by Lyra Evans
“We’re right outside should you need us,” Pine said, addressing Niko more than Sade. But Sade was the one to answer.
“We won’t,” he said, stepping ever closer to Niko. “You can get the fuck out now. This is my time.”
Pine hesitated, watching Niko’s face. But Niko nodded minutely to him, and he reluctantly left, closing and locking the door behind him. It was just Sade and Niko now.
“We’re alone,” Niko said, his eyes never leaving Sade. “Tell me what you know about the Woods.”
Sade’s smirk only grew, revealing the sharp edges of his teeth. He continued to advance on Niko slowly, like a panther preparing to pounce. Niko held firm, though his heart beat faster and faster with every moment.
“No, I don’t think so,” Sade said.
“We made a deal.” Niko worked to calm his heartrate, taking steady breaths and counting them out in his mind.
“And I haven’t gotten my end of it, have I?” Sade asked. He was inches from Niko now, and Niko’s nose filled with the scent of Sade and the prison—stone and dank, body musk and industrial soap, and that bitter flavour Niko was all too familiar with. “You didn’t really think I’d give up the goods up front, did you?” He paused, tilting his head as he took Niko in. His eyes fell low on Niko’s body. “In fact, looks to me like you don’t really want me to tell you what you want to know. Not yet.”
Niko felt himself shudder, but he couldn’t honestly say in what way. But that was his invitation, and Niko knew he needed to do what he intended to do before he lost control. He lifted his chin, meeting Sade’s gaze and moved a mite closer, taking initiative.
“Okay, fine,” Niko said. “So let’s do this, then. Show me what it is you want.” He reached up and took the front of Sade’s button-down uniform shirt in hand. Yanking roughly, the buttons popped off and the shirt came open. Sade’s eyes flashed in surprise, and Niko pushed himself against Sade’s body. His skin crawled at the feeling, but he ignored it, focusing instead on his goal. “C’mon, Sade. What’s the problem?” Niko ran his hands up Sade’s stomach and chest to his shoulders and around to the back of his neck. Gripping hard, he pulled Sade down to him, until their mouths were barely an inch apart. Sade’s smirk had turned to a grimace. Niko licked his lips. “Go ahead. Fuck me.”
With a growl and a shove, Niko was thrown backward onto the bed, losing his grip on Sade’s neck as he was pushed. He landed with a bang as the headboard knocked the wall. Within instants, Sade was on top of him, pressing him down into the duvet. Niko felt his body light up, his mind cracking between what he wanted and what he had to do. Sade’s hungry look had transformed somewhat, his eyes now wild with fury. He leaned in and latched his teeth to Niko’s neck, biting hard.
Niko arched and moaned, bucking his hips up into Sade’s. “Yes, fuck me, Sade. I want it. I want you to fuck me.”
Another angry growl, and Sade let go of his neck, pulling himself up. He glared down at Niko, and Niko reached up to grope at Sade, to feel his body and pull down his pants. An echoing slap filled the room, and Niko’s head was thrown sideways, his cheek burning from the pain. His blood seared inside him, and Niko moaned again.
“Shut up, slut,” Sade said, waiting for Niko to look back at him before slapping him again. The second slap stung worse than the first, and Niko let his eyes flutter shut, his mouth open in a wanton cry.
“Ah, yeah, just how I want it,” Niko said. “Fucking hit me again.”
Sade’s eyes were wide with horror as he straddled Niko. Niko took the moment to arch again, rubbing against Sade’s groin only to find him still soft.
“What are you doing?” Sade snapped, and Niko reached for his waist again.
“What does it look like?” Niko answered. “I’m giving you what you want.”
Sade pinned Niko’s arms to either side of his head, glaring down at him. “This isn’t in the contract.”
Niko bit his lip in coy pleasure. He shimmied against Sade, arching his back to get more contact. “The contract said you get me. You can do what you want with me. It never said I couldn’t cooperate.” He gave Sade a dark look. “You were right in the interrogation room. I do want you, Sade. I want you to hurt me and fuck me and make me come like you did in your playroom. So stop delaying and fuck me already!”
