by Pam Godwin
“Whatever she saw when she looked at me was neither good nor evil. It just was, and it killed it for her. It killed the love she wanted to feel for me long before that knife killed her.” He drew in a breath and let it out. “Some men simply have something inside that makes them impossible to love.”
“I don’t believe that. All humans are capable of giving and receiving love. Everyone has a someone out there.”
“Semira believed the same when she married me. I loved her deeply, and no matter what I did to earn her love, her feelings never developed. It was hard for her to bear, knowing that while I cherished her above all else, she couldn’t bring herself to reciprocate. She wanted to fill that void with children, and I would’ve done anything to give her that. But I couldn’t. It was another part of me that didn’t work. Another thing for her to resent.”
Jesus. He had years to dwell on this, to let it eat at him, and now his infatuation with the romance between Tate and Lucia had an explanation. It seemed his own failed relationship had fostered a fascination with happy endings.
Was it possible that he craved love?
She wanted to know about his wife’s death. It seemed that was the key to everything. “Why did your colleague betray you?”
“Because the good guys aren’t always the good guys. Integrity isn’t a guarantee, just because you’re fighting on the right side of the law.”
“So your colleague was a traitor?”
“I can’t talk about the fucking job.” His voice vibrated with so much threat it stopped her heart.
“Will you just explain one thing?” Swallowing hard, she sat taller and glared at his back. “You went from a straight life to that of a crime lord. It changed when your wife was murdered?”
“Yes.”
“You said it isn’t about the job, yet the job was connected to your wife’s death. You must hold resentment for everything that life represented—the legitimacy of it, the paid taxes and moral righteousness. Could it be that if you let go of that grudge, you might—”
“Be a better man?” He barked out a self-depreciating laugh. “When I held Semira in my arms, with her intestines in her lap and her life spilling through my fingers, it was neither love nor hate that shone from her eyes. The last look she gave me was saturated with pity. Pity for a husband she couldn’t love, even in death. Pity because she knew that without her, I would forever be alone, because no one would put as much effort into me as she did. I hated her for that. I hated her pity to the depths of my soul, and I made damn fucking sure no one would ever give me that look again.”
He became a monster.
In a deranged, fucked-up way, it made so much sense. Monsters were abhorred and feared, but never pitied. In that, he’d succeeded.
Kate had never felt bad for him. Never felt sorrow or disappointment. Not even now. Because it was inconceivable to think of him as weak or helpless. He didn’t evoke that oh-you-poor-thing, head-patting kind of emotion from anyone.
What she did feel was compassion. That innate goodness that most people possessed was what compelled her to sway toward him, filling her with the perverse need to comfort him for the pain he had inflicted on her.
Talk about messed up. But the more she thought about it, the more she understood. For the first time, she felt a real sense of hope.
Hope for him.
He was a self-aware bully, open-minded and regretful, imperfect and human. She could work with that, relate to it, and maybe, just maybe, she could convince him to let her go.
“A terrible thing happened to you.” She quietly inched to the side of the bed. “But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can change the course of your life. Stop kidnapping and terrorizing people.”
His neck slowly turned, bringing the intensity of his eyes over his shoulder to grab hold of hers. “I’ll stop being heartless when you stop looking at me like it’s the only thing I am.”
She emptied her expression but couldn’t clear the guilt. It stuck in the press of her lips, accusing and judgmental.
“Or don’t stop.” He jerked back around. “Either way, it doesn’t change your circumstances.”
Reality crashed in, banging in her chest. What was she doing trying to reason with her captor? He just fucked her ruthlessly, while she screamed no until her throat bled. He didn’t give a shit about her.
Except something was happening deep in her gut. She felt this coiling, fierce objection to putting him in a category marked Irredeemable. He was so much more than a bad man, and she’d only scratched the surface.
Or maybe she really was just suffering from Stockholm syndrome.
