“What did you do?” I ask, breathless. There is nothing he could say that wouldn’t surprise me. This isn’t the Reggie Andrews I know, that anyone knows. This is Reggie Andrews on the other side of what I put him through. He’s not broken anymore, but he put his pieces back differently. He’s a man with obsessive tendencies and violent urges, and I gave him tacit permission to let go of all the societal conventions and the repressive morality that kept him in control until now. This is a man free to be himself for the very first time, and it seems like his true self is pretty bloody.
It makes me want to jump on him right now, press myself against him until I’m scarred by all his brand-new edges.
“You were right,” he begins, coming over to release me from the beam above. “I looked into Jessica Mendes’s arrest, and it’s shaky at best. There isn’t enough concrete evidence to get her case reopened, though.”
Oh, my sweet, newborn devil. He’s opened his eyes to the truth of how the world works, but he still thinks there’s something to be done about it. He still thinks he can change things, fit a broken system into all his shoulds.
He sits on the mattress and tugs me down into his lap. There’s something about the way he holds me that makes my stomach turn inside out. He’s not holding me like he’s just keeping me from fleeing, locking me into place so he can have his way with me. His arm binds me against his chest solidly, inescapably, but it’s almost as if he just wants to be touching me, even if we’re not fucking. Like he wants to know I’m here, and no one can take me away from him. Not even me.
He pulls his phone out of his back pocket and rubs it against his jeans to clean off the drying blood dotting the screen. He opens a video and taps play, and my pulse speeds in anticipation.
There’s a man on the ground, bound to a chair, with blood falling from his face in sheets. The beating is fresh, and it’s not one he’s used to taking.
“Now tell me what I want to hear,” Andrews’s voice says, in a chilling tone that I used to think was reserved only for me. I haven’t heard it in a couple days, and the growling timbre shoots straight to that spot between my legs. The bloody man, presumably Dixon, doesn’t speak, and the camera jostles as Andrews’s boot kicks out, landing square in the fucker’s stomach. I don’t think I mean to, but I realize my hands are gripping my captor’s muscled thighs, my nails digging in deeper with every second.
We watch Dixon rattle out a confession of sorts, highlighting Jessica’s innocence in the whole situation. When he’s done, so is the video, freezing on a shot of Dixon’s crimson-drenched face, his eyes big and pleading.
I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do. My body feels tense, full of nervous energy just waiting to explode. My thoughts are fried, a mess of blood and bone and begging.
Finally, I speak, in a small voice that’s as surprised by the question as Andrews is. “Do you have more?”
He hesitates, then taps to the previous video in the album. Dixon still looks like a man here, his face not drenched in blood, his nose where it’s supposed to be. Then I get to watch Andrews tear him apart, watch every blow and listen to every scream until the video abruptly cuts off. I reach out to play it again, and he lets me. My breathing becomes ragged and uneven, and my pussy feels like it’s clenching around nothing. Andrews thumbs my nipple, and I realize it’s hard and tight.
“This shit turns you on,” Andrews murmurs, not quite at me. He should sound disgusted, but he doesn’t.
He pauses the video and sets the phone aside, pulling me around so that I’m straddling his waist. When I feel his hardness through his jeans, my heart skips a beat. I’ve never felt like this before Andrews has even touched me.
“What do you want, Miel?” he asks, holding my gaze. “What does your body want to do right now?”
I want to say that I don’t know and let him decide for me, but that’s a cop out. I close my eyes and try to figure out what will sate the burning need building up inside me. My hands feel cold and empty, so I put them on Andrews’s body, letting them slide and explore as they wish. My pussy wants to be filled, but barring that, I need friction. I move my hips and rock myself gently against Andrews, until I find the right angle for his hardness to rub against my throbbing clit. The roughness of the jeans against my sensitive inner thighs only heightens the sensation.
