by J. L. Beck
But it doesn’t matter. None of it does because she belongs to me now, and there’s nothing any of them can do to take her from me.
I shift forward once more, and he flinches away, knowing more pain is coming. The knife feels featherlight in my hand as I bring it across his face in a diagonal motion, cutting through the other side of his face so smoothly, like slicing silk. An ear-piercing scream fills the air, followed by a begging plea.
“Please, don’t do this. We can work something out. I told you that you can have the bitch. I don’t want her anyway. She’s frigid and hated whenever I touched her.”
I dig the blade in deep enough that it hits bone, leaving a hole in his cheek now. “You should watch what you say when I have this deep under your skin…I might get angry and slip.”
He cries out as I sit back once more, my anger rolling in my gut, snapping the control I usually keep a tight hold on.
“You don’t get a say about her life anymore. One more word indicating that, and I’ll take a lot longer than I planned with you. I’ll start with your toes and slice you up bit by bit until you change your fucking tune.”
God, I fucking hate him so much. I’m shaking with it. I haven’t felt this much unbalanced rage since I faced my father that night, the same knife in my hand.
“Let’s get this straight, shall we? I’m going to kill you. It’ll be painful because I want to please my wife. However, every word you say can determine how fast or slow this will go. As I said, I can slice you up bit by bit, or I can gut you in one quick stroke and leave you to bleed out.”
His eyes go wide, and he starts shaking again. Fucking coward can’t even face the death he’s earned in the end. “What if I have information? Something you would want to know in exchange for my life?”
I shake my head. “Nothing you can tell me will compel me not to kill you tonight. Nothing at all.”
When his eyes narrow and his spine straightens, I watch him closely. He thinks he knows something that can give him some leverage. I almost want to know what it is. But not enough to free him and not enough to let him live. Once his blood seeps into the floor, my debt to Val will be paid, and she’ll be mine forever.
The thought bolsters me enough to send me scooting toward the bastard one more time. He flinches back and stammers out. “A little pussy isn’t enough reason to start a war. You know, killing me outside of the season is an act of war, not only against my family but also against the council. Everyone will be on your ass.”
I lean in and grab the back of his neck so I can whisper in his ear. “They’ll have to find your body to prove it first.”
Then I slide the knife into his fat stinking gut and enjoy the way he jerks in my grip.
I have blood seeping down my wrists and onto my shirt now, but I don’t care. It’ll prove it’s done. She’ll be able to see no one can take care of her like I can. No one can fucking give her what she needs like me.
He whimpers again, and I twist the knife, digging it in deeper. It won’t take him long to die, and I’m okay with it. Right now, all I can think about is getting back to my angel.
“She’s not worth it,” he grits out.
I release his neck and jerk my knife roughly from his gut. “You want those to be your last words? I’d pick something more interesting, but it’s up to you, I guess.”
He groans and leans over in the chair. The dumbass doesn’t even realize sitting that way will compress his wound and make him bleed out faster. “You have no idea what you’re doing. She’s a viper in your henhouse, and you don’t even know?”
As if my angel could ever do anything to betray me. He obviously doesn’t know a thing about her, and he never did.
It’s a comforting thought as I watch the puddle of blood grow between our feet. I’m not leaving this spot until his heart stops beating. Otherwise, I won’t be able to tell Val definitively he’s gone for good.
I shoot a text to Alexei and tell him to find Sal’s computer. If he has any more videos of Val on there, I want them all destroyed. Which reminds me.
I wipe my knife on his pants leg, cleaning it off, and then tuck it back into my boot.
Then I dig through his pants pocket to find his phone. This will need to be destroyed as well. No doubt he has some disgusting things on here.
“You are so fucked,” he whispers, the light slowly leaving his eyes.
I sit back and straighten my jacket. “Aren’t we all?”
He shakes his head, not even putting effort into it. Then with his last breath, he wheezes out, “She knows what happened to your mother.”
