She’d never had anyone to comfort her as she’d dealt with Joshua’s death, alone. No, only the darkness she’d let in, the darkness she’d let me glimpse in the blood ritual had comforted her, and even though she’d died, it had remained inside her, like a viper waiting to strike.
Her face was bathed in the firelight, caramel-colored hair as she watched the flames lick her mother’s remains. Embers from the shroud floated in the air, revealing the calm, petite face that looked so much like Lena’s that my stomach tightened. I wondered if she’d have come back if they’d chosen to burn her ashes, to try to force the other side to accept her soulless body. Her fingers curled through mine, pulling my arm closer as she leaned against me for comfort.
“I have you, little one.”
“I know,” she answered as she continued to watch until the flames burned the flesh, filling the area with the intoxicating, obnoxious odor. Still, she remained as others dispersed. I tighten my arm around her, pulling her into my embrace as the Fae, Alden and a few others remained. “And we’re returned to the ashes for which we were born, to the witches who called us into this marvelous storm. I send you back to whence you came, I free you now in this eternal flame.” The flames leapt, sending nothing but ashes into the sky with her words. She’d whispered a spell, one that released the souls of the dead, to speed their process to the other side.
“Only high priestesses can do such a thing,” Joshua marveled as he stared at her with wide eyes and his mouth hanging over. “You’re…you’re not even a witch!”
“I’m…more,” she muttered silently, her eyes watching as the ashes seemed to be sucked into the heavens above. Power, raw, uncut, unchecked power buzzed at my side as she continued watching her mother’s ashes as they returned to where her soul had been born.
I held her closer yet, unable to get close enough to reassure she was real, that she was still the innocent girl who’d lipped off at me, and had grabbed my dick with a naiveté that had been addictive to watch. Those eyes lifted, holding mine as a subtle smile played across her full lips.
“I’m…tired,” she admitted, even though she didn’t crave sleep. She didn’t have a soul that needed rest or to recover. Only a craving for what she desired and what she needed: revenge. “I’m hungry.”
“You don’t eat,” Hades said with a lopsided grin. “You need to fuck. Let out the Fury that is trapped within.”
“I have let her out.”
“No, you’ve let her taste a sample of this world, but you’re strong, and you hold her on a leash. Let her out to dance with Lucian, and then to feed on the blood of the angels tomorrow morning. She can’t hurt him; she’s bound by laws older than space and time to protect him. Let her out to feed, to show you what she needs to live.”
“I’m bound to protect him?” she snorted. “He’s fucked.”
“He enjoys being fucked,” Hades chuckled. “Trust me, let her out and see what it’s like to embrace what you’ve become. No more holding back, it’s time you learned your limits, and who is whispering to you when you think no one else notices. You have two faces now, Lena. One is yours, the other is who you are to become. If you think you’re powerful now with only this version of yourself, know this, you’re weak. Once you can let her out, let her spread those wings without fear of hurting others, she will teach you what you have truly become.”
“And if I lose myself when I let her out?” she asked softly.
“Then we will be right here to help you find yourself again. That emptiness you feel, that craving for more? That’s her, trying to feel her way into your world. Trying to merge herself with you to become one. I’ve let you stumble enough, little she-cat, now spread those wings and embrace what you truly are. You’re a fucking butterfly, fly free.”
I swallowed hard as I stared at the composure on her face, the steel spine that spanned straighter as she tilted her head as she stared at Hades. I’d felt her magic growing and then slipping away, and yet I’d no idea she was the one pushing it away.
“Lena, we should…sleep,” I offered, knowing she knew I had no intention of sleeping. “Hades, find that blade. Spyder is hunting the archangels, aware of where they may be hiding. The others are setting up a perimeter around their estate as we speak. Hellhounds have been unleashed, but we know they won’t attack him. Not willingly, let’s give them some incentive to do so. Everyone else should rest because tomorrow, tomorrow we unleash our own brand of hell onto the archangels and the devil himself.”