I open my eyes, and meet my captor’s hungry gaze. He likes what I’m doing, and for some reason, that makes it feel even better. My hips pick up the speed, and I can’t stop looking at Andrews’s lips, dark and lush and biteable. I meet his mouth with a kiss, and he eagerly takes the lead, putting those perfect lips to work, teasing with his tongue. It feels more natural now, to let my tongue dance in tandem with his, to let my mouth do whatever feels right in the moment. So I bite his lower lip, hard, until he groans and I taste the metallic tang of blood. I expect him to pull away and be pissed at me, but this only seems to further excite him. Without breaking our kiss, he quickly flips me onto my back, his hands greedily grabbing at my tits, my ass, everything in between. His erection strains at his jeans, and the gnawing need between my legs feels like it could kill me.
“I want—” I pause to catch a breath. I always thought this was something I would never, ever want. I thought the ability to enjoy sex had been stolen from me, resigned myself to never understanding the physical desire that seems to drive everyone else. And in a way, I think I didn’t want to let myself want this. Because without my damage, I don’t know what is left of me. Because my brokenness is a knife, and without it I have no defenses. But still, still I meet Andrews’s eyes and say it. “I want you inside me.”
He holds my gaze for a moment, as if to search out any doubt hiding away, and then he nods. He pushes down his jeans while I slide off my undies, but he doesn’t fuck me yet. His hand finds my wetness, and his fingers dip into my wanton opening, then travel up to tease my clit. He starts kissing me again, his mouth still tasting of copper, and I can’t suppress a moan. Fuck, this man knows what he’s doing. He curls his fingers inside me and my spine bends as if by magic, my hips rocking in their search for more. Just… more. I don’t understand why he’s torturing me like this. I need his cock, need his domination. Need everything he has to offer. I mewl in frustration, and he finally caves to my desire. I feel his thick head at my entrance, and there’s a moment of panic. Despite everything my body wants, my mind still remembers. My mind is screaming at me to stop this, tells me my body is lying. That all I’m asking for is more pain and humiliation, more scars to bear. But then he penetrates me, and the sensation clears everything else out of my head. It does hurt, but in the most delicious way, and when he slides his full length inside of me, it feels like a missing piece of me was just put back in place. My inner walls clench, trying to pull him in deeper, trying to hold him and never let go. And, oh, when he pulls out, my eyes roll back and my toes curl. And so it goes, his thrusts picking up speed and intensity, becoming rougher than the first time. With one hand he pins my wrists above my head, and the other grabs my ass, holding me viciously in place while he ruts. I feel like I can’t breathe, my whole body being jolted back and forth, everything happening so fast and out of my control. Andrews has lost control too, I can tell, and his wild strokes only feel better. He slams into me like he’s trying to break me, like he’s trying to permanently embed himself in my body. It doesn’t hurt anymore, even though it should. Pleasure is building inside me, purging me of anything and everything else. Can I come like this? I can tell Andrews is close. My nails are dug deep into his back, because all of this feeling has to go somewhere, and I feel like I’m about to scream, truly scream. I bite down on his shoulder to silence myself, harder than I intended, breaking skin, drawing blood. Andrews cries out, not quite in pain, and I feel his cock pulsing inside me, feel the heat of his release spreading inside me. I don’t know if it’s that, or the blood on my tongue, or his painfully tight grip, but I come too. All the pain and the hurt and the pleasure inside me detonates all at onc
e, and I can feel it tear me apart, atom by atom. It hurts the way closure does, my body shuddering at the catharsis, my vision going white.
