Birds of Paradise

by Anne Malcom

  Because Lukyan was gazing at me from his spot above me. Drinking me in. Devouring me.

  My shirt had somehow disappeared. My plain cotton bra was lopsided, my nipples straining out of the cups, bruised and swollen. His fingers reached up to trail around the ridges of my breast. Then they darted to the side to snatch a rogue carving knife.

  My heartbeat intensified as he laid the steel against my chest. I exhaled roughly as he used the sharp edge to cut through the fabric of my bra and expose my breasts to him. He ran the knife against the raised skin of my scars—more cigar burns, shallow knife wounds. His knife went upward, to my neck.

  “Are you scared I was going to hurt you?” he asked, voice thick, like the bulge jutting out from his slacks.

  “No,” I hissed, eyes on his crotch. “I’m scared you won’t.”

  His eyes flared and he made a sound low in his throat.

  The knife was quickly discarded so he could use both hands to yank at my jeans. My panties came with them. Lukyan’s eyes never left my pussy as he circled the backs of my knees, pushing me backward, farther on the table so the soles of my feet landed flat. He pushed my legs farther apart so I was open, completely and utterly exposed to his gaze.

  My stomach curdled at the thought of how vulnerable I was in this position. How intimate it was.

  He didn’t immediately touch me. Of course he didn’t. Lukyan sensed my discomfort, my sick erotic excitement, so he continued to stare. To press the pads of his thumbs into the insides of my thighs.

  It would bruise.

  I hoped it would.

  I prayed it would fucking scar. So Lukyan’s mark would sink into my skin, chase away all the other brands of my past.

  I let the discomfort of his gaze flow through me, let it attach to my insides like a barnacle. His eyes met mine as he slowly and purposefully lowered his head to fasten his mouth onto me.

  My breath came out in a painful whoosh and I quickly sucked it back up, choking on it as he relentlessly worked his mouth against my tender skin. His fingers entered me and mingled with the interior scars of before. Not chasing them away but working in some kind of sick harmony with them. I was paralyzed with the pleasure of it all. Of someone, of Lukyan, devoting his entire attention to me.

  Again, as my climax came, it wasn’t simple. It wasn’t the relief of an explosion, of a release of pleasure. It was something more than that. Something horrible and beautiful at the same time.

  My scream bounced off the walls as Lukyan was suddenly not between my legs anymore. His mouth was on mine, the taste of my pleasure and pain on his tongue. And then he was inside. Completely. Forcefully.

  He let out a hiss between his teeth as he thrust into me. His forehead crashed against mine and I saw stars. My hips cried out in pain as he pressed into them with his fingers, gripping them so hard the bone seemed to soften under his hand. I didn’t move. I didn’t want to.

  The table moved with the violence Lukyan was slamming into me. His mouth was everywhere. Our teeth nipped at each other’s flesh, as if our connection wasn’t enough. It wasn’t. We needed more. We needed blood and pain and violence.

  We needed all of it between us.

  And our brutal coupling gave us that.

  His body crushed mine, from the inside out.

  And I fucking loved it.

  His eyes sucked my broken soul from my body, branded it with his wretched aura.

  And I fucking loved it.

  He fucked me into the abyss, and I prayed I would never come back.

  We ended up in Lukyan’s bedroom. I didn’t quite know how. My head might’ve slammed too hard on the wood of the table, and maybe that was how I was suddenly halfway across the house without quite realizing how I got there.

  Or maybe my body, unused to having sex be something other than a torture device, had simply expired from the amount of orgasms it had been given. From Lukyan.

  Whatever it was, I wasn’t overly concerned. My head ached dully, as did the tender flesh between my legs.

  But it wasn’t like before, when it didn’t just ache, it screamed with the violation. Every move had been agony, using the bathroom almost made me pass out, and my entire body was blanketed, weighed down with shame.

