Master of Salt & Bones

by Keri Lake

  Screwing my eyes shut, I succumb to the visual inside my head. The look of ecstasy on Isa’s face, her legs wrapped around my body, her moans echoing off the walls.

  I need her out of my system, out of my head. Every waking thought is wrapped around this girl, strangling my opposition, begging me for one taste. One touch.

  I want the forbidden. I want the one thing that irritates me more than anything. The one thing I shouldn’t want.

  Isa.

  Chapter 40

  Isadora

  A soft tickle down my leg rips me out of dreams, and I slide the blade from beneath my pillow, kicking my feet back. In the blackness of my room, the knife hits something, and I keep it propped there while scrambling for the lamp beside me. The chain brushes my fingertips, and I give a hard yank, the darkness blinking to light.

  Lucian’s hulking body looms over me, like a black squall ready to take me under, as he holds himself propped on outstretched arms.

  My blade at his throat.

  The seeds Nell planted inside my head earlier in the night failed to bloom once I saw the relics of his son, and I left his office feeling like every other asshole from Tempest Cove who believes the rumors about him. I fell asleep hating myself for failing to do the one thing that makes me different from the others in this town: think objectively. Still, murderer, or not, the man carries an edge of danger about him. An aura that triggers my instincts, warning me to be careful. So I keep the blade where it’s at, while my brain unwinds from the confusion.

  My attention falls to his bare chest and torso, momentarily distracted by the tight cords and deep ridges of hard-earned muscle. The scent coming off him is an intoxicating mix of spice and a more primitive, masculine aroma that waters my mouth. Something burns in those infernal eyes. Dark and wicked. For a moment, I wonder if I’m dreaming, until he shifts, and I feel my pants slide down my thighs.

  “Wait.” I squirm beneath him, never lowering my weapon, and grab hold of his hand, which makes him pause.

  “You’ve got the knife, Isa. Use it.” He lifts his chin, exposing more of his throat to the blade’s unforgiving edge, but even so, he goes back to tugging my pants down my thighs.

  Once they’re off my legs, he tosses them to the floor, and I lie vulnerable beneath him. Metal clinks while he works the buckle of his belt one-handedly, his eyes never wavering from mine as he loosens his pants and springs his cock free. Thick pulsing veins feed the long and stiff erection captured in his fist, the sight of which tickles my stomach.

  “What are you doing?” Still half asleep, I double-blink, trying to determine if this is the real Lucian, or the one I’ve dreamed of for the last month.

  “I’m fucking you. With, or without, the blade at my throat.” His voice, pitched low and deep, dances across my skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake. My panties slide down next, his eyes shimmering with reverence as he pauses a moment and pries my knees apart. “Or you’ll be fucking me, it seems.” The awe in his voice mimics the expression on his face as he licks his lips.

  Without ceremony or apology, he pushes two fingers up inside of me, and I gasp at the intrusion. His fingers glisten on the withdrawal, and closing his eyes, he shoves them into his mouth. He shudders, shaking his head, and his hand balls into a tight fist. “Tell me to stop, Isa. For fucks sake, tell me to stop, and I will. I swear it.”

  Swallowing a gulp, I set the knife onto the nightstand and shake my head, my whole body trembling. “No.”

  For a moment, we stare back at each other in a battle of wills, until he finally groans, slips my panties off, and tosses them away. “I’m selling my fucking soul for this, so I hope it’s as good as I imagined.” Taking hold of his cock, he strokes himself while he seems to admire my body, biting his lip as the iniquity dances in his eyes. Darkly erotic, he reminds me of the bad twin in my dreams. The one who fucks me without apology. The one I secretly desire most, for reasons I can’t begin to explain. “I’m no lover, and I’m not equipped to offer the emotional security a girl your age requires. To be clear, I’m here to fuck you. Hard. That’s all.”

  His words send a shiver of anticipation down my spine, and my thighs twitch. “I’m not looking for a pep talk from you.”