Why had he shared his past with her? Was it a call for help? Was he begging her to see past his imposing, brutal good looks? Or was it a trick? A ploy to engender feelings from her so he could use them against her later?
An unusual sound broke through her introspection.
The plop of wet drops hit the floor near his position.
Plop. Plop-plop.
Was the ceiling leaking? It appeared dry.
Was he crying?
She craned her neck, straining her senses, listening.
The wet sounds sped up. More liquid. A slow trickle.
“What is that?” Chills swept across her scalp as she stood from the bed.
Scanning the room, she scrambled for the closest thing she could grab. His shirt. She spread the crisp material against the front of her body and slowly stepped around him. And lost her breath.
Blood.
Oh God, it was everywhere.
Rivers of crimson snaked along his forearm, forking stained lines down his fingers and dripping to the floor.
Hot red splatters. There were so many dots between his feet they overlapped.
She teetered, lightheaded, and focused on the source of the bleeding.
A razor. He wore that damn finger blade like a claw, dragging it over old scars.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
He was cutting and not answering her, because it was a stupid question.
She took a shaky step closer. “Why?”
“Punishment.” His voice lacked all emotion, and the blade continued to carve.
Balling a fist in the shirt, she clutched it tighter against her chest. “Punishment for what?”
“You.”
She flinched, and her gaze flew over the scars on his arms. So many marks. Faded ones. Newer ones. “Do you do this every time you fuck a woman?”
The razor paused. He lifted his head, his expression empty, voice emptier. “The last person I had sex with was my wife.”
“What?” Her naïveté plummeted to the floor and shattered. “That was—”
“Twelve years ago.” He returned to his cutting.
“You haven’t had sex in twelve years?”
“That’s what I said.”
She recalled how incredibly experienced he was in bed and stared at him in disbelief. “You’re lying.”
His nostrils flared, and he dug the razor deeper into his arm.
Thick droplets oozed free, flowing off his skin and soaking the flooring.
Dark red against dark wood.
The scent of copper in the air.
She wished it would stop. She needed it to stop.
“Tiago, can you just…” Now within reach, she stretched an arm toward him and held the other against her chest, trapping the shirt. “Please, just stop for a second and talk to me.”
He looked up, stared blankly at her face then her outstretched hand. She wanted to yank her arm back, but she refused to look scared, even if everything inside her screamed to run.
His bladed finger twitched as he raised his slashed arm and curled a bloody hand around her wrist. He pulled, forcing her to shuffle into the space between his legs.
The soles of her feet sopped up the gore on the floor. She tried not to think about that, and instead focused on what he’d said.
“You fucked Iliana.” She held her arm still in his grip
. “In the backroom, every day.”
“I’ve never touched that woman.”
Cycling through her memories, she couldn’t identify a single time he put his hands on Iliana. Not even tonight in the kitchen. It was always the other way around.
“She’s all over you,” she said.
“Iliana throws herself at everyone.” His fingers tightened around her arm. “She will never touch you or me again.”
“What about Lucia?” She squinted. “She was your captive for eleven years. You can’t tell me nothing happened.”
“I touched her body and imagined my wife, but I never kissed her. Never fucked her.”
He released her wrist and yanked the shirt from her grasp. Blood-soaked fingers curled around her hip, and he lowered his head, touching his brow to her stomach.
Was he staring at her pussy? Or were his eyes closed? She kept her attention on his bladed finger and held her breath.
“When I was with you tonight, I didn’t think about Semira. Not once.” He pressed his lips to her belly button. “Celibacy was my penance for failing her. It was my choice. Until you.”
He broke his twelve-year abstinence. For her.
It means something to me.
As if pulled by an invisible string, her hand floated toward his head, where his soft hair lay against her abdomen. Before she made contact, she snapped out of the enchantment and dropped her arm. “Why me?”
In a swift glide of powerful muscles, he unfolded his body and rose to his full height, towering over her, completely nude. “You’re mine.”
