by Luna Quinn
“Please,” she said, quietly. He wasted no time.
Kicking the door open all the way, he entered fully, dragging a now protesting Sasha into the living room. Her fight was real, but he knew it was only part of this game—that no longer felt like a game—they were playing. There was no doubt in his mind that the roles they’d both taken up so naturally fit her just fine because the minute he’d manhandled her, her arousal had flared to epic proportions.
“Oh, the mighty Judge thinks he’s going to punish me, huh?” she said, goading him.
Looking around the room, he cataloged everything in her small but efficient apartment before sitting down on a brown ottoman. He pulled her across his lap, on her belly, her ass up in the air.
He hooked his fingers in the waistband of her leggings, and then he was pulling them over her hips, baring her ass. Her hips jerked.
“Razor, don’t you dare—Fuck!” Her protest ended on a moan as he brought his hand down on her ass. Hard. Repeatedly.
SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!
He didn’t miss a beat, his hand alternating from her right cheek to her left cheek. Slaps, followed by soothing rubs.
She yelped and squirmed even as, he noticed, she now arched into his slaps. He held her down firmer and smiled. Goddess, her skin was already beginning to darken. He was ridiculously happy that he’d tossed his riding gloves on the seat before heading up. The feel of her warming flesh on his bare palm was erotic on a level he couldn’t even describe.
SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!
“Motherfu—” She’d given up yelling at him and was now moaning out curses. The neighbors could probably hear her swearing, and he was more than okay with that.
Razor’s breathing was fast, his dick now painfully hard. He wanted to flip her over and sit her down on his cock, fuck her until they were both sated, which would probably be never. But he wouldn’t. Not fucking her would be part of the punishment. It would be like punishing them both.
“Bad little Reaper,” he growled. She was now undulating on his lap, trying to rub herself on him. He kept his hold on her firm.
Twenty barehanded slaps later, he finally stopped. Panting, and with an erection that would never fade, he took a minute to compose himself as he admired her ass. The temptation to push a finger into her and see just how wet she was almost unbearable.
Unsure how he managed it, he set her panties and leggings back into place, then stood up with Sasha in his arms. She was looking up at him, eyes wide, lips parted. He was pretty sure she was fighting just as hard to stay back.
Steadily, he set her to rights, taking a moment to pet her and whisper into her hair how incredible she had been.
She didn’t say anything, just blinked at him, leaning into his touch. When he was sure she wasn’t going to fall over, he cleared his throat. Not willing to leave without something for himself, Razor leaned down and placed a long kiss on the side of her throat. Her breath hitched as his tongue licked up her clean sweat. The scent of her renewed desire hit him, and he practically whimpered. But before either of them could do what they both so obviously craved, he turned on his heel and left her apartment.
If she had touched him, he wouldn’t have stopped at just sex. His instincts had been screaming at him to mark her body, her entire house for that matter, with his scent so no one would have any doubt as to who she belonged to.
He practically ran out. No, she didn’t belong to him. Probably never would. This had been a big fucking mistake. Again. Sexual attraction didn’t mean she wanted him forever. He was an idiot for even entertaining the idea.
Calling up every last scrap of self-control, he rushed to the parking garage. His fangs were out, his dick was about to burst, and more worrisome, his beast was snarling at him to go back to her.
Razor drove off like his soul was on the line. And maybe it was, who the fuck knew, but he broke every traffic law as he got away from Sasha and the impossible things he wanted from her.
Chapter Fifteen
Razor confused the fuck out of her. Sasha paced in front of her couch, torn on how to even begin to react to what he’d just done. And how he’d left her when she’d been seconds away from getting on her knees and begging for more. Actually begging. The scary part was that she was absolutely shameless about it. He had opened the floodgates, and she wanted him. Bad.