  “Then, it’s settled. I gave you a choice.” The rough and ragged texture of his voice oozes desperation and tenuous restraint. Trembling muscles, and the unyielding spark in his eyes, make me wonder if I really have a choice, at all. If a powerful man like Lucian can be pushed to the brink of taking without asking.

  It doesn’t matter. I’ve dreamed of this. Of him. Coming to me in my sleep. I want the savage beast that I imagine lies beneath the thin mask of control he wears. The devil who whispers in my ear while I dream, spinning depraved promises. “I want you,” I whisper, lying back against the pillow.

  Lowering himself, he slants his mouth over mine, and I swallow his moan. He fists my shirt, yanking up the hem of it, exposing my bare breasts beneath, and the growl of appreciation vibrates over my skin when he dips his face to suckle me.

  I cup the back of his head, squirming against the merciless tug at my nipple. A zap of pain comes with the scrape of his teeth, and I cry out, closing my fist around a handful of hair. “More, please.” Drunk with lust, I mindlessly reach down between my thighs and take hold of his straining shaft.

  Drawing his hips forward, he allows me to stroke him, while he holds himself propped on outstretched arms. He slowly rocks into my palm, his cock harder than before. So hard, I can’t imagine him fitting it into me.

  I stir my hips beneath him, rocking in the same tempo as his imagined thrusts, and the moment his eyes finally lock on mine, desperate and starving, I know I’m in trouble. I’ve finally pushed him over the edge.

  “Please, Lucian.”

  “I could.” The length of his cock slides across my soaked entrance that’s aching to be filled. Teasing and taunting me. “But I want to watch you squirm beneath me like hooked bait. Desperate.”

  Biting my lip, I focus on the sensation of his skin against mine, rubbing across my sensitive slit every time he drives forward. The lust burning in my belly like hot coils ready to ignite.

  “I want my name to echo inside your head like a blade across your skull, because that’s what you are to me. The knife that cuts deeper and deeper.” Every word that pours from his lips is like my own blade dragging across my arm, and I moan at the thought of such relief, that moment when the blood seeps through the burn.

  “Please,” I whine, my body tense and trembling, waiting for it. Rolling my head on the pillow is all I can do to fight the feverish passion burning through me. The craving I feel for him right now must be what every junkie on the planet suffers, just before that needle plunges into the vein. “I need it. I need you.”

  The tearing sound draws my attention to where he rips a condom free of its foil of between his teeth, and he slides it down his length before tossing the wrapper onto the nightstand. “You love this. You love what you do to me, don’t you?” Sheathed cock in hand, he slings my legs over his shoulders and drives forward, my body tensing with his size, and I breathe hard through clenched teeth.

  “Relax, Isa.” He inches further, working his way deeper, stretching me with his girth. As he pushes to the hilt, filling my womb, his teeth come together in a hiss that ends on a curse.

  Like an invisible string pulling my chest, I arch into him and cry out.

  Capturing my screams in his mouth, he eats my cries of pain, devouring my breath, and thrusts deeper. A growl vibrates against my lips, and his cock slides in and out of me, creating a wet glide.

  “Fuck, Isa,” he says against my mouth. “Fuck!” His breaths are broken and fervent, teeth scraping across my jaw.

  Solid muscles flex and tremble beneath my hands, where I hold tight to his shoulders, drawing him into me. On a single-minded mission toward climax, he ravages my body, taking what he wants from me. Fiery and restless, he fucks as if his entire existence rides on pleasure, as if it�
�s a requirement for his survival, and I’m the food source.

  All I can do is hang on and hope I survive the aftermath.

  Skin slick with sweat, he reminds me of a starving animal cut loose from its confines, one determined to feed to the point of gluttony.

  My stomach tightens at the sight of him, the smell of his skin, and the slapping sounds that echo in the room, as he works himself toward what he needs from me. I’m shaking with excitement and fear for what’s to come. The uncertainty of what it means now that we’ve crossed this line.

  In my experiences with sex, which have been nothing more than quickies in the backseat of a car, there’s nothing beyond this. The guy does up his pants and drops me off at home. I wish I could say that I trust Lucian completely, and know he won’t discard me afterward, but I can’t trust what I’ve never known. As much as I want to come and give in to the pleasure alongside him, I don’t want the moment to end, for fear of the black void. The humiliation and shame that inevitably follows.

