Crescendo (Beautiful Monsters Book 1)

by Lana Sky

  “I cut myself that night,” he tells me, brushing his hands alongside mine to prod the remnants of that very first shallow wound. “As a reminder. This was the last time... There was a knife under my bed. I was ready for the fucker. Then he came in and I just...laid there while he fucked me like an animal.” His voice breaks, but I have never heard such a dangerous sound pass the devil’s lips. He’s a creature formed entirely of rage. My fingers tremble against his white-hot skin, and I’ve lost count.

  I start over, but this time I let my hands fall and bring my face in close, brushing my lips against his uneven flesh. His story is too complex to be felt. It needs to be inhaled. Swallowed. Consumed. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen.

  “I did the same thing the next night,” he continues by the time I finally reach the twenty-eighth mark. “And the next. And the next—” he inhales sharply when my tongue grazes his skin.

  My lips go dry at his taste. Sweat and musk, way more potent than whatever’s in my veins. He travels deep down inside me to where no one else has ever been. A place that Vinny doesn’t even know exists. It swells with the presence of him, and I’m infested with the devil himself.

  “Thirty-four days,” he says, his voice catching over the words. It’s more than a number. It’s the price of his soul. Thirty-four days before he finally managed to fight his way out of hell. “I didn’t use the knife, either. I hit him...with my fists. I kicked him. I couldn’t stop. The bastard wasn’t even hurt. He didn’t try to stop me when I ran out of the house, half fucking naked screaming that I’d tell the police. Maybe he wanted me to...” He laughs, a twisted hollow sound that drips down over his chest like falling blood. “I was twelve.”

  My head throbs beneath the weight of his confession. It wants to sink back down into the warmth...the nothingness. My brain doesn’t want to feel, for once. It wants to sleep. The drug makes it so very easy to sleep.

  But the devil’s taste is on my tongue. I wince as I sink forward and fall to my knees. My mouth is on him, still pressed against the shrine of his body, and I breathe in each word of his morbid sermon. I memorize every cut, and he lets me clumsily attempt to trace every one. His bitter truth is enough to counter the opposing rush of the heroin.

  But it’s a bittersweet cure—he’s ruined one high and given me another. The substance he wields takes me impossibly higher than anything else, but he’s stingy. He won’t ever give me another taste, and my teeth sink into his flesh in punishment, though my jaw feels too heavy to truly bite down.

  He flinches back with a hiss, raking his fingers through my hair to latch onto the back of my skull. He forces me to look up, holding my gaze. Then he hauls me upright and shoves me back onto the bed, leaving me there while he stands against the wall.

  He watches as my tongue shoots out, seeking all traces of his taste from my lips. He watches me swallow every last bit. He watches...and he knows exactly which budding addiction will win out when I finally come down from the high.

  Morning descends with all the intensity of a freight train slamming into my chest at full speed. My lips part beneath a groan first, cracked and painfully dry. My eyes blink themselves open next, to a stained, grimy ceiling illuminated by a swath of gray daylight.

  My brain is mush, my skull composed of a million bricks that clatter together when I try to sit up. I barely lift my head clear of whatever lies beneath it, only to fall right back down. It takes three attempts before I can roll over onto my hands and knees. I’m shaking, forced to rock back and forth just to stay upright. The world spins when I finally manage to lift my head and focus on the shadowy figure watching me from across the room.

  “Get up,” Lucifer commands. His tone is clipped with impatience. How long has he been waiting? How long has he wondered whether or not I’d survive my little brush with a powerful opiate? His eyes reveal nothing as I scramble to remember how to control my limbs. It hurts when the muscles in my legs contract in order for me to stand. They shake too badly, and I flop back onto the mattress, clinging to handfuls of the comforter for balance.

  Panting, I glance at him through the wild, tangled mess of my hair. “Help...help me.” I hold my hand out, gauging his reaction to the request. His eyes narrow, but before I can even guess whether or not he’ll move, he approaches me and snatches for my wrist.

  I cry out when he pulls me to my feet. The bastard isn’t gentle. I stagger forward and have to clutch at the wall for balance. Clinging to it, I tremble, every nerve loose and unstable.

