by Esme Devlin
But he was there. He was there the whole time. And the pair of them fabricated the whole thing.
Chapter 32
Malachy
I’m not letting them walk away.
Josh and Ross are waiting outside the door.
But Grace doesn’t need to know that, not now at least. I’ll wait until she knows me better. She needs to be in way fucking deeper than she is now before she gets the full extent of my… sickness.
As for Kate? She’ll be a witness. But Craig’s well versed on dealing with witnesses. She can either shut the fuck up or she can live in her own ruined castle, just like my Grace.
Grace. She started all of this when she pushed me that day. She might have ended up in a body bag too if I wasn’t so fucking obsessed with her. But since that first day I clocked eyes on her in her shop, I knew I didn’t want to kill her.
I wanted to make her the same as me. Two-halfs of a black heart. I might never be the prince, but I stopped caring about that a long time ago.
“They’re going to walk away and never come back. And you, Grace? You’re never getting to walk away. Get your fucking clothes off.”
Chapter 33
Grace
He barks the words at me like an order and even though I’m hurt, upset, numb… I can’t deny that I want him to make me feel something.
And I know he can do it.
I know he can take my pain away and replace it with a deeper kind. A more carnal, raw kind. A pain that’s sweet and not sour.
And I can do that same thing for him.
Does this make me just as fucked up as he is? I don’t know anymore. My whole life has been a fucking lie — I don’t know myself anymore, or who or what I am. All I know is I’ve gone from hating him to wanting to fix him to this fucking obsession that doesn’t even care if he’s broken.
He says I’m never getting to walk away. And right now that sends a shiver of fucking excitement deep inside me. Yes, I’m fucked up.
Slamming the door shut behind him, he stalks the room towards me. I’m still standing behind the bar in the same place he left me.
He doesn’t utter a word or make a sound when he walks behind the bar and lifts me up to sit on it like I weigh nothing more than a pound of sugar.
He unbuttons my blouse, and I let him. His fingers are quick, his eyes are focused, his jaw is locked tight, and he looks angry.
But maybe that’s good. Maybe he’ll fuck me up so badly I won’t care about what happened here twenty minutes ago.
The blouse comes off, and he removes my bra, throwing both of them down the other side of the bar.
And then he takes a step back, leaning against the counter at the opposite side, his eyes drifting over my body. I feel my nipples hardening as if he’s touching them, pinching them. I don’t cover myself. The look in his eyes tells me he likes what he sees.
Still, he stands there and I feel like I’m on the edge, waiting for him to say something — to do something. I open my mouth, not even sure what I’m going to say — probably his name or something, fuck knows.
“You should run.”
He speaks first, and I shut my mouth.
My heart is lodged in my throat and I try to swallow it back down again. Why is he saying that?
“You want me to run?”
A flicker of amusement dances in his eyes and his head moves in the faintest of shakes.
“Why tell me to, then?”
“So we can get the lesson out of the way now.”
“What lesson would that be?”
“The one where you understand, once and for all, that it’s fucking hopeless.”
I don’t want to run. Even though he’s not sane. Even though he lost his mind a long fucking time ago. He saved me that day. He saved me again this day. He ripped the bubble away and now I don’t want to be forced back inside it.
He makes me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt in my life. And I think it’s because he’s so fucking dangerous. Like being with him is taking my own life and putting it in his hands, and it makes me appreciate it all the more.
I always thought life was too short. Too precious. Malachy reminds me of that every time I’m near him.
But I’m not sure if I still believe in not burning bridges, though.
He doesn’t give me a second to think about it any more. He takes a step, closing the short distance between us and his hands go to my neck, both of them, reminding me that he could squeeze and end everything if he wanted to.
“Say it. Tell me who you belong to.”
His rough finger comes up and circles my jaw and he looks at me with pure devotion in his eyes.
I could say it. I would probably mean it, too. But I want him to hurt me. I want him to take all my other pain away.
I let a smile play on my lips while he hangs on for my next word.
“Say it. I’ll make you a fucking queen.”
“Prove it first,” I tell him. “Make me feel like one.”
His face breaks into a smirk and he drops my neck, pushing the whiskey glasses beside me off the edge of the bar. They crash over the side, smashing on the hard wood flooring, the sound of it echoing around the room.
My heart skips a beat from the fright, tendrils of adrenaline snaking their way around my body. I bite my lip, knowing he’s about to erupt and hanging on for the second that he does.
He splits my legs so wide I think they might snap in two but I don’t care.
I don’t care about anything other than the way he’s about to make me feel.
His fingers find my entrance like he already has the image of it imprinted in his mind, and this time he sticks two in, hard, deep, and I moan while my head rolls back from the tension of it.
He circles my clit with his thumb — driving me as insane as he his, still pushing further in and hitting me again and again in places I didn’t know existed.
The pressure is intense.