Sade roared and hit Niko again and again, and every time the pain radiated through Niko’s body, he moaned louder, begging for more. And every time Niko moaned, Sade hit him harder, until finally Sade cried out in frustration and pulled back.
“Fucking stop it!” Sade yelled, his face wrought with a burning anger.
Niko sat up as he could, reaching for Sade again. “Stop what? I thought you wanted to fuck me,” Niko said, and his hands found Sade’s cock, still determinately soft. Niko rubbed at it through Sade’s pants, but it did little to help. Sade slapped his hand away, and Niko made a pitying face at him. “Unless…you can’t.” Sade stilled, his eyes snapping back to Niko. “That’s it, isn’t it? You can’t fuck me if I want it. Can’t get it up if you’re not forcing me.” Sade’s hand found Niko’s neck, pinning him to the bed with a gripping pressure. Niko struggled to speak but still managed to get the words out, “You’re just a limp-dick bitch who thinks he’s tough shit.”
Sade dragged Niko up by his neck, tightening his grip until Niko felt the short edges of Sade’s nails digging into his throat. He was barely able to breathe at this point, but Niko didn’t let the malevolent smirk fall from his face.
“You little fucking slut,” Sade said through gritted teeth. Niko had his hands on Sade’s arm. “You fucking ruined this for me. If I don’t get what I want, then neither will you.”
Niko knocked at Sade’s arm, dislodging it just enough to say, “Are you saying you aren’t going to fuck me? You’re not going to perform any sexual acts on me at all?”
Sade tightened his grip again, grabbing a fistful of Niko’s hair as he did. He held Niko’s head back as far as it would go to make his neck as vulnerable as possible.
“I don’t have to fuck you to enjoy myself here,” Sade spat. “I can still have some fun with you without sex. I think you’ll enjoy it a lot less, though.” He threw Niko backward again, knocking his head painfully against the headboard. Then he was on his feet at the side of the bed, dragging Niko over the edge and to his feet. “I can’t kill you, Kiki, but I can damn well cause you some brain damage.”
Niko tried to regain control, writhing wildly before Sade could slam his head into the wall again, but his balance was rattled by the first blow. Sade caught hold of his head, twisting one arm behind Niko’s back. As Niko tried to rotate out of that, Sade pressed him against the wall to stop him flailing.
“I can do what I want to you, you little bitch,” Sade breathed into his ear. “You should have just let me fuck you like I wanted. Now, instead of letting you come, I’m going to try something I’ve always wanted. How does waterboarding sound?”
“Not great,” Cobalt’s voice came from the doorway to the room.
Niko felt himself dislodged from the wall and spun around violently. Sade caught him, one arm still painfully twisted and pinned behind his back. Sade’s other hand found Niko’s throat again, the nails digging into either side of his trachea, as though he meant to rip it out.
“Who the fuck are you?” Sade asked, his voice ragged with fury and surprise. Cobalt was calm and cold in his stance, his face giving nothing away. In his hand, however, was the contract Officer Pine had left on the kitchen counter. “Get the fuck out, or I’ll tear out his throat. This is my time, and I can do whatever I want with him.”
Cobalt shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
Sade’s fingers twitched, cutting deeper into Niko’s skin. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Niko felt the laugh bubble up in his throat, despite the pain there. “You’re a fucking moron, Sade,” Niko said through his glee. “You broke the contract.”
“Like fuck, I did,” Sade said.
&nb
sp; “The contract was very specific,” Cobalt said.
“You just admitted you weren’t going to do anything sexual to me,” Niko said. “You broke your own terms.”
“What?” Sade said. Cobalt unrolled the contract so Sade could see. The surface of the page that had once detailed the terms of the exchange, where Sade and Niko’s signatures both glistened in glittering letters, was now blotted out by a large, angry mark reading VOID. “You fucking treacherous slut,” Sade snapped at Niko, still holding him like a shield. “You fucking stupid piece of shit. What was the point of this? Voiding the contract means you don’t get your fucking information. Good luck finding the Woods without my intel.”
Niko laughed again, and Sade tightened his grip on his neck. “You’re still going to help us.”
Sade leaned in close to him, his teeth brushing against Niko’s ear. “If you think I’m making any more deals with you—”
“No,” Niko said. “You’re not getting anything else from me, ever again.”
