Elizabeth

I woke up alone.

To someone so accustomed to doing so, I didn’t expect to feel overwhelming and complete panic with this fact.

But I did.

Because I was in Lukyan’s bed.

I was Lukyan’s.

Every square inch of my body ached, considerable amounts of my skin marked with his violence.

And I’d loved it. Every second. Even the parts I wasn’t quite sure I’d survive. I didn’t even remember drifting off. I had a vague thought that I might’ve done so when Lukyan was still inside me.

He wasn’t there now. Inside me. Or beside me. It felt empty without him. Before, I’d been so certain, fatally certain that I would never let another man have that part of me, because there was no way that anything but more suffering could come from that.

I was wrong.

Movement out of the corner of my eye snatched me out of my interior thoughts.

Lukyan, of course. He was dressed in his suit, as per usual. This one was charcoal, black shirt underneath. Open collar so you could see the teeth marks and bruises decorating his neck.

I flushed with the realization that they were my teeth marks. I had inflicted those bruises. The sick part of me—the one that was growing with every second spent with Lukyan—reveled in seeing those marks. That part wanted to make more of them, make them deeper so they scarred and remained on him forever.

He was standing in the corner of the room, not making a move to come to me like I ached for him to do, seeming to do an inventory of my naked body. There were no sheets to hide under; he had kept them from me all night. Not that I needed them for warmth. My body was covered in a thin sheen of sweat for most of the night, constantly moving against Lukyan’s unyielding appetite.

I didn’t remember going to sleep, and I didn’t remember waking up with the chill that I had been so sure emanated from Lukyan. Instead, all I remembered was the warmth that came from having his body tangled in mine.

Maybe it wasn’t coming from him, that frigid cold. Maybe it was coming from me. Maybe being with him made me realize how close to a dead thing I really was.

“I thought you’d left,” I said, lifting my fragile body upward to lean against his headboard.

He didn’t reply, just continued to stare.

I chewed at my lip, uncomfortable and vulnerable. I waited for the inevitable, for him to shoot some cold venom at me, kicking me out of his bed, his house, his world.

It didn’t come.

I bristled against the silence, frustration chasing away whatever timidity I’d been clinging to. “Are you just going to stand there and try your best to kill me with your stare?” I demanded.

His jaw ticked. “You’ve settled in here and shut out that world you are so certain will destroy you,” he said, stalking toward me. “You’ve shut yourself in here with me, thinking you’re safe, when that world you’re so terrified will kill you isn’t anything compared to what I could do.” The bed depressed as he leaned on it with his knee, leaning toward me to grasp the back of my neck, press my forehead against his.

“I know,” I whispered. “I know that. And maybe that’s why I did it. Because I knew you would destroy me. Because I want you to destroy me.”

His hand flexed, and a thin streak of pain radiated down my spine. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

I didn’t back down. “Then show me.”

And he did.

And it was magnificent.

* * *

One Week Later

A lot could happen in a week.

But not everything.

I wasn’t miraculously cured. The broken pieces of me weren’t put back together by Lukyan’s touch, by his intoxicating and brutal presence.

If anything, I was more broken. Sicker. More depraved. He wasn’t bringing me back to life—he was yanking me further into the grave.

But I learned something about myself, something I’d always known but never admitted. There was no coming back to life for me. It just wasn’t going to happen. Sometimes people were so broken that they had to live with it. Carve themselves a life in the wasteland that was their world.

And I was accepting that. I was going to be sick and ugly, and it wasn’t going to be the end of the world. I was becoming comfortable in my wasteland.

But it was full of discomfort.

And learning.

About sex.

A lot of sex.

Which we’d just finished.

My body throbbed with the remainder of his touch. The shower rain in the background of my thoughts. The memories of what had just happened.

My skin was hot and cold at the same time, his mouth plundering my own, his body crushing mine.

We were naked, so his delightfully hard skin ground against my agonizingly sensitive flesh. I cried out into his mouth as he bit my lip. He liked to do that, draw my blood.

I wanted more.

My mouth wanted more.

I wanted control.

Craved it.

My fingernails sank into the skin of his back, scoring at the flesh, opening cuts that were only just scabbing over. He let out a hiss of pleasure.

He liked it when I hurt him.

“Lukyan,” I demanded as he poised himself at my entrance.

His eyes glued to mine, his body stilled, his neck pulsed with restraint. But he did not speak.

“I want to suck your cock,” I whispered.

There was a split second of silence, and then he was no longer poised at my entrance, no longer on top of me. I was on top of him.