“Lucian,” she whispered as she turned, curling her delicate frame against my body, seeming so small in the clearing with the ashes still floating into the sky. “Take me to the club, where I can’t hurt anyone.”
“How did you know it was rebuilt?” I asked, and she smiled the most wicked smile I’d ever seen grace her lips.
“You have your ways, and I have mine.” She shrugged as she lifted on her toes, pushing her mouth against mine. “Take me away where I can be free, where I don’t have to fear hurting others. Where I can fucking own you,” she added and a growl resonated from deep in my chest at her open challenge.
“You think you can own me? You can try, but not even letting her out to play will help you from me, little Fury.”
“Prove it,” she whispered huskily.
Chapter 34
Lena
“You’re going to wreck the club, aren’t you?” he asked as I paced in the bar area, noting the new wards and structure. It was built to be comfortable, and yet to withstand an assault. He’d built us a sanctuary in case we’d needed one, but all the witches were either dying or dead now.
It was vacant, empty, not a single other person was inside the club as I took in the newly rebuilt place with a critical eye. Lucian had gone all-out, pulling no stops into the luxury that was his club.
Lights flickered on above us, and I spun in a circle, taking it all in. Above our heads were strobe lights, flickering as music began to play through multiple speakers. The song was quick and fast paced had my body itching to move to it. However, the plasma screens that lit up with gyrating bodies that seemed oblivious to us watching them didn’t miss a beat as they fucked on a crowded dancefloor right as the person filmed it.
“Live?” I asked as I stepped closer, feeling a pull to the screen as the couples moved, dancing as their bodies connected and matched the beat of the light.
“No, previously recorded from another club right before it was attacked,” he admitted.
“He’s targeting you,” I mused, hating that he was, in fact, the target of Lucifer’s rage. Considering everything that continued to happen around us, it was surprising that it was tossed aside.
“He blames me for her death, and a few others he played with,” he shrugged as he watched me closely, as if he feared I’d change my mind. “I created a room for you, would you like to see it?” he asked, his eyes turning to liquid pools of blue fire as a smile danced wickedly on his mouth.
“I’m guessing it was made with pleasure in mind?” I wasn’t going to lie, the man knew how to fuck, how to destroy a girl’s will and take a wrecking ball to her senses.
“Among other things,” he said softly as he reached me and pulled me into his arms. “I burned this place to the ground because that beautiful smile of yours fucking haunted me. When I rebuilt it, I did so with your pleasure, and your needs in mind.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” I pointed out. “Throwing a fit and burning this place, your club, to the ground was rather brash and wrong of you. But I do like the new look.” And I did, it was done in shades of blue that matched my eyes, silvers for the dress I’d worn when I’d first kissed him, and the pictures that covered the walls were of me, things I’d done inside this club with him. Yet you wouldn’t know it was me unless you had been there, been a part of it.
On the far wall was a picture of th
e dimples on my back, his hands touching my hips as he’d fucked me, which made my panties wet with the memory. Next to it was my body on a bed, with his men around us as Spyder held me, his hands covering my breasts as my hair pooled around them. The dark head between my legs, biting the inside of my thigh was Lucian. Blood oozed from my shoulder, and yet in this lighting, it could have been anyone or anything happening. On the wall over the sex club’s entrance was a picture of me in Lucian’s lap and yet it faced outwards, an image of everyone watching us with their faces perfectly marked by memory and I smirked, remembering exactly how they’d watched us, how they had looked as he’d taken me with his fingers.
“You approve,” he said, not a question.
“I do like that no one else would know they’re of me,” I admitted. “Except you,” my tone lowered, thickened as I turned to stare up into his midnight depths. “You had these made before I died, didn’t you?”
“I had them taken as they happened,” he agreed, his hands slipping into mine as he started us into the next room.
“Because that isn’t creepy at all,” I mumbled as he chuckled.
