by Zara Cox
“There’s that challenge again,” he murmurs. He looks deceptively calm, lying there with his hands behind his head, but the hooded eyes fixed on me haven’t lost an ounce of their intensity.
“I’m not challenging you—” I stop when his phone pings. We both look down at the screen. Even upside-down, I can read the words.
Wardrobe ETA 5pm. B.
When the screen goes dark again, I look up. “What’s her story?”
One indolent eyebrow lifts. “Is that your way of asking me if I’m fucking the help, Cleo?”
A nasty little ball congeals in my stomach. I have no intention of investigating it so I shake my head. “It wasn’t.” I take a beat to congratulate myself for an even voice, biting my tongue to stop the other two words aching to burst free. They give me the finger as they launch out of my mouth. “Are you?”
“Not this particular one. B and I are strictly business.”
Not this particular one.
No way are those four words biting into my skin. I’m just itching with…something. “But she runs clothes errands for you?”
“I haven’t needed one until today. She will be adequately compensated. As to what her story is, I didn’t ask. She didn’t offer to tell me. We both like things that way.”
I recall the phone call in the parking garage last night. Whomever she was talking to, she was more than holding her own. While not ashamed to let a trace of vulnerability show. “She reminds me of Jessica Jones.”
One corner of his mouth twitches. “She’s in charge of this place because she’s a badass, and fortunately she doesn’t have JJ’s drinking problem or super-rage issues. Both of which I consider bonuses.”
Discovering he knows about a favorite TV character prompts a dozen other questions. Mundane, boringly sane questions that shouldn’t have even the tiniest platform in this space.
He takes a breath, and my eyes are drawn to his ink. It’s not the safest subject but I choose it anyway because, hell, nothing is safe when it comes to Axel. “What does that symbolize?” I point to the yin yang tattoo at his navel.
“Harmony. Fucked up.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I thought I had it. The perfect balance right there in my hand. Turned out I was wrong.”
“When…when did you think you had it?”
“Time and dates no longer matter, but as these things tend to happen, it was right before my life turned to shit. After that, I hated the sight of it. It was either cut it out or burn it. I chose the burning flames of hell.”
His scorching gaze suggests those flames are nowhere near abating. That the subject is still a precarious one. Leaving it alone, my gaze travels up his chest to the ink peeking from his collar. I want to know about those too, but I decide to leave them alone for now.
“Why a ‘punishment’ club?” I ask instead. That’s more in keeping with the man he is. I tell myself that I’m not asking because I want to understand. There is no understanding. There never will be.
“Because everyone sins. Everyone deserves punishment. Why not make a killing off it?” Stark, soulless answers that should explain everything but are nowhere near enough.
“What are yours?”
His eyes meet mine, and all I see is an endless landscape of nothing. “Ah, baby, they’re too many to count. But rest assured, I’m getting everything that’s coming to me.”
My breath catches, and my heart bleeds despair. “You sound sure about that but who are you to decide what your punishment should be? Surely, it’s the right of the wronged party to decide what penance their tormentor gives?”
For the first time, he can’t meet my gaze. His hooded lids sweep down and shut, and the muscles in his bent arms bunch until he’s cradling his head, his breathing growing ragged as if he’s fighting a demon from within. When his chest rises in a deep, long exhale, the sound is sub-human. “Not if they are no longer breathing.”
The shock of hearing the admission fall from his mouth sucker-punches me so hard, I’m certain I’ll never be able to take another whole breath. The blood drains from my head, and my hands fly to my mouth.
In every single way this played out in my mind on dark, rage-filled nights, not once did I imagine Axel confessing to his sins.
Now that it’s out, now that it’s writhing at my feet, I don’t know what to do with it. I want to pick it up and shove it back into him, to have that obtusely hopeful kernel that never died inside me, the one that hoped that all this was one giant mistake, to have been worth me doubting his guilt.
I thought I hated him before. That emotion is nothing compared to what I feel for him now. And I’m agonizingly aware why that is.