Not only that, I was somehow upside down. My knees were on either side of his chest, my hips open at his mouth, I was exposed to him so brazenly, my body flushed.

But I didn’t move, because his cock was there, right there in front of me. My hand was circled around it before I properly understood how he got us in this position.

He growled and there was a loud slap and sharp sting on my ass as the flat of his palm made impact. The pain vibrated downward where it turned to pleasure.

“You suck my cock, I eat your cunt,” he said, voice thick.

I instantly twitched at his crude words. My body sang with this position, with how filthy it was. How perfect.

There was another resounding slap. More pain.

“Suck my cock now, Elizabeth.”

I forgot I was nervous, that I’d never done this before. His command had me doing just that.

The second my lips closed around him, his mouth was right there, moving between my most intimate of places to the most forbidden places.

I groaned onto his cock, my lips moving in the same rhythm as his own, everything but our mutual pleasure fading away into nothingness.

There was power in this. Control.

Excellent and brutal power.

And I made sure I utilized every second.

“Elizabeth.” Lukyan’s curt voice jerked me out of my memories. I was hot and flushed, and the area between my legs was damp once more. “I thought I told you you were to come in here so I could clean you.” His voice came over the sound of the running water.

Every inch of me ached. I didn’t know if I could handle more, if my legs would support me on the short walk to the bathroom.

But I got up anyway.

Because the only way I was going to deny Lukyan entry to me was if my legs collapsed from under me.

* * *

One Week Later

We were sitting in the library. The sun streamed through the glass, hitting the sofa I was curled on, warming me with its rays. It should’ve been a comfort, especially with the chill in the cavernous room that never seemed to hold heat—but was still my favorite in the house—but it wasn’t comforting.

It was a taunt.

Lukyan’s hand on the nape of my neck as he circled the sofa, that was a comfort. As were the chills that chased away the sunshine that accompanied his stare when he made it to the front of the sofa.

I dropped the book I’d been reading. Not before marking my page, of course.

His stare was heavier, more disquieting than the assault of the sunshine I’d only ever experience through glass. I wasn’t used to it. I was still trying to figure it out. Figure him out. The coldness that bordered on loathing, his touch that taunted me with the other L-word. His extensive silences. His violence. My love for it.

We weren’t easy. Us. Being together. It was uncomfortable, uneasy, the feeling of walking along ice on a lake that wasn’t quite frozen over. One wrong step fueled with too much confidence in the thickness of the ice—that’s when the depths would swallow you forever.

I was dancing with my own demise, and I couldn’t bring myself to muster enough dread at this fact like I was supposed to. Lukyan wouldn’t let me. There was nothing but the immediate moment when we were together. His presence didn’t invite contemplation, didn’t offer the room for it.

His gaze penetrated my thoughts, teased my attention away from him and onto his onyx black suit, the white shirt underneath it and the cold eyes focusing on me.

“I have some people coming over, some men—”

“People? Men, coming here?” I interrupted, in shock. “I thought no one came here. That no one knew about here. That you didn’t tell anyone about this place, that it was kind of the point of this place.”

“It is,” he said. “It was. These men are different. And—”

“They’re coming to see you?” I tried to chase away the rogue terror that convinced me they weren’t here for him but for me. That this was part of his entire plan, to play with me like a little boy might play with a butterfly before he plucked my wings off and crushed me beneath his shoes.

Then again, I wasn’t a butterfly now. If I ever was one. My wings had been ripped off long ago.

He nodded, the mention accompanied by a jaw tic.

“And they’re… friends?” I probed.

“I don’t have friends,” he shot sharply. Like I’d accused him of having a hand in the Kennedy assassination. If it didn’t put him in his early eighties, at the least, I wouldn’t’ve ruled it out. “I have people who are my enemies and people who aren’t dead.”

I smirked.

He did not appreciate it. Not that his face betrayed this—the air did. It became heavier. Harder to swallow.

“What am I, then?” I challenged.

“You’re mine,” he said instantly. “My… complication.”

I stopped smirking. “You said you’d kill me if I turned into a complication.”

That rogue terror I’d been hiding from found purchase on my weakness, which wasn’t surprising since there was a lot of it to grab onto.

He leaned downward so his arm was braced on the back of the sofa, breath hot on my face. His hand brushed my breast and I suppressed my gasp. But I was sure my face gave it all away. It always did. My poker face was laughable compared to Lukyan’s. But even I managed to crack it when my mouth was between his legs.

“You’re an unexpected complication, zvezda moya,” he said, tweaking my nipple over the soft fabric of my sweater. “An enjoyable complication.”

