Crescendo (Beautiful Monsters Book 1)

by Lana Sky

  I’m half mindless when he finally slows, his body heavy against my back. I don’t react when he pulls out and comes against me. I just lay there, relishing the heat he gives off in the otherwise cold room. He doesn’t shift his weight from me when I slump face down against the mattress. He braces a hand against my spine instead, once again rubbing his release into my skin, using his thumb to meticulously paint me with every single drop. Once finished, he hits the mattress beside me, his breathing harsh and unsteady.

  “Lynn,” he grits out. “Is that your name?”

  I flinch and shake my head, though I’m not brave enough to lift my face from the pillow. I inhale the dust that’s embedded in the cotton along with the sweat from my own skin and his particular brand of musk. Seconds pass when I realize that I never gave him the correct answer. All this time and he hasn’t cared to ask my name. Maybe he still doesn’t; the devil is as curious as he is volatile.

  In the end, I lift my head just enough to free my mouth and whisper, “Danny. My name is Danny.”

  He grunts in acknowledgment, but I can’t tell what he thinks of it. Did he expect something different? Something prettier? I nearly laugh out loud at the fact that his approval actually seems to matter to me.

  “Only Vinny calls me Lynn,” I add, though I’m not sure why. “My real name is Daniela. He thought it wasn’t good enough for me.” It’s strange how detached I sound as if the silly matter of a name didn’t bother me in the slightest when for fifteen years it’s been one of the shackles Vinny has used to keep me under his control. He’s turned me into three different women. Only now can I start to somewhat reconcile those broken parts into one cohesive person again—though I don’t seem to be the only one with a nickname hovering above my head.

  I wait for nearly a minute before I gather up the nerve to ask him. “Why do they call you Kitty?” By “they” I meant Mack who wielded the moniker like a weapon.

  He’s inches away, but I still feel him stiffen. Lucifer can make a natural silence seem eternal. Even the steady huff of his breathing quiets. It’s not fair. Music has always been my refuge, and he takes every sound from me until the frantic beat of my pulse is all I have to count the rhythm of my sanity to. Finally, he shifts, the mattress creaking under his weight.

  “My first time in the cage, I tried to climb out,” he admits. “I was sixteen, and I was the bait before the real fight. A warm-up,” he explains. “The man was nearly twice my size, but all I had to do was last ten minutes, and I’d earn three percent of the cut—but I didn’t last five before I chickened out and tried to scale the fence. One of the men running the cage waited until I nearly cleared the top before he stuck a knife through one of the gaps and stabbed me in my side—” His hand moves to his thigh, hovering over a particularly nasty scar. “When I fell back in he shouted that ‘scared little kittens,’ didn’t belong in the cage. Only mad dogs could survive in this world.” He inhales and then exhales on a sigh. “I broke three ribs and didn’t earn a fucking dime. But I came back, and they never forgot the scared little Kitty who couldn’t run with the pack. Until I started to win that is...”

  I picture him down in the arena, cold and calculating. Then I imagine the way he’d gone after Mack. Those two creatures don’t even seem to be one in the same. A calculating devil and an out-of-control monster.

  “Whatever they call me, it doesn’t fucking matter,” Lucifer adds. “It still wouldn’t change a damn thing.”

  Part of his words resonate deep down inside me and linger long after the high from the sex has worn off. I didn’t even orgasm this time, and I don’t know why it doesn’t seem to matter. He used me the same way Vinny’s men did their “prize” whores, sating himself and leaving nothing behind.

  But his breathing sounds easier. The mattress dips deeply beneath him as he spreads out on his back and for one brief, dangerous second Lucifer is completely relaxed—as much as a devil ever could be. How easy would it be to fish my knife from my pocket and jab it into his throat? Maybe it’s the fact that he tore my pants off in the other room that makes it easier to lie there and accept this. Accept him.

  The thought alone is a sadistic game to play. He is Russian roulette, only the gun is fully loaded with bullets. His eyes are a barrel to the chest. The rasp of his voice against my aching skin is like being pistol-whipped with the body of the gun itself. But when his fingers come to trail the length of my shoulder blades...he’s mercilessly putting the gun to my head and pulling the trigger. Bang.