Dear God…I feel sick. Bile rises, fast and acrid.
I jump off the bed, striking blindly for the bathroom. The sheet tangles around my legs, and I yank desperately at it.
Behind me, the bed creaks. “Where the hell are you going?” His voice is pulsing with something coarse and alien. I hope to God it’s all the demons in hell flaying every inch of him.
“I going to the bathroom,” I spit out without turning around. “And I’m going alone! Surely I’m allowed that dignity?”
Whether he agrees or not, he lets me go.
I slam the door, turn the lock, and rush to the bowl. But the nausea is gone. So are my tears. Everything is shut down.
I close the toilet lid and sit on it, shaky hands pulling the sheet around my trembling body.
What is wrong with me? I’ve known the truth for eight years. Have meticulously plotted an eye-for-an-eye reckoning while sitting at my mother’s bedside, watching machines breathe for her.
And now I’m almost…sorry he confessed?
Chapter Twenty-Four
ATONEMENT: PART ONE
Axel
She knows who I am. She knows what I am.
I know who she is.
Her sins have loomed very large in my mind for a very long time. But I never stopped to imagine how mine would look to her.
Never imagined what seeing myself in her eyes would do to me. I once dropped my guard during an illegal cage fight with a Filipino bruiser. His concealed kalis slashed my thigh wide open. The wound took three weeks to heal, each moment of that healing process hellish agony.
The pain I feel now is a thousandfold multiplied what I felt then. Sitting on the side of the bed with my head in my hands, I wonder in what dimension I imagined confessing would be okay.
Because it’s good for the soul? Probably, if you believe in Sunday school stories and fairies. And if you believe you have a soul to redeem. I don’t. And now she knows.
I raise my head and stare at the bathroom door. There’s no sound coming from inside. She’s been in there ten minutes. She wants to be alone. I should respect that.
The idea bumps around in my head like a clumsy puzzle piece seeking its slot. I’m not surprised when it doesn’t find a landing.
Because fuck that.
When it comes to Cleo nothing is ever as it should be. Besides, we’re not here, in this room, for the fun of it. We’re here because, no matter what she thinks of me now, she’s still mine.
I stand. Agonized but resolute.
My first knock receives no response. I try again. Harder.
“What?” Her voice is weak. Worn. Heartbroken?
The yearning to believe that last emotion sears through me. But hot on its heels…I loved a figment of my imagination who was never going to live up to reality.
I push my own imaginings to one side. “Time to come out, Cleo.”
“Why?”
A dozen answers crowd on my tongue. I discard them one by one in favor of the bald truth. “Because you have to face who I am sooner or later. And because your time is mine, I vote for sooner.”
She makes a sound that rips at something wide open inside me. Like the pain that lurks inside me, this new rip pisses me off. They all point to weaknesses I thought I conquered on the battlefield. The special black ops team I was assigned to follo
wing the Taranahar incident trained what extraneous emotions I had left after Cleo out of me. It taught me to divorce myself from everyday emotion. And yet I’ve never been rawer, felt more exposed, since she turned up at the club three weeks ago.
The sound of running water comes through the door for a few seconds. Then silence. I force myself not to kick the door open. And wait.
When she emerges, her face is paler than I’ve ever seen, her blue eyes dark and haunted. Not that she allows me to look into them for long. She slides past me and heads to the window where I fucked her an hour ago, her gaze fixed on the street below.
“Why did you tell me?” she finally asks, her voice husky and broken. “You could have kept it to yourself for…for the rest of your life. So why?” A raw, dejected demand.
My hands flex. Bunch. Flex. Words feel inadequate for the weight I carry inside. “Perhaps it was wrong but I needed…” A confessor. “If I could take it back, I would.”
She rounds on me, her eyes wild pools of desolation. “Well you can’t! You…you can never take it back.” She shakes her head and storms back toward the bed. When I reach her, her mouth is pinched tight as if she’s holding it together by a thread.
Jesus. How the fuck selfish am I? To dump this burden on her when she blatantly stated that the reason she left was because she couldn’t handle the violence?
