked like he was trying to show me that it wasn’t just about my shit, other people had cards in the game too. I saw through that. Now no matter what, I had to go through with it because if I fucked up, Gabby was going to fucking Africa to be married to someone worse than Giovani. Talk about pressure.
Nikolai hadn’t expected me to bring it up with Beast and, by the looks he was giving me, had been angry I’d done so. I’d been so taken aback, though. A part of me thought maybe Beast was going to say it wasn’t true and confirm my suspicions that Nikolai was nothing more than a manipulative liar. All Beast confirmed was that I had to go through with the plan.
The whole thing was so fucking crazy. The plan, Gabby, Vic, Nikolai, it was nuts—but a crazy plan was better than actually going crazy. If I continued as I was, tumbling down the rabbit hole with Beast, I knew I wouldn’t just go crazy. I would disappear.
I looked through the iron slats of the park fence. Nikolai wasn’t back with the car yet, apparently still finagling his side of the job with Vic. I sighed, grabbing my purse.
This…
This was going to change everything.
But that was a good thing.
It was a good thing.
I told myself the things I did in the night were all to further the plan, but even I knew that was a lie.
Shaking my head, I decided to leave the park or at least wait outside. I couldn’t keep standing alone in an empty park—I was starting to feel like a statue. As I exited through the gate, someone stepped in front of me. Fingers curled around both of my arms and tugged me to the side. My first thought was I’ve been caught.
And I was relieved.
How fucking sick is that? To crave to be captured and kept by the person you’re trying to escape? It was so cold out in the real world compared to the Beast’s lair, though. The snow melted through my coat and seeped into my skin. I didn’t realize how numb I was before the Beast. I thought I’d felt before, thought I’d lived before, but I could feel my soul already numbing. It was a familiar numbness, an anesthesia that had once been my sole method of survival, when the only way I’d survived was through someone else’s pictures.
The Beast’s lair was pure fire. It was burning and it ignited things inside of me. Some of those things I wished I didn’t have to feel, like self-loathing and hate and despair, but I knew I couldn’t feel anything without them, like yin and yang. It was so bright. So real. So raw.
And I was utterly addicted.
But to be addicted is to be crippled and powerless.
I’d spent half my life crippled and powerless, at the mercy of doctors and the will of my body.
I wouldn’t ever again.
I glanced down at the hand that gripped me. The hand did not belong to the Beast; his was burned in my memory. The Beast’s hands were like refined virility, big with strong veins that promised a grip that could hold my soul as easily as my body. I did recognize this hand, though, just as I recognized the man it belonged to: Levi, the cop from the funeral and Gabby’s love. He looked at me fervently.
“I can get you out,” he said, dropping his grip from my arm but looking and talking no less fervently. “I can get you safe haven. There are good cops in this city, people who will help.” I looked at him. His long hair was pulled into a messy bun—not the stylish man bun seen all over New York’s hipsters and wannabes, but a desperate look on a desperate man.
“Does Gabby know you’re here?” I asked, deflecting his offer. I already knew the answer. When Gabby discovered Levi’s secret, she cut him off, not out of spite, but love.
Levi’s eyes flashed down a moment. “She isn’t returning my calls.” Good. Noting the black town car pulling up toward the curb, I walked away from Levi toward Nikolai.
“I know you’re planning something,” he yelled at my back. “You and Gabby. There’s a reason she’s icing me out and it isn’t because she’s unhappy with us. We’re good together.” I spun around and walked back, the heels of my shoes making a lonely echo on the pavement. I got up in his face.
“You don’t belong in this world, Levi,” I said—as if I did.
“And you and Gabby do?” Levi asked. I nearly balked, feeling like my mind had been invaded. He grabbed my arm again, and I looked down at his fingers. They only lightly held on to me. They were gentle. His words demanded of me, but his fingers did not. Beneath his hand was an invisible one. It was big, covered with thick veins, and had subverted my very own consciousness and being. It had snaked into my muscular system, had slithered into my blood. It had changed me.
I yanked free of Levi without responding and left, ignoring his shouts as I stepped through the door Nikolai held open for me.
Nikolai drove back to the penthouse and I stared out the window, thinking on what Gabby and I had just cemented into action. Outside, the picture hardly
changed. I was sure there were things I couldn’t see, things beyond twinkling lights and falling snow.
“Nikolai?” I called out, turning from the window. His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “Would you tell me something about yourself? Something the Beast doesn’t know.” Something that lets me know your true motives.
His eyes went back to the road. “I don’t think that is wise.” Pulling my lips together thinly, my gaze flicked back out the window. I just wanted something—no matter how small—beyond the Beast. Something to remind me that there would be a life beyond this tinted one. Something besides him that I could grasp on to.
“We all have our parts to play, mistress,” Nikolai said, drawing my gaze back to his mirrored one. “If you break form before the play ends, then you risk letting the audience in.” My brow furrowed, eyes still locked with Nikolai’s in the mirror. Slowly his gaze shifted as we came up to traffic and I redirected mine to my lap.
I still didn’t even know his last name. I was basically going to war with this guy but I didn’t know anything substantial.
Ruby colors from brake and streetlights cast a glow over my hands as I fiddled with my pants. I wondered if I was in over my head, and it wasn’t the first time I’d done so. Since trading myself to the Beast, I’d been treading water in a storm. I never imagined this, though, me playing a part as princess to take down a mafia Boss.
A part that would erase the girl I once was.
I looked out the window as the car resumed speed. I could hardly remember who she was anyway, what she used to do. Frankie Notte…she had dreams. She wanted to travel the world. She taped up pictures on her wall of places to see, a bucket list of things to do, from seeing Tokyo to Times Square at New Year’s. She wanted to find true love, as most people do, that one person who matches you unequivocally. That one person who is so much your half that once you find them it becomes starkly, painfully real how incomplete you were without them. Without them, it would be like trying to ride a bike without wheels.
Beast: A Hate Story, The Beginning Page 35