  No, there was only some of that. I couldn’t say it all disappeared, because it couldn’t. It wouldn’t. When violence had been ingrained that deeply, repeated that often, it was never going to turn into nothing. It would always be a shadow on whatever came after it. I didn’t dwell on that. I accepted it.

  When the room came into focus, it was the stark blue of Lukyan’s eyes that drew me up from the abyss. He was up on his elbow, not touching me, watching me.

  A prickle of chill ghosted over my body. I glanced down to my nakedness in the shadows. There was no luxurious cover to warm me.

  “I wanted to see you,” Lukyan said by explanation to my shiver. No apology, no move to get something to warm me. He wanted to see me. And he wasn’t going to let my discomfort stop him from doing that.

  I swallowed. Because if he was seeing me, he was seeing all of me. All my scars. The dim moonlight shone through the windows. I didn’t try to cover myself because there was no point. I couldn’t cover my true scars with clothing.

  Instead, I let the lack of blankets work to somewhat of an advantage. Lukyan was naked too.

  His body wasn’t as white as mine. It didn’t have that gray tinge of decay that mine held. But he was fair, creamy. It was smooth and porcelain, like marble. His muscles seemed to be carved out of it. The bicep closest to me was large, purplish veins snaking up to the surface and tracing along his forearms. A small sprinkling of luminescent hair was scattered across his chest, trailing downward like a river between his defined abs. Because of his angle, I didn’t get to see the cock that had so thoroughly gotten to know the inside of me.

  But I knew it was smooth and beautiful like the rest of him.

  “I don’t want children,” he said to the moonlight. To the silence of the room that had become palpable, comforting, like velvet.

  Of course, the second I became comfortable was the second he spoke, his words tearing through the comfort like a knife

  I stiffened. “What?”

  He shuffled us so my head was tilted up to see his. I couldn’t see him properly, of course, only the thinnest of outlines in thick darkness that was reserved for the hours between two and four.

  The lost hours.

  And I had been lost. For hours. For the eternity that had been between the dining room table and here, in his bed.

  His breath was hot and minty on my face. My forehead brushed the stubble that was growing in the darkness, rebelling against the order on his face.

  “Children,” he said again, the rumble of his voice vibrating in his chest. “I don’t like them, nor desire them.”

  Again, I tried to fathom a reason for these words, especially considering what he knew about my past. The dull ache that was constantly with me intensified. Did he mean to hurt me? Was this his plan all along? The ultimate hit man. Not killing when it would be quick and easy and painless. Waiting for the perfect moment to kill someone from the inside out.

  “I don’t follow,” I whispered.

  “We didn’t use protection,” he clarified. “And considering your… situation for the past year, I know you don’t have anything. That and I ran your blood.”

  I blinked. “You ran my blood?”

  “Yes,” he said, like it was an obvious thing to do with the women you were meant to kill but didn’t and kidnapped instead, then ended up fucking.

  Maybe it was the obvious thing to do in those situations. He’d have more experience than me.

  “Technically I didn’t run it,” he corrected. “I don’t have the capability or the equipment. The doctor who treated you did. You’re clean.” The way he said that was meant to reassure me.

  “In that sense, I suppose I am,” I said, my voice lower than a whisper. Perhaps that was the only thing left clean ab
out me, my blood. Then again, it was most likely the dirtiest and most polluted thing in my body.

  “But there is the other issue of protection,” he continued. “I didn’t see birth control with your personal effects, and unless you have some sort of contraceptive implant—”

  “You won’t get children,” I interrupted. “I mean we won’t.” The words tumbled from my mouth quickly and painfully. “I can’t after…. The pregnancy, the trauma of losing the baby. It means I’m never—you have nothing to worry about. In that department.”

  I bit my lip so hard I tore through the flesh and blood rushed into my mouth. The pain was nothing compared to the ripping sensation in my abdomen. The pain that was over a year old but somehow as stark as the day I started to feel my baby die inside me.

  It never really went away.