But then why take up with Finnan? What the hell does he have on her?
The questions blaze through my mind, but I coldly snuff it out. She wasn’t inclined to tell me before. She most definitely wouldn’t now. But this…her naked torment is down to me.
“I’m going to make amends, Cleo.”
Her head snaps up, her eyes narrowing with incredulity. “How? How do you make up for…for killing someone?”
The wave of helplessness that sweeps through me is so debilitating, I stagger forward and drop into the armchair. She thinks it’s only one. I can’t bear to set her straight. My head feels heavy as I shake it. “I don’t know. I haven’t found a solution yet, but I’m working on it.”
Her face clenches in a grimace of anguish and she throws her arms out. “How do I know those aren’t just words? Here you are, living your billion-dollar life, driving your sports cars, getting to choose how many women to fuck in one night, and having minions on speed dial. How does any of it coming anywhere close to making amends?”
“Those are useless trappings. Whether I give away every last penny I have or make another billion by Christmas, nothing is going to stop the endless cycle of hell that greets me every time I open my eyes and stays with me every single fucking second. Hell, sometimes I don’t sleep at all. You know why? Because sometimes in dreaming there’s hope. And you know what the fuck is worse than hope? It’s hope based on nothing!”
Her eyes widen in alarm at my savage tone.
I take a breath. Look away. But I can’t not look at her for long. She draws me back. Fucking Christ. She always will.
I can’t read the emotion that weaves through her eyes, maybe because my every sense is churning in a life-size blender.
She walks forward and perches on the bed in front of me. “You want to make amends? Then let me go.”
Let her…What?
The blender stops, and everything freezes. “Let you go… Hell no,” I snarl.
Her bottom lip quivers until she firms it. “Axel—”
“He physically abused you, Cleo. I’m not fucking sending you back to him.” My gaze drops to her midriff. I don’t need to pull the sheet away to recall the ugly bruises on her skin. “I don’t give a shit what he’s holding over your head. He’s never getting the chance to do that to you again.”
She inhales sharply. “I’m going back. I have to.”
“Tell me why you want to go back!” I don’t realize I’ve surged to my feet until her head snaps up.
A second later, she looks away. A vice clamps my chest. Hard.
“It’s not so easy, is it? Laying yourself bare? Opening yourself up to judgment?”
Her eyes are a little less haunted, a little more enraged, when she looks back up “I don’t owe you any explanations, Axel. As you said before, I’m merely your pawn. So do with me what you will, but don’t expect me to open up my heart to you just so you can inspect who lives in it. That is one satisfaction I’ll never grant you.”
The pressure in my chest tightens, the ferocity of it reddening my vision. I move without thought. Without focus. “Fine, then let’s concentrate on other avenues of satisfaction.”
The urgency to lose myself, now, pulls me under. She may not want to show me her heart—and just when did that become the single most important focus of my life?—but there are many other ways she can satisfy me.
I stare down at her, note her agitated breathing, the twitching of her fingers on the sheet. “The damn sheet is in my way again, Cleo. Make it so it’s not.” I sound like a being possessed. I feel like a beast owned. Chained by shackles she’s not even aware she owns.
Her tongue swirls over her lower lip, her breath growing choppier. “Axel—”
My name on her lips produces a potent, unmistakable effect. My thickening cock roars to life, the urgent jerks already tenting my pants. “There’s been enough talking for the day, baby. Time to shut that pretty mouth and put it to a different use.”
I grab my cock to alleviate the teeth-clenching ache taking over.
Her gaze falls to the proud evidence, and a decadent shudder ripples through her small frame. Beneath the sheet, her nipples peak. My already altered mind slides further into madness.
She seems to debate with herself, her slightly glazed eyes going from the cock I’m gripping to my face and helplessly back again. I smile inwardly. If I had a heart, I would pity her. For whatever reason, destiny and chemistry colluded to give us bodies that insanely turn each other on.