34
Valentina
I feel like an idiot, pacing back and forth in front of the elevators, my bare feet slapping on the time with every pass. Kai checked on me three times, and I waved him away. He’s been worse with his hovering since that text came in from Sal. I’ve already forgotten it in my worry over Adrian.
What if Sal hurts him? What if he doesn’t come back?
What if…
What if…
What if…
It’s all I can think about as I pace and watch the number screen on top of the elevator for movement. No one has come up since the team left. I keep my phone tucked tight in my hands; the ringer turned up as high as I can make it. Once Kai took the information he needed from it, he returned it almost reluctantly.
Would it kill someone to call me and let me know Adrian is alive? Better yet, that Adrian is alive, and Sal is not.
I’ve never considered myself a vengeful person, but I decided to make an exception with Sal. He deserves nothing less than pain and suffering for all he’s caused. And for all Adrian’s sins, he’s the perfect instrument to deliver the karma Sal earned all on his own.
A part of me wishes I were strong enough to be there for it, to watch. Even if the idea makes my fingers tingle with adrenaline, it also turns my stomach. Just being in the same room with him would make me puke.
I keep pacing, watching the number, waiting for it to move.
When the numbers begin moving, my pacing increases as I watch the screen. Each floor the screen eats up shoots a spike of fear through me. I’m not scared of Adrian. Even in the beginning, he’s been nothing but honest with me. His moments of brutality have always been tempered with that honesty. I’ve learned he does nothing without a reason, and it’s become a touchstone for me to understand what he might do next.
I keep pacing, watching, waiting until the elevator finally dings, and the doors slide open.
Inside, it’s only him. But, at the same time, he’s not the calm, collected man I’ve come to know. Something about the way he looks is unhinged. Hands braced behind him on the bars of the elevator, his white shirt is stained to the elbows in blood. It’s also splattered all over his front. The jacket he’d left in is gone, and his usually perfectly styled hair is mussed and crusted with blood like he’s been running his wet fingers through it.
God, I should be terrified of this dark god. He looks like something out of a horror film, yet I’m frozen, unable to look away.
He lifts his chin and locks eyes with me. When we first met, his eyes drew me in, a combination of soft and chilled. Right now, there’s no softness in his gaze. No humanity, no give, nothing like the man I’ve come to understand over the months we’ve known each other.
I swallow hard, frozen in the center of the foyer.
He shoves away from the bar and steps into the penthouse. The doors whoosh closed behind him, trapping us together.
A part of me wants to run. A part of me is dying to know what happened. And a part of me wants to fall to my knees and give him anything he asks for.
When he reaches me, he stares down at me hard. The scent of blood wafts off him, sharp and metallic. “Have you been keeping secrets from me, Angel?”
My gulp is loud between us, and I can’t take it back. I shake my head, unable to speak the words.
“Not good enough,” he growls. “Try again. Have you been keeping se
crets from me?”
“No,” I squeak out. “I’ve told you everything. Not even things I shared with Rose.”
He cocks his head, studying me. I hate him seeing my hesitation, seeing my fear. A long time ago, I accepted this is my life now. Facing this side of him is part of the job, and now that he’s finally showing it to me, I can’t flinch.
Or he’ll never forgive me.
“I promise. I don’t have any secrets from you,” I say, my tone more confident despite my stomach tying itself in knots.
His fingers curve around my neck, not clutching, merely holding. “Should I believe you?”
“Why wouldn’t you? Did Sal say something about me keeping a secret? How would he even know? I only spoke to him when I absolutely had to.”
He walks me slowly toward the nearest wall, each step careful so I don’t trip.
I don’t understand his question or where this is going. Nor can I see past the almost feral look in his eyes as he stares me down.
“I promise,” I repeat, hoping he’ll believe me this time. “I promise. I don’t want to keep secrets from you. I don’t need to.”