  “Look at me.” He’s at my shoulder and grabs for my chin himself when I don’t obey quickly enough. The breath catches in my throat as he manipulates my body against the wall, pressing me back while he steps in closer. His scent sneaks into my lungs, sweat, and blood. He hasn’t washed yet. Bruises paint his jaw and discolor the center of his chest. Battle scars.

  I can’t stop myself from reaching out to trace the mark just above his right pec. He stiffens at the contact, but I doubt that it’s out of pain. His grip over my chin tightens, craning my neck back so that my eyes return to his. They peer deep down, searching me. At first, I think he’s checking to see if I’m fully free of the aftereffects of the drug. Then he steps closer, pinning me against the wall with his bulk and I realize his true intention.

  Do I remember? If so, how much? How much of Lucifer’s dark, dirty secrets still taint my skin?

  I school my expression into revealing nothing and he grunts in frustration, his nails digging in. He won’t break me though. Vinny taught me well how to wear a mask—but beneath it, I peer over what snippets I do recall. Just who hurt him as a child? His father?

  The devil gives me no answers when he finally lets me go. It’s only as he jerks out of my reach that I realize my fingers had never left his skin, stroking absent patterns against his bruised flesh. Letters. D A N N Y...

  Lucifer knew my own dark secret. Now I have one of his.

  But there are no winners in his game. Just bitter round after bitter, brutal round. Which one of us would finally leave the cage as the victor? Would we ever leave at all?

  Lucifer gives away nothing of his battle plan as he retreats down a narrow hall. He doesn’t command me to follow, but I do anyway, bracing one hand against the wall.

  This apartment is even smaller than the last one. In just two steps Lucifer enters a tiny kitchen. There’s a bathroom to my left and to creep inside it, I would simply have to shuffle two inches sideways.

  “Here.” Lucifer snatches a plastic cup from a cupboard above a metal sink built into one of the countertops. He runs the faucet and fills it with water from the tap. “Drink,” he commands, slamming it down on the counter closest to me.

  I reach for it, only to flinch as pain sears through the center of my palm. It’s a shock to find blood pooling there, seeping from a gash that I don’t remember causing. Then like the scattered fragments of a nightmare, I remember...him. My eyes seek him out, and I realize that I’d left blood over his chest, the real reason he pulled away.

  “You cut me.” He doesn’t appear ashamed, but then I realize that I’m not exactly angry. I remember. The words he’d said drip through my ears in a distorted melody. It feels good now, he’d told me while I’d been swept under the heroin. But it won’t last. It never does. I wonder if he’d spoken from experience. His face reveals nothing, and I don’t ask.

  Instead, I lift the cup and drain it dry. My head swims when I set it back down and swipe at my mouth with the back of my uninjured hand. Lucifer’s searing eyes miss nothing. “If you haven’t thought of a plan for taking down Stacatto,” he starts, “now is the time.”

  “P-Plan?” Still dizzy, I shift so that my back rests against the wall, and I brace my good hand against it.

  “To take him down,” Lucifer clarifies, his voice hard and unnerving.

  Me “take down” Vincent Stacatto. When said out loud—by such a serious man—I can’t help but laugh just once. Lynn might have been able to entertain the notion in her head, but putting it
into practice? I shake my head. “I...I can’t—”

  “You don’t have a fucking choice.” Lucifer steps out from around the counter, and within seconds he closes in on me. “Think.” I jump when one of his hands finds the center of my chest, the thick fingers pointing toward my throat. He makes a show of pinning me flat against the wall and leaning in, his breath hot on my skin. “What are his weaknesses? His businesses? Who are his allies?”

  I’m still shaking my head. “He didn’t tell me—”

  “Bullshit.” His fingers flex, hard enough to send tiny jolts of pain exploding throughout my ribcage. “You’ve dreamt about it. Don’t tell me that you haven’t spent every waking moment fantasizing as to how to bring the bastard down...” His voice rumbles through my ears and resonates down my spine. I shiver, and my tongue shoots out to wet my lips, tasting blood.

  “He...he deals drugs—heroin and cocaine,” I say, wracking my brain for the snippets of conversations that I hadn’t been meant to hear; the words I used to drown out whenever he’d force me to play during a torture session; the little bits and pieces of information that I’d gleaned on my own. “He owns a taxi company—Sunshine—and uses the drivers to distribute the supply throughout the city.”