  I offer myself up like a sacrifice, letting him tear away my skin, down to my bones, where the vulnerable parts of me are buried so deep, I don’t even recognize them anymore. Secret fantasies wrapped in delicate black ribbons, just wanting for a man like Lucian to pull the strings and unravel my tightly-woven facade.

  We’re just having a little fun.

  The tiny compartments inside my mind open to the voices from my past, and eyes screwed shut, I shake my head, willing them away.

  No, please. Not now. I won’t let them ruin this moment.

  You’re dirty. Nothing but a dirty fucking slut.

  A spasm of pain sends jagged lights behind my eyelids, the panic seeping in from the fringes. “No,” I whisper.

  A soft caress against my cheek draws my eyes open to Lucian. My dark knight. The shadow on my wall when I sleep. The tickle on my skin when I’m alone.

  A man. Not the selfish and childish boys of my past, who take without permission, and touch without invitation.

  He slows his thrusts, his eyes burning with concern. “Isa, what’s wrong? Am I hurting you?”

  It’s only then I notice the tears slipping down my temples, and I shake my head.

  “Why are you crying? This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  I reach up to touch his face, running my thumb over his scar. “Have you ever wished one moment could last forever?”

  Tipping his head, he seems to study me, then leans forward for another kiss, this one less demanding, gentle. He slides my legs off his shoulders and lowers himself to his elbows so that our bodies are closer together, my breasts pressed against his chest. Forehead resting against mine, he rolls his hips, smooth and steady as a metronome, in a lazy and languid tempo. “I’ll hold out as long as I can, but I can’t lie, you’ve got me burning up right now.”

  I lift my head to kiss him and wrap my legs around his back. “No. I’m ready. Just promise me, afterward? You won’t treat me like shit.” More tears spring to my eyes, and I hate myself for ruining this. I hate that my past is filled with so much baggage I could start my own fucking luggage company. I hate that he now knows perhaps my worst weakness.

  He kisses the tear streaking down my temple, and his eyes are locked on mine. “I told you, there’s a difference between getting fucked by a boy and getting fucked properly.” Hand stroking my hair, he wears an earnest expression. “You’re mine. And I would never hurt what’s mine.”

  Lips pressed to mine, he ups his pace again, winding my body back up.

  You’re mine. Perhaps it slipped from his lips unintentionally, because only moments ago, he told me all he came to do was fuck me. Hard.

  You’re mine.

  Mine.

  His.

  “Yours,” I whisper mindlessly, watching in awe as climax crests over his face like the sun rising on the edge of the ocean. The rush of blood beneath his skin, the blaze of violence in his eyes, with every thrust inside of me. He tips his head back, and the veins in his neck pulse with the tight clench of his jaw, while his hips hammer into me.

  “Again,” he says, raggedly.

  “I’m yours.” Panting through my nose, I grip the bedsheets at either side of me, scrambling for something to hang on to, as the pinnacle of ecstasy draws closer and the fragile strings grounding me begin to fray. My senses blur to nothing but Lucian. His eyes. The scent of him filling my brain with a voracious craving. The delectable flavor of his skin on my tongue.

  Quick, controlled movements have his cock pistoning in and out of me, his powerful thighs slamming into mine. He dips forward for another kiss, sealing our lips together as my body thirsts for oxygen. I turn my head to break the kiss, but he takes hold of my jaw, suffocating me with his mouth. I moan and shift against him, my body in a frenzy. A maelstrom of agony and promise.

  He doesn’t stop.

  Body jerking for air and the need for release, I climb higher and higher. Tighter and tighter. I close my eyes to a flash of blinding light, and arch my back, finally breaking the kiss on a gasp of breath, and the warm rush explodes through my veins. Crying out, I arch higher, my body paralyzed with the pleasure pulsing through every muscle.