  There’s no real warmth in the scarred, calloused hands, but my flesh is so sensitive that I can feel every wet, open inch of his. His blood paints me too, mingling with his sweat and his seed. I should feel disgusted, I suppose, but my corrupted pores open wider, eager to absorb every last, twisted drop.

  Suddenly, it isn’t just enough to lie there. I have to draw my legs together and arch my back to find enough leverage to relieve the pressure building there. His hands are still on me, and Lucifer doesn’t miss the movement.

  “Does it hurt?” He doesn’t sound concerned. Just curious. He really is like a cat, always prodding a new mystery with his claws.

  I wince and draw myself upright further, propping my knees against the mattress and my hands against the pillow. “Yesss,” I admit, my voice tight. It hurts. The pain of the first time had been easier to ignore in the tense moments that came after. I’d turn the water in the shower to scalding and worked until my shoulders throbbed, scrubbing away at every trace of himself Lucifer had stained me with. This time, I’m left gaping open. Misused muscles scream out in torment, ripped apart during his invasion. I try my damn hardest to sink into that pain. I gnash my teeth and clench my thighs until tears spill from my eyes and sink into the cotton sheets. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, I chant to myself.

  But even the agony he delivers is a bitter poison. My body prefers to focus on the heat he gives off instead and the pulsing ache between my legs that I won’t be able to ease with the pathetic friction caused by rubbing my thighs together. I know pain, fluent in every nuance of it both mental and physical.

  But whatever he gives me is foreign, and I want more. Admitting that stings worse than any blow Vinny’s ever inflicted. I need him to leave. I need him to take what he wanted and ignore the mess he left behind. When the mattress shifts, betraying the moment he stands, I assume that he’s of the same mindset. Let’s make this clean.

  I hear him pad into the hallway, and it’s only when I’m sure he’s gone that I lean against one elbow and slide the opposite hand down along my belly. Carefully...slowly... When my fingers finally make contact with sore, vandalized flesh I can almost pretend that they aren’t my own. The lie feeds the flames, and they rise up into an inferno. At first, I only move my fingers in rapid circles where my body craves friction the most. I don’t think.

  But the needle’s in the other room, and like the world’s most pathetic addict I can’t stop myself from prodding the tip of it. Drip by precious drip, my mind floods with lethal doses of him. I picture him down in the cage. The way he looked at me... I see him in the bar, fighting Mack. Him. Him. Him.

  I gasp when my body finally begins to ride the high, but it’s just an echo of the pleasure only he can bring. This is that tasteless nicotine gum that Vinny used to quit smoking; there’s no real satisfaction, and deep down some part of me registers a terror that I refuse to let myself dwell on now. Whatever happens within the next few days...gum is all I’ll ever have—my own fingers struggling to imitate the fire only he could set. He’d been so worried about the heroin, I think, choking out a bitter laugh while my fingers swirl and twist.

  Lucifer had been worried about me. He used his own pain as a bitter antidote to counteract the drug—only I was the fool who got addicted to that new sting. Vincent Stacatto couldn’t have devised a crueler form of torture.

  My eyelids drift shut. My head thrashes, tethered to my body when all it really wants to do is break off and float away. I’m panting with the effort
it takes to drive myself toward the edge of sanity, but right when I’m just about to tip over it, I’m back inside my skin. My fingers stiffen and pull away before I realize why. Then I hear him, his footsteps heavy as he crosses over the threshold of the room and finds me there, hunched over and red with shame.

  “Turn over.”

  I flinch at the command. No, my body tells me. No. Hide. Ignore. Hide. I should curl in on myself the way I used to when Vinny would come into my room at night to “show” me how just he loved and needed me, stroking his cock while I was forced to watch.

  Only God knew Lucifer’s intentions—an ironic twist.

  But it’s that mystery that makes me finally move, twisting around to flop onto my back. I keep my eyes shut though. I wait until the anticipation practically boils me alive before I finally allow myself to look at him. He holds a rag in one hand and a plastic case in the other. A first-aid kit? I don’t have long to guess before he sets it on the end of the mattress and braces one knee between my parted legs.