“You can’t help yourself, can you?” I mutter. There is no pleasure in my voice. No gloating. I’m just as helpless in this as she. But it’s the only thing she is offering. And, from her, I’ll take anything I can fucking get. And set the whole fucking world alight for a chance to have more.
The eyes that meet mine burn with lust and annihilate with censure. I reach out and brush a finger down her soft, warm cheek. Asking for forgiveness for the craving that has always been bigger than me? Maybe.
“You may have condemned my decayed soul and closed your heart to me, but in some respects, nothing has changed. Your body will always sing the perfect tune for me.”
A ragged little moan rips from her throat, and depraved asshole that I am, the sound goes straight to my cock. I lower my zipper, slowly so I don’t do myself an injury. My lack of underwear aids my eager dick in springing free. It juts out, ravenous and throbbing.
Her mouth drops open and her nostrils flare as she scents me delicately. The drugged want in her eyes threatens to knock me off my feet. I remove my T-shirt, toss it away, and then lurch closer, offering myself to her.
“Take it, baby. It’s yours.” It always has been. I’m beginning to fear it always will be.
A hungry little swallow and she reaches for me.
“The sheet, Cleo,” I bite out.
She raises the arm securing the sheets. The cotton slides down her tits, pausing for a cheeky second on the tight peaks before it drops to her lap.
Their gorgeous fullness makes my mouth water and sends moisture to other parts of me. Pre-ejaculate beads on my crown, and my cock bobs harder.
“Take me in your mouth. Suck me,” I croak, barely recognizing my own voice.
Her hand closes over me. Tentative at first, it turns bolder when a thick groan rocks me. Slowly, torturously, she strokes upward, drawing more of my need to my crown. She seems fascinated by that drop of pre-cum. All I want is to feel her tongue taste it. “Now, Cleo.”
Doe eyes sweep up my pecs to my face and hold my gaze. Then she brings me inch by excruciating inch to her mouth. She knows the power she has over me. And she wields it mercil
essly. The first sweep of her tongue catapults me to heaven. The second plunges me to hell because it’s not enough. My fingers claw into her hair, cradle her scalp. “More!”
Still she teases. Flicks and nips, up and down my shaft. My thighs tremble with the ferocity of need pounding through me.
“Goddammit, Cleo, suck me.” I don’t care that I’m pleading. All I want is to be in her mouth, her body.
She takes my crown and pulls it into her mouth with gentle suction, while her tongue teases my hole and her hand pumps me with firmer strokes.
The steady rhythm of suction and stroking threatens to blow my mind. Gradually, she takes me deeper, sucks harder.
My whole body is caught in a series of shudders I can’t stop. Hell, I don’t want to stop. Helpless words fall out of my mouth. “Fuck, that’s so good. You look so gorgeous. Yes. Yes!”
My balls tighten, and my vision begins to blur. I blink hard and fast. I don’t want to miss a second of what she’s doing to me. Fire gathers at the small of my back, threatening a blaze I may never recover from. But I don’t care. This feeling, this moment, here with her, is all I crave. Already it’s going too fast. She’s too fucking good at this. My gut clenches as I try to apply the brakes on my flailing control. Her mouth is the stuff of dreams but I want something more.
My hands move from her hair to catch beneath her arms. Surprise slackens her hold on me and I use the momentum to lift and toss her on the bed.
“I’m dying to blow my load in that glorious mouth of yours, and I will, soon. But right now, I want to finish in that tight pussy. So open up for me.”
Her breath catches but her thighs fall open without protest. The sight of her pink, glistening cunt sends my heart rate through the roof. She’s still wet with my release from before, but the swelling of her clit, the plumping of her pussy lips, is all new.
Doubly intoxicating.
Still mine.
I draw my tongue through her soft folds, the sound of her breathy moan music to my ears. I lick and tease, bite and suck, until the mingled taste of my cum and her juices is diluted with a fresh burst of her pre-release. Her clit fattens, and her thighs begin to shake. I insert one finger inside her. Then two. Jesus, I’ll never get over her tightness.