He catches my hair with his free hand and forces my open mouth to his one, chuckling slightly while I sigh and gasp into his mouth.
My skirt has bunched up around my hips and he forces my head down to watch him. “You see this?”
He’s still going, harder and harder and something is building inside of me.
The muscles of his grey forearm clench as he brings me to the edge.
The sight of his decorated hand as it disappears, knuckle deep inside me has me squirming and pushing against him like a bitch in heat.
“This is mine. Always fucking mine. I own it. I own you.”
His words send another rush of pleasure right through me and I’m desperate for more.
He pulls my head back up again and kisses me harshly.
“Take me to your bed,” I whisper into his mouth. I want him to fuck my body into his mattress, in his dark room with his black bed and his black heart.
His hand slips from inside me and he lifts me up, pulling the rest of my clothes from my body and slipping my feet out of my shoes.
Then he lifts me up in his arms, wrapping my legs around his hips and cradling my head into his chest.
We get to his room and he doesn’t bother putting the light on or lighting any candles.
No time for that shit.
He lets me slide down his body, the wetness from between my legs dampening his rough clothes.
My fingers trail up his hard stomach, running circles over the bumps of his muscles.
His breathing is slow and controlled. His skin is warm and his stomach is remarkably smooth, like silk.
“I’m going to break you tonight,” he says, cupping my face with his rough hand.
“You broke me last night,” I tell him.
He laughs, a deep throaty one that has me smiling even though I know the joke is on me.
“That was nothing. Foreplay, at best. I’m going to do it properly. You’re going to scream my name and you’ll be sore for weeks.”
I shiver as he thumbs my lips and sticks it inside my mouth. I bite
down on it, hard, and he lets out a groan.
My fingers work their way down his stomach, getting to his jeans and undoing the button. The sound of his zip drifts to my ears as I twirl my tongue around his finger, still pressing hard with my teeth.
He pulls it out and pushes me back against the bed, spinning me around while I hear him removing the rest of his clothes.
And then I feel him behind me, his hands on my shoulders, his breath above my head, his solid cock pressing into my back.
He wraps my hair around his fist and leads me onto the bed, forcing my head down against the mattress while he pulls my hips up high to meet him.
I feel him at my entrance and hold my breath, but he just rubs the head of his cock along my slit, putting me at ease and making that thing that was building before come back with a vengeance.
Before long it’s not enough, and I’m practically grinding against him, whimpering into the mattress and begging him just to do it.
I need him inside me like I need air in my lungs.
And then he does it.
My fingers twist the bedsheets around as I try to adjust to the huge size of him, but he doesn’t give me a single second.
So I try to scramble away from him, but every time I do his hands on my hips pull me back, and he ends up deeper inside me.
He does exactly what he says he would do. He fucks me brutally until I’m screaming his name into the covers and my nails are digging into his wrists, his hands, the ones that fix me into just the right position for him.
It doesn’t stop until I’m whimpering and begging.
I don’t even know what I’m begging for I’m so fucking delirious. Harder? Softer? To come? For mercy? I don’t fucking know.
And then he shows me what I was begging for, as if he knew it all along. He flips me over and pushes himself in again, slapping my face before finding my tits and kneading them together, taking my nipple into his mouth and sucking and biting.
I’m convinced I’m bleeding. There’s not a single part of me that isn’t sore and yet I’m burning up. I’m so fucking close.
My nails score lines into his back as my insides contract around him. And then it hits me like a fucking storm. I hold my breath and he helps me, his thick hand coming around my throat while he pumps into me a few more times.
I feel him shake on top of me and I wonder if he’d been holding it in the whole fucking time. He feels divine.
This feels like paradise.
I can’t even breathe and I don’t care.
He collapses on top of me, releasing my neck while we both gasp for air and he pushes my hair back off my face.
And that’s the last thing I remember before I drift off.
Chapter 34
Malachy
I shove a pair of shorts on and duck out of the room, locking it behind me. Grace is sound asleep, I shifted her into bed properly and tucked her in, but if she wakes up, then the last thing I need is her going wandering into things she doesn’t understand yet.
“Malachy?”
Lucia shouts on me from the sitting room as I walk passed and I stop at the sound of her voice, turning around and leaning against the door frame.
“Shoot.”
“I heard voices,” she says.
I look at my watch. “About time for you to be getting to bed, don’t you think?”
She pets her lip and gets up from the sofa. “What’s going on?”
Maybe I’d have told her if she hadn’t started the fucking toddler act on me. “Lucia. Go to bed, sweetheart.”
My tone is like ice and she stops in her tracks. It wasn’t a question. I tried that, it didn’t work. Now she gets the choice taken away from her.
She must sense I’m in no fucking mood for an argument, or to let her play the responsible step-mother, because she nods her head and takes herself up the stairs.
I continue my way through the house, going down the stairs again to the old vaulted cellars where my workshop is. But I don’t go to the workshop.