The next room was hands-down fucking erotic, not because of the round alcoves for lovers, but because an image of me riding him had been painted on the ceiling. His tattooed arms held my waist, and my head had been thrown back in the throes of passion. The glass was tampered, lining the bar along the edge of the wall. I moved towards it, slipping behind it as I pulled down a bottle of scotch, his preferred brand and age.
“You missed me,” I laughed, the sound deadened and yet the light in my eyes seemed to grow as I stared at him. “You put pictures of me up wherever you’d thought of me. Which means, you thought of me everywhere,” I muttered thickly as I filled both goblets to the top, tipping it back to chugged it in an un-ladylike move.
“Someone people leave a hole when they leave so big and so painful that it never stops aching,” he uttered as he drank his, mirroring my action before he pushed the glass towards me. “When Katarina died repeatedly it simply sucked. I felt like you do now, empty and missing something. I ached, but I didn’t know why.”
I swallowed as my eyes dropped to the glasses as I filled them. It hurt, straight up fucking hurt like someone had just punched me in the gut. Where was the fucking numbness at? How could I feel everything about him and yet not the death of my mother? He reached over the bar and lifted my chin.
“When you died, I wanted to destroy the entire world. I wanted to set it on fire and watch them all burn to death, to feel a sliver of the pain I felt at losing you. I wasn’t created to love, to care if something happened to someone I liked, and through the years I’ve watched thousands, and millions of people being slaughtered and never once had I even fucking flinched, until you. Something inside of you makes me need to be better, to be more for you. That first kiss, I wanted to break your pretty little neck because I felt it, this pull to you. I wanted to fucking destroy you, but first I wanted to see what you were, or why you pulled me to you. Nothing before you had ever kept my interest. You did, I needed to know why. And then you grabbed my dick and told me to go have pretty babies. So yes, I painted your image everywhere and anywhere I saw you because I couldn’t get your pretty eyes or smile out of my head, and even though you’d died, you drove me insane.”
“Good,” I smirked as I pushed his glass across the bar. “I missed you too, asshole.”
“You left me, Lena. You fucking died.”
“Semantics,” I frowned as I stared up into his eyes. “You’re more than me, so I had to become more to stay with you. I wasn’t enough, not strong enough, not stable enough, not brave enough to face the world you live in. Now I am a part of it. I lost a baby, and yeah, I’m pissed about it. I’m changed, but becoming this thing, it meant changing who I was to be who I needed to be. I’d accepted the darkness, so taking the next logical step was figuring out how to wield it, how to make it what I needed it to be. Did it suck? Hell yeah, but I’m here and you’re here, and while we may be losing, we have not lost everything,” I whispered hoarsely as I lifted tear-filled eyes to his. “My mom died,” I uttered as something pulsed through me. Pain? “I hate that you make me feel shit.”
“You need to feel it, to let her go.”
“I let her go the moment I slit my throat, Lucian. I let them all go except you, and maybe I did let you go. I never intended to come back here, to make my existence known, but things happened, and then I was drawn to the Guild, or something in it. I’m guessing it was you, even though I really didn’t want it to be.”
“Good,” he tossed back as he touched my hand and we materialized in a darkened room. This room was dangerous. A large cross sat against a wall with shelves of toys next to it. A bench sat beside it, which looked like a sawhorse with an oval cushion on top of it. In the middle of the room was a bed with cotton sheets, and lengths of lace that hung from the large, metal frame that mirrored a cage. It had a door that led into the bed, and I turned, tossing Lucian a curious look over my shoulder.
“What the fuck is the bed caged for?” I asked hesitantly, and yet my voice came out heated. I blinked as I tried to figure out whose voice it was, that sultry tone that slid over my flesh.
“You, because I’d cage you in a heartbeat to protect you,” he said sharply.
On the wall were pictures of me in all types of poses, as if he’d always been watching me. From the moment I arrived home, to the moment I’d left his club to sacrifice my life to save them all. I wondered if he had some of those somewhere as well.
“You were always watching me,” I stated as I followed his gaze to the pictures as he nodded.