We lie there panting for a second, his weight bearing down on me, his dick still inside me as it softens. I cling to him, wishing he would use all his beautiful rope to bind himself to me. Because what just happened between us, I can’t take back. He doesn’t even know what he just did, and he finally rolls off of me and collapses onto his back with a satisfied grunt, like he doesn’t know that the world has completely changed. I’m going to keep fighting it, I swear, but it’s only going to be harder from here on out. For so long, nobody could hurt me, because there wasn’t anything left to hurt. Because I was cold, uncaring, and that meant no one had any power over me. But Andrews has been climbing the walls, chipping away at my defenses. And I just unlocked the fucking front door.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Andrews
It’s only when I pull into a visitor parking spot at the precinct that I realize what I’m doing. I’m about to show the police recorded evidence of myself forcing a confession. Not only is everything Dixon said on tape completely unusable in court, but the beating is enough to get me thrown in the pen for assault. In a haze of bloodlust and sex, I somehow lost my entire fucking mind.
What the fuck was I thinking?
I exhale slowly and lean my forehead against the steering wheel. All the frantic energy that had kept me in perpetual motion for the past twenty-four hours drains out of me all at once. I was a detective for almost twenty years, and a damn good one. I know that shit like this can’t be used as evidence, not in court. I know that no one is going to reopen Jessica’s case. She plead guilty, and there wasn’t enough reasonable doubt to hold up the process. Anything past that isn’t our job. Getting hung up on your own feelings and theories never ends well. I should know that by now.
I force myself to watch the damn video again. This time, it just makes me sick to my stomach. I don’t recognize the man torturing a potentially false confession out of an innocent-until-proven-guilty man. I’ve become exactly what I spent my whole life fighting against. The kind of man who would shoot down a father in front of his kids, for a personal vendetta. To prove a fucking point.
Because it feels good.
I wasn’t supposed to get worse after I captured and punished Miel. I was supposed to get it out of my system and go back to the way I used to be. Following the rules even when I didn’t like them, because that was right. Going on dates with pretty, undamaged girls who ran when I tried to introduce my dark, kinky fantasies, because those were wrong.
Miel turned me completely upside-down, leaning in every time she should have backed away, pulling me through doors she should have kept locked. She made me feel like I could do the same, that the most shameful parts of me belonged in the light. That maybe the line between right and wrong was a loose rope meant to be played with. A line that some people couldn’t survive on my side of, and that that’s an acceptable excuse.
She turned me into a fucking monster. Just like her.
Miel Conde is a killer, a sadist, and a criminal. No excuses, no free passes.
It doesn’t matter that I can read every scar on her body like Braille, that she lets me look into those dark-as-sin eyes and actually see her. It doesn’t matter that she’s the only woman I’ve ever met who doesn’t blink at the intensity of my obsession, who enjoys exploring the forbidden as much as I do. It doesn’t matter that no other pussy will suffice after hers, that my arms don’t know how to hold any other shape.
I came to Miami with a singular purpose. I broke all my rules because I had to, because I knew I never would again. I took Miel because she was the one thorn left in my side, and she needed to be dealt with. I let her distract me, but no more.
It’s time to get the job done and get back to my real life before it’s too late.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Andrews
I stay away from Miel, because her proximity is poison. I know if I see her, I’ll fall for the lie all over again. I have to purge her from my system, build up the strength to resist her mindless temptations. I just need enough to hate her for five minutes, to stop seeing her as a human long enough to take her life. I’m done entertaining my selfish whims and fantasies. I don’t get to keep her. I don’t get to live out a life in her upside-down bubble. This is the only way. This is the way things were always intended to play out.
I pull my old files from the glovebox and reexamine every well-worn page, every faded line of chicken scratch. The detailed account I wrote of what she did to me in that wine cellar, my own unflinching testimony. The list of bodies that I’ve tied to her bullets and blades: Barry Smythe, Delilah Martin, Alejandro Ruiz, Kevin Hopkins. And those are just from the past two years, after she and Javier Vega surfaced alongside Selina Palacios. For every kill I know of, there must be ten more that they managed to keep buried. Then there’s the list of her lesser crimes: extortion, kidnapping, assault, and of course, torture. This is an evil woman. This is a girl who was born in darkness, and built a life from it. There’s a reason I hunted her down, consumed in a blinding sea of vengeance. It’s carved deep into my arm, impossible to erase, never to be forgotten. And now, I only have more reason to deliver her final punishment. She made me do things that will tarnish my name for the rest of my life, broke open parts of my brain that I may never manage to shut again. She is a threat to the world, and if I let her continue living free, she’ll only do more damage, deal more death. You can’t fix a creature like that. You can only put it down before it’s too late.