This time my gasp was audible.

“A permanent complication,” he continued with hooded eyes as he released my nipple and moved his hand down. My skin prickled with anticipation. And something else. Even in the haze of my pleasure, the ‘permanent’ comment stuck out. It was the first reference to undermine the unsaid ticking of the clock on my time here. On my remaining heartbeats.

“These men, just because they aren’t dead doesn’t mean they mean me no harm.” His hand went into the waistband of my jeans, brushing the skin underneath my panties, toying with me. “The only reason they don’t harm me is because they know I will end them and everyone connected to them should they try. Or even betray an inkling that they’re thinking about trying.”

His hand moved. Pleasure shot through my nerve endings.

“They don’t try because I don’t have weaknesses for them to exploit. I’ve never had weaknesses to exploit. Which got me to where I am, at the top.” His fingers entered me. “Should they find out about what you are to me…” His fingers moved quicker. “They’ll exploit you.” His other hand left the back of the sofa and brushed at my bottom lip, grasping it between his thumb and forefinger. “And you won’t enjoy it like you are now.”

On the brink of climax, I only half heard him, despite the obvious weight of his words. He remedied that by yanking away his fingers right at the crucial moment, leaning backward slightly.

I glared at him the same moment as he brought his other hand to my opened mouth, inserting the fingers that had just been inside me. My tongue lapped at it instantly, and my arousal intensified at the taste of myself on him.

“They’re important business associates and powerful men, but I’ll kill them in a heartbeat if they even start to suspect that you’re something more than a captive,” he rasped. “And that will start something that will require rivers of blood to keep you safe.” He removed his finger to grasp my neck with both hands. “And I will do it. Make a whole ocean if I must. Only one person in this world gets to hurt you, and that’s me. But I’m also going to be practical and make sure we don’t spend the entirety of our lives spilling blood, especially with our current situation making our only battleground the place that shouldn’t even exist.”

My breath caught at this. This not subtle but not unkind reminder of what my handicap might mean. What it already meant.

For once, Lukyan didn’t notice the catch in my breath, too focused on the current situation. “So you do not act in any way that betrays your connection to me. You do not speak, nor move, lest I say it is okay. Are we understood?”

I nodded. “So… I’m going to be here, with you, when they’re here?” I clarified with unease. “Wouldn’t it be easier just to hide me in my room and pretend I don’t exist?”

“Yes,” he said. “But I can’t pretend you don’t exist. And you’re going to exist for longer than I planned, much longer. Which means you’re not going to hide. Not anymore.”

I swallowed roughly. “Okay.”

* * *

They came that same day. Like Lukyan had told me at the last possible minute so I didn’t have time to stew over the fact that more strangers—dangerous strangers—were entering the structure I’d manipulated to become at least a façade of safety.

So I didn’t have time to get hurt by the betrayal from Lukyan at having me in front of these men when he knew what it meant for me.

I didn’t have time to think of that because Lukyan had fucked me on the sofa in the library after telling me about the visitors. Then he’d taken me to my bathroom, fucked me in the shower, and then we’d gotten dressed.

Then they were here.

And I was sitting in the main living room, still, doing my best not to betray any fear as the men entered and Lukyan poured himself a drink.

The men were sharply dressed. Much like Lukyan, but the suits weren’t quite up to his quality.

Lessers, I decided immediately. People lower than him who will serve him until they find a chance to take him out. Not that they likely would find a chance.

But still dangerous nonetheless. I could see it in their eyes, the way they held themselves, the way they regarded me. Especially considering what I was wearing. What Lukyan had told me to wear.

All my skin was covered with fabric, as always. But this fabric was little more than sheer mesh, and skintight. A black maxi dress designed to communicate the wearer was at the height of fashion trends, not that they were a murderer’s captive. But it worked quite well—perfectly, actually—for the latter. I had on a black slip, also skintight, that went down to my ankles, so technically only the white of my arms showed through the fabric. But that didn’t mean I didn’t feel just as exposed as I would’ve if I were naked.

And that’s how I felt when their eyes roved over me, the gaze akin to maggots crawling over my skin.

“And what’s this, Oliver?” one of them asked. The younger of the two. Not even past his twenties, I’d guess.

But one didn’t need to be middle-aged in order to be cruel. It was the kind of thing that didn’t discriminate by age. He stepped forward, brushing at a strand of my hair with amused menace.

I had to steel myself from my flinch, had to physically suppress a glance at Lukyan, who didn’t say a thing at the contact.