Before Sade could answer, Niko gestured to Cobalt.
A serene smile spread on Cobalt’s face as he began to Sing, “Release Niko and sit down on the sofa.”
A beat of stillness, then Sade’s hand uncurled from Niko’s throat and Sade let him go. Niko stretched out his arm to shake off the soreness as he watched Sade walk smoothly past Cobalt to the living area and sit down on the sofa. The moment his ass was on the cushion, the effect wore off, and he blinked back to himself. Shock and horror crossed his features, followed by rage.
“What the fuck did you just—”
“Shut up,” Cobalt Sang to him. The sound of the melody was fuel to the fire in Niko’s blood, though he wasn’t the target of the order. Sade’s mouth snapped closed, his eyes wide with alarm. “Do not move.” As Cobalt bound Sade in place with the chains, Sade watched him unmoving and clearly distraught. When Cobalt was done and assured of Sade’s inability to free himself, he turned to Niko. “Are you all right?”
Niko was staring at Sade, his heart still racing. Chest heaving, body still on fire, Niko nodded. “Let’s get this over with.”
Moving to the doorway, Niko tried to calm the rush of blood through his body, but it wouldn’t ease. He felt raw with emotions and need and hormones, but he had a job to do. Cobalt stood opposite Sade, large and imposing and completely unfazed by Sade’s violent thrashing.
“Tell us everything you know about the organization known as the Woods,” Cobalt Sang, and Sade glared, gnashing his teeth at Cobalt, but the moment the melody hit him, his expression fell neutral, and he began to speak.
“The Woods is the codename for some kind of underground trafficking organization,” Sade said, his voice flatter than Niko had ever heard it. He stared at nothing and no one as he spoke. Niko might have been unnerved but for the fact that it was Sade. “I first heard the name a few months before I was arrested. One of my long-time customers stopped using our services, and when I had my people look into it, they found he’d gone to a competitor. Before that, whenever I’d heard the term ‘the Woods,’ I’d dismiss it as a metaphor or something. I’d heard rumours about the hottest product on the street disappearing into ‘the Woods,’ but it never made much sense until I lost a customer to them.” Cobalt made a face at Sade’s use of the word ‘product,’ but Niko knew he meant his victims. Runaways, homeless, addicts living on the street, and freelance prostitutes were all people likely to get taken by Sade’s group. Apparently, the same was true for the Woods.
“So I started looking into it. Profits were down, and I wanted to know if there was someone else eating up my market share. I trawled the clubs and streets with my guys, hand-picking the new meat. But when I sent them to collect, they’d come up empty. The product had vanished. Then I lost a few more customers. And then I was pissed.
“I got hold of one of my old customers. A small fish, in the grand scheme, but that made him easier to pin. Had him up in my headquarters for two days, coaxing him to give us the information we wanted. And to remind him what happened to people who crossed me, of course.” Niko grimaced. He remembered that. That was when everyone under Sade had started really fearing for his sanity. Torturing one of his own clients was just bad business. Niko tried not to think of the way the body had looked when Sade was done with it. It was only once it was too late to save the guy that Niko had found out about what happened. Sade had been so excited by his own depravity, he’d had Niko dragged down into the room so he could fuck him there. That was another memory Niko pushed down and locked away.
“According to him, the Woods was a more ‘proper’ organization.” Sade clearly seemed disdainful at the characterization, even in his neutral state. “Said they had lavish parties before the bidding opened. There were performances in front of the gathered guests, and everyone who joined the client-list had to perform in front of the others. To prove they really were part of the club. Everyone would stay the night at the location, and the bidding would start in the morning. They made a fucking weekend out of it. Like it’s a society event or some shit.”
“Where was the location?” Niko asked, breaking through the fog of Sade’s instruction for a moment. Sade’s eyes flickered to Niko, but Cobalt stepped in quickly.
“Answer the question honestly,” he Sang, and Sade’s expression settled.
“Don’t know,” he said. “But the location was supposed to be different every time. Apparently, each client has to provide an appropriate place at least once to host the event. To prove they had enough money and stature, maybe. Makes it all a very exclusive club. Fucking rich people.”