  No. I make a noise somewhere between a protest and a whine. No. I want him to hit me with the cloth he brandishes in his free hand. Hit me with it. Hit me. Don’t...

  He drags it along my hip, and my breath catches: he wet it. “N-No,” I choke out when he starts to stroke across my belly. “You don’t...you don’t have to.”

  The devil doesn’t give a damn about my protests. He cleans me up with soap and water. He wipes his blood from the surface of my skin and grinds something else into me in the process. I can’t stop the heat that floods the further up my body he travels. I can’t stop myself from watching him, and his eyes trace my skin the same way I’d observe my cello right before I played, imagining just where to place my fingers and how to arrange my bow for the best sound.

  The devil plays me expertly. I gasp out in tune, and he draws out the melody, forcing me onto my stomach when he’s done with my front.

  It’s harder for him to wipe away the sticky mess on my back with just the cloth. He has to use his strength, rubbing my flesh raw in the process. When he’s finished, he tosses the cloth aside, and I crane my neck to find him wrestling with the case. He gets it open and pulls out a roll of white gauze.

  “Give me your hand,” he says without looking at me. Which one? I wonder. Then I flex my fingers and remember the wound he made. I twist around and hold out the injured limb flat and watch in shock as he proceeds to wrap a length of gauze around the cut. It’s not much of a neat job considering that his bloody hands taint the ivory bandage. He tries to rip it from the roll and winds up leaving darker splotches of red in the process.

  “S-Stop.” I lean over and flick my fingers through the objects in the case. They find a pair of scissors, and I manipulate them one-handed to snip at the gauze before he can do more damage to his hands.

  I shouldn’t touch him. I should let the beast lick his wounds in peace—something tells me that scenario wouldn’t be far from the truth. I grasp the devil by his wrist instead, and I ease the gauze from his grip. There are antiseptic wipes in the first-aid kit, and I use all twelve on his open wounds. It looks like he shoved his hands into a meat grinder, but he doesn’t even flinch when I dig into his scrapes to swipe away as much mud and grime as I do blood. He only protests—a deep, low growl—when I aim for the ones on his face next, using a clean bit of gauze and some clear antibacterial gel I found in a tube.

  Maybe if he were any other demon, I’d let him win this one battle and cower from the danger promised in his gaze. It’s his fault I resist.

  When I actually do try to wipe at the scratch on his chin, he bats my hand away and jerks out of reach. “Don’t.”

  “You’re bleeding,” I counter. I don’t feel any ounce of fear when I lean forward, the gauze in my hand, and dab at his chin. He clenches his jaw against me, and I know that he doesn’t move only because he refuses to back down from the challenge. “Hold still,” I add, my voice hoarse. An insane comparison is back when Christoph would skin his knees playing outside, and Mamãe would bandage him up with antiseptic. He’d scowl, trying his best to remain stoic while she cleansed his cuts, but she would always have to encourage him to sit still through the worst of it. You can do it, my big man.

  Lucifer can only stomach the attention for a little over thirty seconds before he knocks my hand away again. Then, he snatches the gauze from me and starts bandaging his wounds himself, wrapping it lengthwise around the hand of his that’s worse off. He bites off the gauze with his teeth and doesn’t bother to treat the other open areas. He would rather bleed all over the bedspread than appear weak.

  It’s a strange choice of action to take. Vinny guarded his health almost jealously. Every scrape or wound would have been seen to by a trusted doctor kept at his beck and call. Once, he lost control beating a man half to death and bruised the knuckles of his right hand. He wore a brace on it for a week afterward. “To protect my investment,” he claimed. Violence and bloodshed were his cultivated traits, after all. Every punch he threw himself was an investment into the foundation of his very kingdom.

  I wonder what legacy a man like Lucifer might invest in with those hands. So far, he seemed indiscriminately reckless with the tools of his trade; he’s spilled more of his own blood than he’s drawn, a fact that Vinny would scoff at.

  Lucifer wasn’t as careful in cultivating his empire. He was a wayward wolf, striking down a kill out of necessity rather than for personal gain.