She had obviously expected him to come running to retrieve the bike she’d stolen, but she hadn’t even begun to hope for what actually had happened. She’d pleaded for it, and he’d spanked her. She repeated it through her head as she paced, seeing flashes of his face, so intent on his task. Feeling the warmth across her ass, and the memories of his hand so restrained as it came down on her bare flesh.
Ever since they’d fucked, there was a growing hunger within her, and she wanted to demand more from him. So yeah, maybe she had actually stolen the bike to challenge him. To see what he would do in response. He seemed to be better at reading her than she was at admitting things to herself.
And oh, had he delivered.
The restraint it took for him to walk out when they both so clearly wanted to continue made her feel on edge, annoyed even. She’d never felt like this before, and it made her want to crawl the walls.
That gnawing hunger inside her drove her to want to remove every last piece of his restraint. She wanted him wild. Sasha wanted to strip away that control, piece by piece, to see what lay underneath. And then she wanted to watch as all the puzzle pieces slammed to the ground and flew apart so she could be the one to put him back together.
Oh, how the tables have turned.
The thought made her stop in her tracks. What happened to only getting their kicks and moving on with business? When had this become something more complicated?
Oh, she knew why. That much she could admit. He called to something deep within her, a primal part of her that answered to him and his beast.
Shaking her head, she decided to ignore all the deep and meaningful crap. Deciding it was better to play it cool, she took her phone out of her pocket and went to her text messages. The last thing Razor had texted her was about their investigation. She was about to spice up their conversation history.
She grinned evilly and typed quickly.
Next time you spank me, hit harder.
Her playful grin faded before she hit send. The truth of the statement rang clear. Razor had read her right. She hadn’t just been challenging him when she’d stolen his bike. She’d practically begged him for punishment before she’d even opened her mouth. He was the Judge, the one she could always trust to strictly stick to the rules, to what was fair. She could trust his judgments and punishments. Even though she mocked him for his restraint, she counted on that. Was that what had prompted her to throw down the challenge?
That was a scary thought. He knew what she’d been up to before she consciously realized it. And it wasn’t the simple, lust-only relationship she claimed to want. Yet…it felt good. Right.
A part of her, buried deep, stirred to life within her. She hesitated for another moment, then added another sentence to the text.
When I really need the release of a punishment, it should involve tears.
She stared at the words, now too truthful to be playful, and hit send before she could change her mind. She tossed her phone down without waiting for a response. Just then, she felt the stirrings of a Call to collect a soul somewhere in Sector Five, and she was all too happy to answer it. Changing quickly, she left her apartment to find the soul.
She left her phone on the couch, afraid of what she could be unleashing.
The Call to collect a soul was like claws slicing into her gut. Unpleasant at first, then incredibly painful three seconds later. When a Reaper was called to duty, they didn’t linger.
Sasha had ignored a Call once. It was a mistake she wouldn’t repeat ever again. On so many levels.
When the initial tug of the Call pitched her stomach, so did the name of the soul. Sometimes, they got whispers
of information about the soul. Sometimes, they got nothing.
In the back of her mind, she heard the soft breath, words barely audible. “Emma Parishkov. Age three years, two months.”
No.
Ice gathered in her veins.
This was impossible.
The voice lied. The claws in Sasha’s stomach dug deeper, and she fought every instinct in her body. Even when she felt herself start to disappear, she resisted the Reaper gift of appearing next to the soul they needed to collect.
So young. Too young.
Impossible.
Sasha forced air into her lungs, her throat burning as she pushed her tears back down. The claws doubled, tripled, pulling at her from every side. She stumbled backward, feeling the wall at her back. Still, she felt pulled forward, backward, up, down, everywhere and nowhere.
Cold. She was so cold.
Darkness collapsed on her, her vision narrowing. The hallway of the grand castle she stood in turned like a wheel. The ceiling spun around her. The floor swayed in front of her, then dropped.
Still, she would not let herself be taken there.