Niko thought back over the properties Indigo had listed and mapped. Was that how they were connected? Were each of those locations used to host one of the Woods’s events? And then immediately put up for sale? The description of an event certainly seemed to fit with what they’d learned at the manor.
“Continue telling us what you know about the Woods,” Cobalt Sang, restarting his initial instruction. Again, the sound of his voice perforated Niko, infusing his body with a writhing kind of wanting. No matter how he tried to focus on the case, on what was going on, Niko couldn’t make his body cooperate. He couldn’t shake off the hunger that grew in him.
“After bidding, clients got to play with their purchases on site or go straight home, depending on what they’d paid for. That much wasn’t so different from what I offered. Seemed like a big risk to take, betraying me all for the sake of a fancy party. But that’s not all. Little worm who betrayed me said it was the product that was different. The hottest meat out there, apparently. Said some of the products made him instantly hard. The bidding would get out of hand, people fighting to have these ones. There were only ever a few of them, and they were never Fae. They made people feel like teenagers, raging to fuck or something. And that the looks on their faces were…like they wanted to be there. To be sold and used.” Sade shook his head. “I tried whipping my product into shape, to get them to act that way too, but you can always tell when it’s an act. So after that, it turned into a race for the best product. I guess I got a bit reckless recruiting. So I guess the Woods won, in the end.”
The neutral expression on Sade’s face slowly faded, the anger lighting his dark eyes again, and Niko took his chance.
“Who runs the Woods?” he asked. Cobalt Sang him an order, and Sade’s fury dissipated again for a moment.
“No idea,” Sade said. “I don’t think anyone actually knows.”
“How do you get on the client list?” Niko asked. Cobalt Sang.
Sade answered, “Get on the radar of the right people. Go to the right pleasure clubs, push the limits, show you have money and a hunger for something off the standard menu. A current client can issue a guest invite. Or so I was told.”
Niko had one last thing he needed, but he wasn’t sure it would work on Sade. It might cut too close to what Sade valued most.
“Who are all the people on your client list?”
Cobalt ordered him to answ
er, but Sade’s mouth wound up in a smirk. “So there is a limit to what you can make me do,” he said, his eyes moving to Cobalt now. “Good to know.” He was clearly back to himself now, his eyes glittering with loathing and rage, but he didn’t struggle at his bindings. Instead, the calm he showed was much more threatening to Niko. “So what now, Kiki? You really want that fuck?” His eyes flashed down to Niko’s cock, and Niko stared evenly at him.
“Now you go back to rot in your cell for the rest of your life,” Niko said. “I’m done with you.”
Cobalt grabbed Sade’s bindings and yanked him off the sofa and to his feet. He shoved Sade toward the door, but Sade pushed back, yelling over his shoulder at Niko.
“You’ll never be done with me, Kiki,” Sade shot before Cobalt could open the door. “I’ll be seeing you again. I can promise you that.”
Niko stepped toward him, his being rushing with adrenaline and contempt. “You have nothing I want, Sade. Even taunting you has lost its shine.” He shook his head with pity. “Face it. I beat you. And now you have to live with that.”
Cobalt shoved him to the door, and Sade tripped forward, eyes filled with his venomous hatred. “I’ll get you back for this, you slut. You fucking mark my words.”
Opening the door, Cobalt shoved him into the night.
“Have fun trying,” Niko said as Sade disappeared beyond his vision. Cobalt followed him out the door a moment to pass Sade off to Officer Pine. The moment he was alone, Niko felt his knees wobble. He moved back to the doorway to the bedroom, bracing against the sides. He couldn’t fight it anymore, couldn’t even pretend.
The door closed behind him, and he heard footsteps. “Niko, are you all right?” Cobalt asked, and Niko turned to face him. Cobalt’s lips parted in surprise at the sight of him. Chest heaving, Niko stared at Cobalt with blown pupils and a painfully hard cock. He was straining in his jeans, the flush on his face from his own heat now, no longer remnants of the blows Sade had given him. Cobalt’s ocean breeze scent blew into him, and he shuddered in pleasure. As he stared at Cobalt, Niko saw the Selkie’s pale eyes nearly eclipsed by his pupils. A second’s breath, and Cobalt said, “I’ll give you a moment alone.”