Unlocking the door opposite, I open it and take in the room. Ross and Josh sit at an old whiskey barrel turned table, playing cards in the light of a candle. On the far side of the wall sit Scott and Jamie, hands and feet tied together and silver duct tape covering their mouths.
Jamie’s head is ducked down low but Scott’s staring straight at me.
“Fucking took you a while,” Josh says, not taking his eyes away from his hand of cards.
I chuckle at his audacity. “Had things to do, people to please. Fuck’s Craig?”
“Dealing with little Miss 999.”
That’s unfortunate. For her, I mean. I don’t give a fuck if she’s her best friend, I’m not going to let the wagging of her tongue hurt Grace. No one gets to hurt Grace anymore.
Except me.
“Phone him. We need him back here.”
Josh nods and throws his cards down on the barrel, getting up and leaving the room to make the call.
Without the cards to keep his hands busy, Ross picks up his dildo and starts exhaling plumes of cappuccino or some shit into the room. Beats fucking cherries, but it still pisses me right off.
I light up my own cigarette to combat the smell and drag Josh’s stool across the stone floor, sitting down on it when I reach the two pricks tied up at my feet.
They both look up at me now. Ironic, really. For too long they’ve looked down their noses at me.
I lean forward and rip the tape off Scott’s face, laughing when he lets out a yelp.
“Believe me, it was kinder that way,” I tell him, inhaling a long draw of smoke.
Scott looks up at me and I regard him. He doesn’t look much like my Grace.
“What are you going to do with us?” He grits the question out and I finish the rest of my cigarette before flicking it over to the corner of the room to burn out.
“Honestly? I’ve not decided yet. This whole thing has been one change of plan after another,” I tell him, laughing at the end. “Do you know I wasn’t even intending on killing you both? I was at ease with what happened.”
He swallows at the word killing.
“And what changed?”
I don’t even think he cares. I think he’s trying the old keep em talking trick. That shit doesn’t work with me, but still I humor him.
“I walked into your sisters shop that day. I want to say it was her attitude, that’s what got me started. That’s what got me hooked.”
“Well, you got what you wanted. You got the girl.”
I laugh at that one. “I didn’t want the girl. I wanted to destroy the girl and make you pair watch me doing it. Funny how that shit changed. You did a good job with her, Scott, I’m man enough to admit that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Treating her like she was made of glass. Bigging up her fears until she couldn’t see a fucking leaf without shitting herself. Girl’s got issues. She’s perfect for me, truly.”
He rolls his eyes. “I had to make her believe the lie, didn’t I?”
I smile at him. “As I said — bravo.”
“What now?”
I shrug. “I thought about gutting you both right here, but now I’m not sure how satisfying that would be.”
My eyes flick to Jamie who’s squeezing his eyes shut like I’ve just poured hand soap into them.
“Why now? You’ve had ten years. You’re clearly not a killer. Think about this.”
Ross laughs behind me and I glance back to him and smile. “Why now? Because I made a promise to a woman who was too fucking good for this world. And now I’ve made a promise to another one. And keeping one means breaking the other. You think I’m not a killer?”
I pause for ages to let him answer, but he doesn’t. He’s glancing around the room and looking for an escape.
“I don’t need to be a killer. And I won’t be after tonight either, but don’t you fucking think for a second that means you’re getting to see the sunrise. You don’t need to kill when you ha
ve people for that.”
I get up and the stool knocks over behind me, crashing down on the stone floor and sending the sound echoing around the room.
Josh comes back in and announces that Craig’s on his way. I nod while I think about which one gets to go first. The one who started it, or the one who cemented it?
I don’t think Jamie would survive watching his fate play out before his eyes, so I decide to give him the honor of being the first one.
“Take Jamie to the workshop,” I tell them.
They already know what to do.
I prepared these earlier. They were meant for something else, but they’ll do just fine.
It takes three of us to lift him up into the fucking thing. He’s a big boy, is our Jamie, and he kicks and thrashes like a fish out of water.
But still he goes in. Just.
As I said, I didn’t make this one for Jamie. Most of the time I don’t make them for anyone, I make them for things. Items. Products. Things I source and sell to my own father via a third party. Have you ever seen a police car pull over a hearse when it’s filled with flowers and shit?
Thought not.
So it’s a tight squeeze to say the least.
“Craig grab the lid,” I tell him.
Josh holds his shoulders and Ross has his legs. The lid comes over and the three of them sit on it to hold it in place.
Jamie bashes on the roof of it like it’s going to break. It’s not going to break. I’m actually a pretty decent joiner. I feel like it would have been my calling, if I was just a normal man meant for a normal life.
That’s never been me though. Why settle for a white picket fence when you can have a black fucking fortress?
Or a castle?
I will have this place back. The wheels have been in motion for a couple of years now, since I started up my “kitchen fitting business” or whatever the fuck my dad thinks it is.
Hidden in plain sight.