  Lucifer nods, accepting the information without comment. The pattern of his breathing changes, striking the side of my neck at a slower pace, but he still isn’t satisfied, and a silent command is conveyed when his hand presses a little harder against my chest. Go on.

  “He...he deals in women.” I cringe, picturing the girls he gave to me as “gifts.” Anger mingles with the heat of Lucifer on my skin. I shrivel and burn beneath both, and it’s easier to get the words out. “They have accents. He must get them from overseas. I don’t know where he keeps them.” Apart from my maids, I only knew of the women from the scattered conversations his men would have in the suite when they thought I wasn’t listening. Do good tonight, and we might stop by and see the new girls. Sate your cock for once. “And as for allies...” My recent thoughts hold nothing. I have to dig deeper into an older store of memories that make me almost grateful for Lucifer’s brutal strength to hold me up. “I just know one. A detective.” Lucifer perks up. I don’t know if it’s because of the hatred in my voice or the mere irony that a crime lord cavorts with an officer of the law.

  “His name?”

  “Detective Andrew Sosa.”

  “Sosa.” He frowns. Apparently, the name didn’t ring a bell. Regardless, he’s satisfied by the information, and he steps back, pulling his hand away, my chest expanding greedily. “I’ll look into it.”

  “It would have to be quick,” I say, “whatever we do. Vinny will—”

  “Vinny.” Lucifer scoffs and then releases a full chuckle that drips out through his teeth. “No matter what. You still call him that.”

  “W-What?” I’m thrown off by his line of attack.

  “Vinny,” the devil snarls. “You have yet to call the fucker by his full name.”

  His full name. Vincent. It strikes me that the devil thought I was weak for still calling my tormentor by a nickname. I see it in the way he shakes his head, still laughing, his eyes narrowed over my body like the barrel of a gun, but I don’t shy away.

  If only the bastard knew.

  I’m the one to enter his personal space this time. Just a single step that takes me no farther from the wall than where I can still cling to it. Lucifer stiffens regardless, his mouth caught mid-chuckle.

  “His...his name...” I have to lick my lips to find enough traction to speak. I’m too tired to reign in my accent, and it takes over, mangling each word. Lynn’s crisp voice is dead. For the first time in fifteen years, Daniela fully rears her head. “His name is the only bit of power that I’ve ever held over him,” I admit. “I call him Vinny, and I never forget everything else. Ever.”

  Lucifer holds my gaze for so long that I lose track. The disgust lurking over the irises gives way to something else, though I’m not sure that I can name it. Describing him requires an arsenal of words that I have yet to master. Guilt? Respect? Acknowledgement? I can’t decide which is which before he finally nods once in a grim apology.

  Without another word, I turn and stagger toward the bathroom. There’s only a sliding wooden door to fasten shut with a metal latch. Then, in private, I reassemble myself the only way I know how. I wash my face with my hands and scrub at my teeth with my thumb and a streak of bar soap. Using my wet fingers, I comb through my hair. When I finish, I eye my reflection and try to find some semblance of my old self lurking beneath this stranger’s gaunt features.

  I’m still not sure who this new Daniela is when I finally turn to the door, my fingers fumbling with the latch. By the time I get it open, I’d been too distracted to notice the heat wafting from the other end. One tug on the sliding door and Lucifer’s presence fills the narrow gap. I stagger back instinctively, and just as my back strikes the glass surface of a tiny shower stall, he’s already wrenched the door fully open. One of his hands goes to the buckle on his jeans, wrenching on the fly and revealing the shape of his cock through his boxers.

  I swallow hard, my fingers catching against the frosted glass behind me. I should look away when he steps up to the toilet, blocking the doorway in the process. I should force my way past him. I definitely shouldn’t stare as he tugs his boxers down his hips, revealing his semi-hard cock and...blood. Sloppy streaks of it paint his hips, obscuring the row of his scars. Some drugged worshipper left her scarlet fingerprints all over the priceless statue in the church garden. Gritting my teeth, I start forward and snatch a wad of toilet paper from the roll. Before I can even touch him, Lucifer catches my wrist with his free hand, still guiding a stream of piss with the other. He shakes out the few last drops but doesn’t let me go while he shifts over to the sink.