She smelled the sharp tang of fresh blood before she felt the pain in her nose, the sharp edges of the stone floor pressing into her cheeks. She must have fallen. She didn’t care.
“EMMA PARISHKOV! AGE THREE YEARS, TWO MONTHS!” No longer a whisper, Xavier’s familiar voice thundered through her head. Veins pounded at her temples, and she cried out as the pain shot through every cell in her body.
If her nose hadn’t already been broken and bleeding, the combination of the room rolling over and over around her and the booming voice in her head would have made her nose bleed. Nausea churned in her belly. Tears streamed down her cheeks, the blood mixing with the salty tears and streaking into her hair. Into her ears.
She didn’t notice.
“NO!” She must have screamed the word out loud because she could taste the blood on her tongue now. Her body jolted once, twice, before seizing uncontrollably. She had to hold on.
Just…
a little…
longer…
Maybe she would die. She would welcome the void.
As she felt her throat closing up and her lungs screaming for fresh oxygen, she lost the fight. Just not the way she’d wanted.
Hundreds of sharp claws retracted from her body as she was transported, without her consent, to collect the soul of Emma Parishkov.
Sasha found herself in a different part of the castle she’d been in, kneeling on a bearskin rug, her hands braced on the soft fur. Her fingers curled into the fur, but then she let her body go limp. She didn’t have the strength for this. Her head refused to lift, her bushy hair falling in front of her, the mass of curls shielding her from her nightmare. She couldn’t look.
She knew she wasn’t alone in the room. Two boots found purchase on the floor, and she had the impression of a man standing. A sob caught in her throat. If she was even capable of forming words, she didn’t want to try. There was nothing to say.
What could she say to the man who had just watched his firstborn daughter die?
She didn’t even flinch when his boot stomped on her shoulder hard enough to dislocate it. His boot slammed into her again, and she let the momentum push her onto her back.
“You fucking bitch!” He backhanded her hard enough for her to gasp, more tears streaming from her eyes. Her vision went white for several seconds.
“I-I didn’t…” Words still failed her, and he only hit her again, harder. When that didn’t get him anything, he switched tactics. He punched her so many times she lost count. Still dissatisfied, he kicked her belly hard. She choked on violent sobs, turning quickly to retch out the contents of her stomach. Her mind went blank. Just this morning she’d made the discovery that she was pregnant with their second child.
She welcomed his second and third kicks. She deserved this.
“Ivan—” She croaked out her husband’s name, but it fell on deaf ears.
When he had spilled enough of her blood to mollify him, when she no longer moved, Ivan left the room. Left their house. Left her life.
Minutes—hours? days?—later, Sasha crawled to her daughter’s body, her dry heaves starting all over again at the too-still body. Her sweet baby Emma lay as if she were only sleeping, but the tiny ball of white hovering over Emma’s pink pouting lips didn’t lie.
Chapter Sixteen
After Razor had left Sasha’s apartment, it had taken several hours (and several handjobs) to completely calm down. The tingling in his hand from the hits he’d delivered to her ass had lasted nearly an hour. Which hadn’t been long enough, if you asked him.
Even now, as his hand tingled for a completely different reason, the memory of the warm stinging on his palm made his dick twitch.
Razor had never spanked a woman before. Playful swats on the rear, certainly, but a spanking like the one he’d given Sasha? Never. Gods, and now he couldn’t get it out his mind. Sasha wasn’t helping the matter, either. She’d sent him a text not minutes after he’d left her, and the words still elicited a groan from him. He’d had to force himself not to reply, otherwise he would have told her he could be there in ten. And there’d be no chance of stopping anything else at that point.
Even though he wanted nothing more than a repeat—and by her text, Sasha did, too—he wasn’t ready to face her just yet. His head was still spinning from the change in direction they seemed to be taking. Hence, his mind was a bigger mess than usual.