  The bed squeaks as he bangs out the last few seconds, and his curse bounces off the walls around me. Jets of warm fluid leak down my thigh, and he directs more onto my belly, where he’s ripped off the condom and began stroking himself. White ribbons spring from the head of his cock, collecting in a pool of hot fluids.

  He takes my hand, smoothing my palm over his sticky release, and kisses me hard. “You feel that? Weeks of pent-up torment, all for you. Wear it like a fucking crown, because no other woman has made me come so much in my life.”

  His words are crude, but hot, and when he slides his hands beneath me, lifting me up from the bed, I’m so exhausted, boneless and satisfied, that I can barely wrap my arms around him.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, out of breath.

  “I’m going to get you clean, and then I’m going to fuck you again.” His comment tugs a weak chuckle from my chest, as I rest my head against his shoulder. “You find that amusing?”

  “I find that amazing.” The getting clean part, in particular. No one usually sticks around long enough to clean me, aside from tossing me a rag from some compartment in their car. Perhaps that’s the difference, as he warned me, between fucking a boy and a man.

  “Well, brace yourself. Because the only thing that gets me off more than knives is water.”

  Chapter 41

  Lucian

  Five years ago …

  “There’s a meeting at the Institute this week. I’ll ask you that you go in my place. It’ll be good for you to get acquainted with some of the members of the Collective.” My father leans back in his chair, his feet kicked up on the ottoman, as if the request is of no consequence to him.

  Across from him, I sit forward and frown. “It’s not a good week. Roark’s been waking up with nightmares—“

  “He has a mother. You have a job. And one of your duties in said job is to attend meetings on my behalf.”

  “This isn’t a real meeting,” I bite back, staring at him beneath lowered brows. “It’s a waste of time. Precious time that I could be spending with my own son.”

  “A waste of time. A waste of time?” The tone in his voice is a warning, the rack of a gun pointed at my head. “You being afforded time to spend with your son is entirely made possible by the Collective who pulled your grandfather out of a shit life. If not for this group, you’d be at fucking sea for months out of the year, begging for shark scraps so you could feed your precious little family!”

  “A debt that’s been paid decades over in blood.”

  “A debt that will never be paid, you ungrateful shit!” Liquor spills over his glass onto his shirt with the jerky movements of his anger.

  “I hate to disappoint you, Father, but I don’t harbor your love for making my son miserable. I’m not a fucking sadist who gets off on watching the torture of another
man.”

  At the sound of something shattering in a nearby room, followed by what must be Anna’s shrieks, I snap my head toward the door. In an instant, I’m pushing out of my chair, and I stride out of the library and down the hallway, to find Anna and Roark in my father’s hobby room.

  Small bits of porcelain lay scattered at Roark’s tiny feet, as he stands picking at his lip, watching Anna scramble to clean it up. From the coloring on each piece, it would appear to be one of my father’s many beer steins that he’s collected over the years.

  Kneeling down beside Anna, I help her pick up the pieces before Roark can step on one.

  “I’m sorry, Master Lucian. We were playing hide and seek, and …” Petite, and perhaps only just twenty years old, Anna always seems nervous around my father. No doubt, she’s probably ready to peel herself right out of her skin to avoid his wrath for this.

  “It’s all right.”

  “What’s going on here?” My father knocks into my shoulder as he passes, and when he bends forward to pick up a much larger chunk of the stein, a look of shock registers on his face. “This was the last Thewalt ever made. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” He lurches toward Anna, but turns toward my son, taking hold of his shoulder.

  At Roark’s first cry, I jump to my feet on a rush of pure adrenaline.

  My father draws back his hand to strike him, but I catch his wrist, my teeth grinding in rage. A blinding fury explodes inside of me, and I shove hard against his chest, knocking him backward, over the coffee table, and he tumbles onto the floor.

  Roark cries when I lift him into my arms, my whole body trembling with potent violence, and I breathe hard through my nose to catch my breath. “I ever see you raise a hand to my son again, mark my words, I will take pleasure in your suffering.”

  With one hand holding his arm, he sits forward and chuckles drily. “I see the trait’s alive and well within you, after all.”