Mine. That fucking word set her teeth on edge. He could say the same about this house, his security guards, the stupid blade on his finger. He could take his property and all his precious little possessions and shove them up his ass. She refused to be one of his belongings.
Stretching her spine, she tried to add length to her height, to stand taller than eye-level with his chest.
“Why did you cut yourself?” She lifted her face. “What was the punishment for?”
He narrowed his eyes.
She narrowed hers back. “For everything you’ve done to me?”
“No, Kate.” He cocked his head. “For everything I’m going to do to you.”
The heat in Kate’s cheeks gave way to numbing chills. She didn’t have a chance to stammer a response before Tiago grabbed her hand and hauled her into the bathroom.
“What are you doing?” She dug in her feet, slipping in the blood that trailed him.
“Get in the shower.” He pushed her in the general direction. “Back against the wall. Hands at your sides.”
He didn’t need to flash the blade on his finger. His tone was sharp enough to send her running.
“What did I do?” She pressed her spine against the shower wall and pinched her arms close to her ribs. “If I angered you—”
“You meant to. You’ll fight me at every turn.” He set the razor on the counter and prowled toward her with a terrifying glint in his eyes. “I look forward to it.”
“Don’t hurt me.” Her breathing quickened, knocking her chest into a heaving jog.
“Too late for that.” He stepped into the shower and wrapped both hands around her neck, forcing her head back with his thumbs beneath her chin. “I fucked you thoroughly and completely, and I’ve only just begun.”
Warm blood dripped from his arm to her chest, and she shivered. “You need to get Boones. Let him look at your cuts.”
“Tell me you care if I bleed out.”
“No.” She set her jaw. “I don’t care.”
“So fucking honest.” He leaned in and licked her lips. “Tell me more.”
“You’re a possessive, duplicitous, unreasonable nutjob.”
“Your insults make me so damn hard.” He dropped a hand to her ass and squeezed it painfully. “Me encanta tu culo. When I put my mouth here…” He wedged a finger into the crack, making her clench. “When I lick this tight rim, tell me you hate it.”
She couldn’t. Just thinking about it hardened her nipples. She knew it was happening when he glanced down at her chest and grinned.
“I waited twelve years for you.” He touched his mouth to the corner of hers.
“Don’t say that.”
The wet sound of dripping drew her attention to the tile floor. Red splatters hit the drain. One heavy drop landed on her foot and worked its way between her toes. They both stared at it.
“I’ve seen a lot of shit in my life. What’s normal to me would be shocking by society’s standards.” He wiped a hand over the cuts on his arm, collecting a palm full of blood. “Don’t move.”
He set that hand against her stomach and smeared the scarlet wetness across her hips, her thighs, and between her legs.
Horror hit her in a surge of tears, trembling her chin and burning through her sinuses. She closed her eyes, desperate to unsee the blood he was rubbing into her pussy.
“I’ve been a voyeur for twelve years.” His hands cupped her face, warm and sticky. “Always watching from the front row, close enough to smell the tang of a soaked cunt, to hear the hungry slap of balls. I collected a lot of fantasies, and the things I’ve imagined… The dirty, filthy fucking things I’ve played out in my head never had an outlet.”
Until now.
Until her.
She kept her eyes squeezed shut and bit down on a sob. But it found her vocal chords and vibrated in her throat.
He moved in closer, his wet palms sailing downward, lingering on her chest, tweaking her nipples, then continuing south to her waist and hips. No inch of her was left untouched. He was so attentive that way, achingly affectionate, and it fucked with her head.
Reaching her balled hands at her sides, he pried them open and guided one to his groin.
“Let go of your self-imposed restrictions, Kate.” He forced her fingers around his heavy testicles.
When she tried to pull away, his free hand flew to her throat and applied pressure.