Ducking under a doorway of a vacant building, Razor shook off his thoughts. As frustrating as the situation with Sasha remained, it was neither here nor there. He needed to concentrate on his current situation; any wrong move could get him killed. He’d already fucked up enough during this hunt; he couldn’t afford any more.
Lifting his nose in the air, he inhaled deeply, sorting through the various scents. He caught that of the Vampire he was chasing and frowned. The Vamp’s smell had altered. He was no longer just irritated that Razor was on his tail; he was now enraged.
You aren’t the only one having a bad day, asshole.
Letting his fangs drop, he moved forward. He’d have to be extra cautious. An angry Vampire was never a good one to have on his hands, let alone in Razor’s state of mind. Having Sasha on the brain while hunting a nearly immortal being wasn’t one of his smartest moves, that was for sure.
It’d been an hour since this whole Vamp fiasco had started. He had been called in on the hunt by Aleksandra, co-commander of Sector Two, who’d informed him that (and this was a direct quote) a “freaky-looking Vampire” had taken two females hostage and was now holed up in an abandoned tire shop. She and her twin, Bek, had been on his heels, and with the evidence hard to dispute, they’d called Razor for the execution. His brain had instantly latched onto the “freaky-looking” part. Sounded like the words Archer had used to describe the creature he’d encountered. So it hadn’t taken much to consider the possibility that this could be connected to the missing souls and the young females.
Crouching low, Razor slinked his way into another abandoned building. He moved through machinery, his instincts screaming at him that danger was near. It didn’t feel like it was coming from just one source…it was almost as if it were coming from everywhere. Which made it hard to decide where to aim his rifle. That being the case, it was natural for him to place one hand on the butt of his rifle and his other close to his blades.
The pure Kremortium bullets in his rifle would kill just about anything—as would the sabers made of the same stuff. All except Vampires. Using either of them would slow the Vamps down most of the time, at least enough to save his life. He wasn’t sure why Kremortium or gold didn’t work on them, something about their chemistry…or maybe it was their blood. Or something. He wasn’t even sure. Sin would probably know.
What Razor knew right now was that this Vamp was pissed off, trapped, and, based on the new scent he’d just caught, high as a fucking kite.
&nbs
p; Cursing, he finally came face to face with him.
When Razor looked down, he realized with a sad sigh that he wouldn’t have to do much deliberating to issue the death warrant. The victims, or pieces of them, were scattered in a pile of blood at the Vampire’s feet.
The Vamp roared, and his nostrils flared as he took in Razor’s scent. He had obviously registered as a threat because the Vamp’s eyes turned deadly as he bared his fangs in warning.
Baring his own fangs, Razor flipped him off before pulling up his rifle and firing a warning shot. You’re not the only deadly one, asshole. I might not be able to kill you with my weapons, but my fangs can.
Plaster flew off the wall an inch to the left to the Vamp’s forehead. “Jasic Ronson, you piece of shit motherfucker, get your ass—”
He never finished the words. The Vampire flew off the ground and, teeth bared, launched himself towards Razor.
Fucker was fast, he would give him that. But Razor was faster. The Vamp sailed through the air, and a heartbeat before he would have crashed against him, Razor kicked out his foot. His shit-kickers made contact with the Vampire’s chest and sent him flying backwards.
Wasting no time, Razor barreled towards the fallen guy, already drawing his black saber claws from their sheaths at his back. Before he could reach him, the Vampire jumped up and landed on his feet, snarling, blood and saliva spraying a little too close to Razor’s face for his comfort.
“Not cool, Jasic,” he said as he spit out the blood that had landed in his mouth, wiping at his face with his forearm.
The Vampire Jasic kept hissing, but then his blood-stained mouth opened and closed a few times as if trying to get something out that was lodged in his throat. He even heaved a few times.
Razor narrowed his eyes, taking a step back in case the dude hurled.
“The…Judge…the Judge…needs to…die,” the guy finally choked out.
Razor’s brows drew together. What was this? What was this guy saying?