  I didn’t want it to. Didn’t want to give myself a moment of respite from it. I deserved to carry that pain with me. Forever.

  Lukyan’s hand trailed down my spine and back up again. “I see,” he murmured. No words of comfort. No apologies. Nothing. That wasn’t him.

  My eyes blinked in and out of the present, fighting against the past that beckoned me with the promise of pain. Instead, I chose a different kind of pain. The ice blue kind here in the present.

  “Tell me,” he demanded, the second I made eye contact.

  I furrowed my brow with confusion at first.

  His eyes went to the scars on my upper arm, my breast, my stomach.

  “Tell me,” he repeated.

  My stomach filled with rocks. Ah, so he wanted the rest of my sordid story. My teeth clattered together painfully on instinct, to make sure no rogue detail escaped on its own. It was reflex, to hold my past close, let it eat my insides up but not let it loose. Not let it float into the air and stare me in the face and destroy me completely.

  But I already had something staring me in the face that would destroy me completely.

  So I started to speak.

  Lukyan

  He listened to her story, blankly, on the outside at least. He could tell this mask he was clutching at was affecting her. Damaging her more. He knew that. She was an open book: her dysfunction, her crazy, along with her heart that was on her sleeve. On her face. In her glittering eyes. In every rough, tortured exhale. The mere function of breathing was painful to her.

  Lukyan knew it hurt her when he didn’t react, outwardly at least.

  But he wasn’t worried about that.

  Her life was pain; she could handle a little more.

  And most likely a lot more in the future, if that future was going to include him.

  It will, he told himself, before his brain could try to conjure up probabilities and plans.

  “And then, well.” She sucked in a harsh breath, her watery eyes never leaving his. “You know the rest.”

  He did know the rest.

  The rest being the baby who was forced inside her, that she’d somehow found a way to love despite its violent implantation, dying and having to bring it into the world that way.

  Then, instead of doing her the mercy of killing her, her husband threw her out into the world to let it eat her alive. To let whatever demons she had gnawing at her soul eat her alive. He didn’t want to kill her, because that would’ve been a kindness. Elizabeth knew that man wasn’t capable of kindness, even when it came in the shape of murder.

  And still, she thought that man ordered the hit on her.

  The truth grated at the sides of Lukyan’s mind, scratched him with a strange and unwelcome feeling of guilt. He brushed it away, with effort. This was not the time to educate her. This was time for something else.

  So he moved from the bed, from her, without speaking. Again he shoved at the guilt that prodded him from her glassy eyes as he left her in the bed alone. Alone with her demons.

  He got up, not bothering with clothes, and turned his back on her, crossing the room to press on the panel in his wall that would reveal his computer screen. Again he knew this hurt her; the swift intake of breath that followed him told him that. But he couldn’t focus on that, not right then. His brain was overloaded with the throbbing need to kill, almost blinding his vision.

  His fingers were a blur across the keyboard as he logged into the portal hidden deep within the dark web.

  He smelled her before she spoke, lily and vanilla sweeping him up, and he stiffened against his body’s reaction. He didn’t stop typing, nor did he take his eyes off the screen.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice a husky whisper that he felt straight in his cock.

  The need to get back inside her, to bruise her translucent skin with his touch, was almost overwhelming. But Lukyan needed his self-restraint right then. He’d fuck her later. He’d make sure he fucked her so hard that she passed out again. He liked that. Her body going limp underneath him, still being inside her as she completely surrendered to him.

  Later, he told himself, and his cock. He made a mental note to bury his mouth between her legs later too. Not that he’d need reminding. The taste of her was stained on his tongue with its intoxicating sweetness when all he’d ever tasted was sour. It was like heroin. But heroin wasn’t as addictive.

  He didn’t answer her, and he wouldn’t until he got the information he wanted. She didn’t probe him. She was not like other women in many ways, and this was just one of them. She wouldn’t nag at him for an answer, berate his silence. Not that a woman, any woman, would dare do that to him, but he had come to know that’s what they did to other, weaker men.