His fingers tighten a tiny bit, but I don’t even flinch. There’s no need. In my gut, I know he won’t hurt me. And if this moment of…of…instability is what he needs, I can give him that.
I steel my spine and lift my chin. “Tell me what you want me to say. What you want to know. I’ll tell you anything.”
He hunches down to line our faces up. “He said you knew something about my mother’s disappearance, about her death.”
My voice trembles as I answer. “And you believe him?”
He snorts, his hand loosening now as he stands to his full height again. “He told me with his dying breath.”
Fucking Sal. Of course he would use his last breath on Earth to continue to fuck up my life. He’d use it to turn the one person I care about against me.
His blood is slicked across my skin now, thanks to Adrian’s hold and his proximity. I’m smeared with it, and right now, I don’t fucking care. I want to revel in it. Rub it into my skin and laugh because he’s gone, and I’m still standing, despite how hard he’s worked to the contrary.
“I’m going to ask you once, and only once. Do you know anything about my mother or her death?”
I shake my head, but it’s not much with his grip still on me. “No, of course not. The only thing I know about her is what you’ve shared with me. I don’t know why Sal would say something like that except as his final ‘fuck you’ to me.”
He slams me back into the wall, and my shoulders bounce against it. Not hard enough to hurt, just enough to rattle my bones. It’s not even rough by my pain standards. “If I find out you’re lying to me, that you know something, and you’ve lied to me this whole time…”
When he trails off, I arch my neck forward to catch his eyes again. “You’ll what? Treat me the same way they did? Hit me? Hurt me?”
His jaw tightens, and he reaches out to rip the strap of my sundress. It sags down, baring my right breast to him. “Unlike Sal or your father, I follow through with my threats. There are worse things I can do to you than hurt you.”
Despite his words and his grip. Despite the way he’s holding me and handling me. Despite everything screaming at me to the contrary…I know he won’t hurt me. Not the same way they did. Not even close.
“What do you want from me?” I whisper. “You asked a question, and I answered you.”
His eyes are locked onto my bare skin, and he jerks the other strap of my other shoulder, leaving smears of blood from my shoulder to my bicep.
Then he drags the dress farther down so it slips off my hips and pools at my feet. I wait to see what he’ll do next.
When he rips my panties off, one-handed, the fabric digs into my skin hard enough I know I’ll have a bruise. But I don’t make a sound.
I wait for the moment when my brain somehow leaves my body. An occurrence that happened regularly when Sal, or my father, put their hands on me, but it doesn’t come. In fact, the opposite happens. It’s as if every brush of his skin against mine only heightens my awareness of both him and my own body.
I reach out and unbutton his shirt, staring hard into his eyes, waiting for him to bat my fingers away. He doesn’t, but he releases my neck so I can strip his bloodstained clothing off. Then for some reason, I go for his belt. My hands with a life of their own. My heart is pounding so loud in my ears I can’t possibly hear anything else right now.
When I strip his belt, it’s as if a switch is flipping in him. He steals it from my grasp and then yanks my hands behind me, wraps the belt tight, and cinches it to keep them immobile.
God, I should be terrified. But I’m so turned on I can feel the wetness on my thighs.
“You are not in charge,” he whispers, leaning in. “Say it.”
It takes me a couple of tries. “I’m not in charge.”
He lines his body up with mine, dips down enough to probe my entrance with his cock, and then he’s inside me. It’s not gentle. I’m speared on him, my tiptoes barely on the ground before he lifts me by the hips and slams me hard into the wall.
He drops his forehead to my shoulder but then replaces it with his teeth. It’s a sharp bite, not a gentle nip, and I moan in both pleasure and pain.
When he releases my shoulder, he chants, “You’re mine,” repeatedly.
I fight with the belt around my wrists, needing to touch him back, to hold on, give myself leverage. But there’s no mercy in the way he pounds into me. He’s slamming me into the wall, his hips working furiously, blood smeared all over both of us now. All I can do is close my eyes and lean my head back so it doesn’t smack into his as he drags his teeth up to my neck to deliver another hard bite.