Chapter Forty
Miel
Andrews doesn’t come back that day. He doesn’t come back the day after that. At first, I worry that he’s gotten in trouble. I don’t know what he was planning, but with the way he’s been spiraling, it’s very possible he pushed things too far and got caught. He doesn’t know how to get away with this shit. Maybe the cops got him, or Dixon’s scumbag friends chased him down.
By the second day, I’m done lying to myself. He left, he’s gone. Just like everyone else. He had me, changed his mind, and moved on to shinier, less sinful things. I guess he didn’t have the guts to finish the job himself, and left me here to slowly starve. Fucker.
I’ve spent two decades building up my trust issues, and it’s easy to surrender to the familiar. It’s not like I fully trusted Andrews, anyway. A stupid, soft spot in me almost started to believe he was different, that I could be different, but I knew better than to fall for that. He’s just confirming what I’ve always known: men ain’t shit.
Simultaneously, and with just as much vehemency, I hold on to hope. Every time I tell myself that it’s over, that Andrews is never coming back, I can’t help but add an asterisk. I’m afraid to let myself formulate the thought, but maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I didn’t realize I still possessed the capacity to hope, but there it is, that flickering, deadly flame. The maybes are going to be the death of me, because I should know better by now. I should know better than to believe in anyone but myself.
To occupy my mind, I do what I should have all along. I try to break free. I pull and tug and even bite at my bindings until the rope is stained in blood, to no avail. A wild animal will chew off its own leg to escape a snare, but I’m just not there yet. I try to climb up the rope, thinking maybe I could somehow unwrap myself from the beam itself, but I’m not strong enough anymore, not even stuffed full of steak and biscuits. Honestly, I don’t know if I could have even before Andrews all but starved me. I’ve gotten soft in Miami. Soft in the body, but soft in the head and heart too.
And then the vicious cycle of self-loathing and Andrews-loathing begins all over again. Over and over, all day, and then all night, when hunger and thirst won’t let me sleep.
I don’t even know who I hate most anymore.
Chapter Forty-One
Miel
When the elevator doors slide open on the third day, I scramble to my feet. I’ve gone hung
ry for longer, but the thirst is killing me. It’s already dark out, so I can’t really make out Andrews’s face as he crosses the room. I’ve spent every waking hour since he left blowing on the embers of my rage, reminding myself that this man means nothing to me and I mean nothing to him. Reminding myself that he abandoned me here, and he’d do it again in a heartbeat. And still, fucking still, my insides twist at the sight of him, my heartbeat speeding up in anticipation of his touch. He’s here. He came back for me.
He’s here to hurt me.
When he flicks on the camping lamp, it illuminates a hateful mask I haven’t seen since he first took me. Long shadows exacerbate the look, hiding the truth in his eyes, sharpening all his angles to blades.
“Where have you been?” I ask, keeping my voice steady as it cracks through my dry lips. Maybe it’s just the light. Maybe he’s upset about something that has nothing to do with me, and won’t take it out on me. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Maybe I’m just a dumb bitch who fell into the same trap she always swore she wouldn’t: a man’s strong arms and pretty eyes. Maybe this is what I get, not for everything I’ve had to do to survive, but for slipping up and thinking for a moment that things could be different. That I could be different.
“Don’t speak,” Andrews growls, with that hypnotic finality that makes me feel like I have to obey. That makes me want to obey. That means I have no choice but to disobey.
“What—”
I barely get a word out before his hand is on me, wrapping around my face easily, fingers digging into my cheeks hard enough to crack me open, ensuring I couldn’t speak even if I still wanted to.
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