“Minus in the cabin with your brother, and the moment you left this club to do…to do what you thought you had to do to save us.”
“Our son was meant to destroy you, to destroy everything I loved,” I admitted as I watched him carefully. “Your seal would have driven him until he either succeeded or killed you. I saw it play out, seen my lifeline end in the sands and in the bones. I died no matter what scenario we ran or tried. He died as well, probably at your hands. So I chose to go out in my way, not theirs. I know you think there was another way, but if there had been, I’d have taken it.”
“You could have fucking warned me.”
“No, Lucian. I couldn’t because you’d have locked me up and this, this world would have paid the price for whatever it was between us.”
“No one likes a fucking martyr, Lena.” He snorted; his eyes dared me to argue.
“And I’m not, a selfish bitch who knew I was coming back. I knew if I made that sacrifice, that I’d come back in one way or another, but you? You’d suffer for forcing me to play a game I never asked to join. I won, I won even though it cost me more than either of you selfish assholes were willing to give. Neither one of you ever sacrificed your life to end it; that was the cost.”
“Your life never should have ended; you shouldn’t have been the one to die. It should have been me.”
“You weren’t born with a monster in your soul,” I pointed out.
“I don’t have a soul,” he countered, and I blinked at him. “You’re not the only one who was created, Lena. Now, on your knees, so I can show you what that pretty mouth is for. I’m done talking, let’s play.”
Chapter 35
I grinned at him, starting to lower to the floor as he’d asked, but the moment my knees brushed the floor, power ripped through the room. I bowed my body, arching it as I screamed as absolute pleasure tore through me. He watched, his eyes alight with wickedness as he gazed at my body which was alight with every nerve ending being touched at once.
Moaning, unable to get words or even thoughts to register, he watched me, never stepping closer. His fingers moved and my clothes were ripped from my body, shredded in the heavy weight of his power as he fed me the full force of it. I felt my body being yanked
forward, my ass in the air, exposed as something pushed into my core, filling me until I cried out as pain lingered, and my body clenched violently around it.
“Come on, little Fury, let’s see what you got,” he purred thickly, his fingers moving deftly to slowly unbutton the shirt he wore. I wanted to rip his clothes off, to ruin the suit he’d worn, but nothing happened. I screamed in frustration as the movement in my body grew faster, harder, his fire blue eyes knowingly anticipating exactly what he was doing to me. “Nothing? I thought you’d at least put up a fight. Pity,” he shrugged as he shook out of the shirt and tossed it aside. “This next one is going to sting a bit,” he chuckled, and then something pushed into my ass and I exploded, my body a trembling, quivering mess of nerves that fired on every thrust as the magic took turns exiting and entering my body.
“Son of a bitch,” I snapped crossly as it lessened, slowly without stopping. I tried to stand but my knees shook too hard to even manage that simple task, and then my body was up, floating as he watched it. My legs spread wide as he stepped closer, pushing his fingers through the wet mess he’d created.
“I didn’t have a mother,” he uttered against my ear as his mouth lowered, biting the hard tip of one nipple and then the other as his teeth scraped against the sensitive flesh. His hand slapped my pussy, and I cried out, and then again as I was dropped to my knees and my hair was pulled, forcing my head back to stare up at him as he undid the buttons to the suit pants he wore. Magic rippled around us, and they vanished as he reached down to grab his heavy cock, pushing it against my lips. “Suck, show me what that mouth is good for other than arguing with me.”
I sent my tongue down his silken cock, slowly drawing circles on the sensitive edge of it until he hissed. The moment my lips wrapped around him, the magical hold on my hair sent it down my throat and threatened to choke me unless I adapted. Then it started using me like I was his to do whatever he wished with. The fullness increased and my eyes watered against the sensation of his too-large cock buried in my tight throat as the overwhelming sensation of being fucked and too full shot through me.
Becoming his Monster (Playing with Monsters Book 3) Page 26