“Let go of every preconceived notion you have about sex.” Holding her neck in a threatening restraint, he slid her hand to his cock and molded her fingers around the girth. “Fuck the stigmas and labels and society’s definition of what’s proper. Stop thinking about what you should do and fight for what you want.”
“You know, maybe I’d feel more liberated if the roles were reversed.” She swallowed against the collar of his fist and opened her eyes. “I have no power here. I’m completely at your mercy, and as you already pointed out, you have none.”
His lips split in a feral smile, a menacing spark lighting up his eyes. “Fucking love your mouth.”
The hand on her throat crept into her hair, and he clutched a hunk of it to yank her lips to his.
Stubborn as she was, she tried to resist. But she just couldn’t. Not with his hot, beautiful cock in her hand, his fingers holding that grip, and his mouth setting her on fire.
The kiss went from playful to starving in seconds. Her body craved him. It recognized his touch, his mouth, the scent of his skin, and the rumbling sound of his voice. Didn’t matter how selfish or cruel he was. The brainless, fleshy parts of her loved the way he made her feel.
While his tongue chased and licked hers, he guided their hands along his shaft, angling to rub the head between her legs, touching her, touching himself.
It was erotic and tantalizing and so fucking wrong. She loved it. She hated that she loved it. He was corrupting her, and her mind seemed hellbent on rationalizing and justifying every illogical reaction.
“You’re right in that you have no power here,” he breathed against her lips. “Not while I’m holding you against your will and you’re constantly looking for an escape. But you have the power to take from me. When we’re together like this, you can take as much pleasure as you want. Deviate from everything Van taught you. Break free from your hang-ups. Explore whatever you desire without judgment.”
She wanted that, but she didn’t trust it. Not with him. He was spinning her around
so fast she didn’t know which way was out.
Her eyes fluttered closed. “I don’t know how.”
“Look down. Look at us.”
She lowered her gaze, taking in her bloodstained body, his hand holding hers around his cock, and the semi-hardness of it gliding between her thighs, seeking entry.
He adjusted his grip to drag a finger along her slit, collecting the ejaculate he’d left there minutes ago. Then he smeared that into the blood on her thighs.
It didn’t feel forced or planned. He wasn’t pretending to be something he wasn’t. This was Tiago, the man no one else saw, in all his crude, natural, horrifying glory.
No one had ever captivated her the way he did.
“You’re covered in me.” He tipped her head back to stare into her eyes. “You’re wearing my spit, sweat, come, and blood. Give me your definition for that. The first word that comes to mind.”
“Raw.” Her brows pulled together.
“Yeah.” The corner of his mouth curved up. “Raw isn’t a bad thing, Kate, and I’m not finished.”
He swooped in and caught her lips, stealing choppy breaths from her lungs.
What did he mean he wasn’t finished? Would he cover her in his tears next? Or… Oh, God.
A hot, wet stream flowed down her legs. The length of his dick rubbed against her hip, warm and half-hard in their hands. His mouth moved over hers, distracting her with the potency of his assertive tongue and sultry lips.
But she knew what was happening. A steady rush of liquid warmth drenched her lower half, tickled her feet, and stirred an appalling reaction between her legs. He was peeing on her, shamelessly pissing on her body, and her pussy throbbed.
It wasn’t the shocking dirtiness of it that turned her on. It was the intensity of his arousal from it. The quicker his breaths grew, the faster her heart panted. He kissed her harder, more frantically, and she met him lick for lick, bite for bite.
She clung to the sounds of his groans, the confident way he held his cock in their hands, and the sensation of his body’s hot fluid soaking her skin. It was the rawest form of intimacy she could’ve ever imagined.
Urinating wasn’t much different than climaxing. There was a need for privacy while doing either action. The urge to hold it, stall it, then the tightening, building internal pressure, until the burst, the gushing flood, and the overwhelming relief. It made her want to release her bladder and orgasm all at once, just to share in the freedom he was experiencing, to let it all go without the judgment of prudes in the outside world.