  I don’t know which method I find harder to stomach. Vinny would never let me patch him up, not even partially. It’s almost as if he knew that I’d pray infection would seep into every single scratch he would force me to bathe and bandage. Gangrene, Sammy had said—I’d wish for that, for every limb to rot and fall off.

  Confused, I stare down at my hands, and I watch my fingers flex, bandaged with gauze stained with the devil’s blood. I should feel disgusted, I suppose. Instead, I don’t feel anything. No pain. Just...hunger. It gnaws away at some place far beyond my stomach—and it’s a cruel ache that somehow knows that it will never be satisfied.

  I don’t look up when the bed dips as Lucifer stands once again. He snatches up the remains of the first-aid kit and moves to place them in some distant corner of the room. When he returns to the foot of the mattress, I expect him to issue some kind of command. Sit up. Get up. Clean yourself up. Anything to reattach the invisible collar of captive and master. The muscles in my legs tense, almost eager to obey. I’ll roll over. Fetch. Beg. Anything to remember the need to survive above all else.

  But he doesn’t say a damn thing. He watches me. Something sick and weak within myself makes me look up to find his eyes boldly staring between my legs. They’re parted. I’m still throbbing. God...I’m on fire.

  And Lucifer, the devil, doesn’t look away. He doesn’t have the decency to even appear ashamed. He boldly takes me in, his hand falling over my hip when I start to bring my knees together, branding his lust into my skin. I should push him off the same way he did when I tried to cleanse his wounds. He’s a bitter salve against lacerations I didn’t even know were still open. His heat sinks into my skin, his fingers mending the rent and ruined pieces. When my head falls back, however, it’s the universal sign of surrender: a doe presenting its neck for the killing blow. And he kills me, sinking to his knees with a guttural sound that rattles me inside and out.

  He swipes a hand between my legs, making me part them myself rather than force them open. It’s a chilling sense of helplessness. He sees into me, admiring the fire his very presence stokes—particularly the way the flames lurch against the harshness of his fingertips, aching to be fed. He uses a thumb first, sinking it deep...

  A whine tears from my throat. My back arches, my throat dry, my eyes squeezing shut. The devil doesn’t like that. “Look at me,” he commands, his voice gruff.

  I do, and then I drown in the blue of his gaze and the dark tumult of emotions swirling inside it. He’s a confusing mixture of darkness and light, my Lucifer. I can
taste every bitter dose of rage and hatred he carries. The other flavors are harder to decipher. Lust...maybe, and something else, more potent than the rest, the very thing that drives him to rear back on his knees, his eyes finding mine and boring deep.

  “Touch yourself...like before.” His voice is so gritty that a part of me chafes against it. But, like a good puppet, my hand’s already twitching to obey. He watches my trembling fingers creep down my belly. He waits...and then he observes the way my fingers ease against the flesh dominated by his still penetrating thumb. I’m not brave enough to join him there, expanding the burning fullness. I find that tender piece of me instead and I rub...swirl...twist. My body knows what it wants, and my hips arch violently, jarring my hand against his. Whether as a result of the jolting contact or of his own volition, he’s pressing harder. Deeper.

  “Fuck.” My teeth clip over the curse. It’s the language he taught me the same way that Vinny forced me to learn English: through example. Maybe my pronunciation is off because Lucifer’s eyes narrow further. He jerks his wrist, increasing the pressure...

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  My own fingers are pathetic emulators. The things he does. The way he moves. You can’t learn that kind of predatory domination. He makes me try, however, and when my hand slows, he stops generating any friction.

  “Touch,” he growls, and he doesn’t touch me again until I do. It’s a slow agonizing climb. Slow because he wants it to be. Agonizing because it’s not my pleasure he’s after. It’s merely his own curiosity he seeks to fulfill. How far can he push the “little bitch” before her spine jerks against the bed and her hips twist, seeking out the brutal contact only his fingers can deliver? How long before she starts to moan despite the way she attempts to seal her mouth shut by digging her teeth into her lower lip? How long before she suffers his half-assed thrusting before she catches his wrist in her hand and makes him give it to her...

  Hot, fierce, brutal, violent things. Everything.