  She just stood there, her heat at his back, imprinting her scent onto him, breathing hot against his neck, thickening his cock with every passing second.

  He closed the screen and turned, his eyes running over her naked body that, like him, she’d refused to cover. She was truly beautiful now. In not just a unique way, but an utterly one-of-a-kind type of way. Her skin was porcelain, fine china, blemishless apart from the sprinkling of rose on the apples of her cheeks. And the scars that decorated every one of her limbs.

  He didn’t hate the scars, or how they’d come to be there. Wouldn’t take them away if he could, take away the pain. Because if he did that, he’d take away the woman in front of him.

  The eyes that had once been dull and lifeless were now vibrant, glowing with life and death, intermingled. She wore her pain like a crown, wore broken like a doll and damaged like a warrior.

  Her midnight hair was shiny again, now that she was eating and washing it. It tumbled in wild waves down her back, matted slightly from rubbing against the table, from his hands tugging at it. Her exposed skin rippled with more smooth porcelain, apart from the places that were marred with bruises from him. His cock strained even harder at the faint hand mark circling her delicate throat, and the teeth mark on her collarbone.

  One flex of his wrist and he could’ve killed her. Easily. All his problems quickly gone. He could resume his life and she would no longer be the one thing out of his control. He had her, right there, could’ve done it while he was inside her. Could’ve done it any of the number of times he’d had since the night he’d gone into her home.

  But he didn’t. And the evidence was staring at him in the face. With those violet bruises and those black eyes.

  “I was looking to see if there are any contracts open on your husband,” he said coolly, not touching her despite wanting very badly to. He wouldn’t do so until he could trust himself to be under control. She wasn’t ready for more. He knew that. But still, he wanted her. Wanted to push past her pain. But he didn’t.

  She chewed at her rosebud lips. “Are there?”

  “No,” he said.

  Her eyes flared with disappointment.

  His cock twitched again with her obvious yearning for death. For blood. None of that humane ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’ bullshit. He wasn’t looking to make shit right. He was looking to make things even.

  “Which means I won’t be making money off his death. I’ll just be
doing it for the sport,” he continued, yanking her body to him.

  Fuck control.

  She let out a surprised gasp.

  “I’ll be doing it for me,” he said against her mouth, right before he claimed her. What he didn’t say was that he’d be doing it for her.

  Like always, she surrendered to him. Utterly. Completely. Without fear. She was afraid of the outside world. Of the sky, the sun and the grass. Things that meant her no harm. That she had no trouble being afraid of.

  She moaned into his mouth, biting his lip and scratching her nails against his bare back.

  He clutched her hair, yanking roughly so their lips detached as the column of her neck strained against him. He circled it with his hand.

  Yes, she was afraid of the world that would likely do her no harm, but with him, all that fear evaporated. And he was the one thing on this earth that she needed to fear.

  He relaxed his grip.

  But she didn’t.

  “I want to pull you apart,” he growled. “Just so I can see how you stand. Just so I can figure out how the world hasn’t ground you into dust.” He brushed the scar on her head. “Just to figure out how I haven’t crushed you to dust.”

  She snatched his hand in her own and pressed her lips to his palm. Then she turned it slightly to sink her teeth into the flesh, not hard, but giving him the pain he so desired. The pain he’d craved. He itched for more, some animal part of him wanting her to rip at his flesh.

  “But you have crushed me,” she whispered. “I’m ground down to every exposed nerve, every bare piece of flesh. You see all my unadorned humanity in all its ugliness, but yet you still want me.” Her other hand snaked up his throat. “That’s how I’m still standing.”

  Lukyan’s mouth was on hers before she could properly let her last word escape into the air.

  He pushed her back onto the bed. Fuck it if she wasn’t ready for more. He’d make her ready.

  And he would make sure that she never fucking left his grasp.

  11

  Elizabeth