This one causes me to cry out. I can barely breathe with the intensity of it all. His fingers are so tight, his teeth digging into my flesh so hard I can’t move, only breathe through it.
There’s more pain than pleasure now, but I don’t care. It’s all for him. If he needs to take me this way, then I can handle it.
It hits me fast and hard. I was made to handle him at his worst. Honed for it by my years of abuse and trauma. I can take it like no one else could.
A surge of possessiveness rises in my chest, a lump squeezing everything tight. No one else will have him like this except me.
His movements start to get frantic, less smooth, more brutal with every stroke. I lean into the wall, waiting it out, even as pleasure starts to replace the pain. He switches the angle at the last second, his cock gliding against my clit now. I cry out, my eyes popping open.
He wraps one arm under my ass to lift me, and the other grips my neck. “Come now. Fucking come.”
I shatter at his command. Everything inside me contracts tight around his cock. I come harder than I ever have, and he follows me a few seconds later, eyes still locked with mine, body still coiled tight against me.
When he slows, he still doesn’t release me. “You belong to me,” he says, his voice low, deep, thrumming things deep inside me hard enough to shoot another bolt of pleasure through me.
He eases me to the floor, pulling out of my body. “You belong to me, but if you ever betray me, I’ll fucking kill you.”
I nod my head, mainly because I’m afraid of the way my voice may sound and also because I’m past words. All I know is that I never want to be on the opposing side of Adrian.
35
Adrian
Val doesn’t respond but does acknowledge my words with a nod of her head. At some point, we make it to the shower, where I take my time washing both of us thoroughly. Sal’s words refuse to leave my mind. I can’t comprehend why he said what he did. A part of me wants to believe that it was his last chance at digging a knife into my chest, but then again, the criminal in me, the man hell-bent on avenging his mother’s killer, tells me to believe him.
But doing that would put Val and me on opposite sides. It would make us enemies, worse than
enemies, and I’m not certain I could fathom the outcome of such a thought. If she’s lying… I clench my jaw and swallow the thought down.
Val is quiet, and once we’re both dry, I lift her, carrying her in my arms until we reach the bed. When I place her gently against the sheets, her dark hair fans out in a halo above her head, and all I can do is stand there staring, drinking in her exquisite body.
I’m ravaged, starving for her, needing to touch her, taste her, possess her in every way possible. “I wish I had the patience to take my time with you, to caress you, and bring you to orgasm with my tongue and fingers before sinking deep inside you again, but if I’m being honest, I don’t…I don’t even have the power to be gentle with you. I won’t ask for your forgiveness for what I’ve done and what I will do again. I need you, Valentina. You’re mine, my wife, my fucking heartbeat.”
Her pink tongue darts out over her bottom lip, and like a lion stalking its prey, I pounce. Nothing about the way I kiss her is gentle, my lips branding against hers while I connect our bodies with a feverish pace. The need to feel her warm heat around my cock was the only thing that matters in my mind. I take from her, holding her tight to my chest while spreading her thighs wider with my hips, sinking deeper inside her. She doesn’t complain, even clawing my shoulders violently enough to leave marks.
She’s heaven, and I’m hell, and when we collide, nothing will stand in our way.
“Fuck, tell me who you belong to,” I growl, pressing my forehead against hers.
Val’s eyes are hazy, and I can feel her pussy twitch, telling me she is close to her own release. “You. I’m yours… forever…” The words come out in a gasp as I pull all the way out, then slam back in. Val’s mouth pops open, and her breath hitches, telling me I’ve hit the sensitive flesh at the top of her channel, and I know if I do that a couple more times, I’ll spark an orgasm right out of her.
I move my hips in the same motion again and again until her pussy starts to convulse, the tightness alone making my eyes roll to the back of my head. I barely hold off coming, my balls aching and my cock screaming for release.