  He wets that one hand beneath the faucet and then shuts it off. His pants are still down around his ankles while he eyes his reflection. The devil isn’t alarmed by the bruises earned during his battle. He wears victory like just another scar, and my stomach twists while I trail my gaze over him. The places where I’d touched him during the night glow more vibrantly than the bruises or cuts left over from his fight with Mack. They adorn him like the medals on a general, but my blood... It clashes with his olive skin. My fingers twitch, aching to wipe it off, but his grip tightens, and he turns, steering me back against the shower stall with every step he takes. When I have nowhere left to go, he herds me inside of it, watching as I press myself beneath the showerhead.

  Once he’s just inches away, he lifts my hand by my captive wrist, his eyes on mine. “Drop it.”

  His tone is jagged glass. I obey, and the wad of toilet paper strikes the tile with barely a sound to its name. Lucifer doesn’t release me, however. He merely shifts his weight to block me in, his gaze unreadable. I don’t know what to think when he reaches down, pulling my hand along with him, and rummages through the puddle of his jeans, eventually withdrawing a knife. It’s the dull kitchen one that he let me keep.

  Rising fully, he waits until he’s sure that I’m watching—so that I don’t miss a single detail when he holds out the flat of his hand and starts to cut. With barely a wince to show for it, he gauges out a single line similar to the mark he made on me. Once finished, he lets the knife fall, its blade gleaming beneath my blood and his. I don’t react when he reaches for my hand pressing our bloody palms together. Clasping our fingers, he raises them both above my head, his expression penetrating me deeper than any knife ever could. “You wanted me to promise,” he says gutturally.

  Apparently, this is how un-owned men cement said promises. Not with handshakes or simple words...but this. Blood against blood. Eternal.

  The muscles in my arm burn as I force my grip to tighten, grinding my open wound against his despite the sharp throb of pain it triggers. Droplets of red escape, striking the cracked tile beneath my bare toes. A drop lands on my ankle, and I shiver, but not out of disgust. Only Lucifer could turn bloo
d into a weapon. The tiny droplets sizzle, searing his claim into my skin. My veins hum, surging with the hazy memories of violence—him down in the arena, fighting for me. Punching, kicking, striking for me.

  My body is a fool, still thrumming on the edge of the high. I haven’t fully come down when I feel searing heat creep between my legs, or when my nipples tighten against the coarse fabric of my sweater. I blame the heroin for the need that makes me shudder and clench my thighs together. I blame...everything and anything but him. Those eyes don’t affect me. Not the way they narrow over my throat as if he can sense every reaction sparking beneath my skin.

  When he finally releases me, I can’t silence a sigh of relief. I want him to leave. I need him to drag the wooden door shut. I need to shove my own hand between my legs and ignore the things my fingers will have to do in order to ease this ache. I wait, shame a painful ball at the back of my throat, eager to be swallowed down. Lucifer makes me wait.

  Then, he takes a step back, and air trickles into my lungs in one greedy breath, only to escape just as quickly when he raises his uninjured hand and...he palms his cock. No. My head falls back against the stall, hard enough to make sparks appear before my eyes. I squeeze them shut. I don’t look. I don’t listen to the slick wet sounds as his own fingers glide up and down the ridge of his shaft. I don’t let myself dwell on the fact that he’s pleasing himself right in front of me, completely unashamed by the act. He’s a beast, after all, merely giving into a beastly, primal urge. The devil is selfish and bold in fulfilling his own needs, and I need...I need...

  I shove my blood-stained fingers into my mouth and bite down while my other hand bolts to the front of my jeans. I attempt to suck in my stomach and shove them beneath the waistband, but in the end, I have to undo the clasp one-handed and kick them down, leaning against the glass behind me for leverage. Any embarrassment flies out of the window as I take two fingers and...yes. My gasp nearly drowns out the sound he makes: part inhale, part growl. It reverberates off the glass, adding a delicate chime to the harsh slick of his stroking hand. He’s moving faster, I think. Tightening his grip, getting off on watching me listen to every sordid little sound...