“A souvenir, from my latest contract,” Lukyan said smoothly without a hint of discomfort. He leaned back in his leather chair, rolling his crystal tumbler of vodka in his hands. To the outside observer—that would be anyone but me—he would’ve looked relaxed, even a little bored. But I saw the way his eyes strained in the corner, the way he gripped his glass just a little too tight.

But that didn’t give me much comfort since the younger one was still close enough for me to smell his sharp expensive aftershave.

“I didn’t realize you took souvenirs,” he said with a grin. I held my breath as he lingered in front of me, toying with my hair for a second longer before stepping back.

“Well I don’t usually keep them for long,” Lukyan replied, pushing out of his chair almost lazily. I saw straight through Lukyan’s act because I knew nothing he ever did had even an edge of laziness.

But these men clearly didn’t know the Lukyan I did. These men knew Oliver, the cold-blooded contract killer, the one who took human beings as souvenirs and then killed them when he was done defiling them.

He played his part well.

Maybe because it wasn’t a part at all.

The hair that had fallen down my back was lifted when Lukyan made it to his spot behind me. The nape of my neck was exposed, and he let his lips fasten against the skin. This was like nothing we’d had before. This made my skin crawl with so much intensity I almost ran from the room.

Almost.

I clenched my hands against the arms of the chair so hard one of my nails broke off.

I didn’t flinch when Lukyan’s teeth broke the skin, nor at the pain that came with it, because I was expecting it. It didn’t hurt more than anything we’d done before. But it hurt more in all the ways that mattered. Because it was being done to degrade me, in front of two killers who thought of me as something less than a person.

Maybe it was because I was something less than a person. Something uglier. Maybe that was because in the midst of my disgust, a flickering of desire lightened at the bottom of my stomach.

Cold hands circled my neck before going downward, underneath my shirt into the cups of my bra.

The younger one smirked, sitting back in one of the armchairs, the leather creaking as he did so. The older one, in the slightly better suit to hide that slight paunch underneath it, was impassive. This didn’t excite him. This was of little consequence to him. I suspected he wouldn’t blink if Lukyan slit my throat right here and now, except to complain if Lukyan got blood on his suit.

“So you’ve gotten the information we sent?” he asked in a bored tone.

Lukyan’s hand kneaded at my breast before he tweaked my nipple roughly. I couldn’t mute my small cry, both in protest and in pleasure.

“She’s a quiet one,” the younger man observed with a sick grin. He was no longer content sitting back and merely watching. Instead, he leaned forward, his hand settling on my knee so hard it seemed to cut into the bone.

I gritted my teeth and Lukyan’s hand paused for less than a millisecond at my breast.

“Yes, I got the information,” Lukyan said coolly, resuming at my nipple. “As I could’ve told you quite well over email.”

“We prefer a more… personal touch.” The younger one’s hand pressed at my knee harshly so my legs would creak open to him. I bit my lip so hard blood spilled from it. “Does she play well with others?” he continued, as if I was a dog, or a young child to be lent out for a playdate.

The kind of playdate that my marriage had been an extended version of.

He leaned forward, his sweaty palm moving downward, catching on the fabric of my dress until he reached my ankle. I almost gagged when his skin touched mine, when his hand circled my ankle, squeezing painfully before working its way upward. Not quickly, slow enough to prolong my suffering of the knowledge of his destination.

The air felt thick and hot, filled with a stench that didn’t have a smell more than a feeling. Like that vague switch in the air when a fly’s wings brushed its scent against your face, so you could experience the death and rot that they feasted on. That was inside them.

That’s what was surrounding me now, with only Lukyan’s rough and cruel touch to chase it away.

I counted my breaths, focusing on the length of the inhales and exhales.

Lukyan’s palm moved across my breast and flattened over my thundering heart. It stayed there, dry, cold and heavy, almost crushing my ribs. But it was comforting.

“She plays well with whoever I tell her to play with,” Lukyan replied, keeping his hand where it was until he felt my heartbeats slow.

Then his presence left me altogether, and the only touch that overtook my senses was the one above my knee against my inner thigh. Panic arrested me, and I was sure I wouldn’t be able to do as Lukyan had asked, that I wasn’t strong enough for this. To let one single more monster touch my body, let it rot faster than it already was.

“But we’re not here to share toys,” Lukyan said, rounding me and smoothly bumping the younger one’s hand purposefully. It was casual, almost thoughtless, but the underlying command, the deadly one, wasn’t lost on anyone in the room.

There was a dangerous thickness hanging in the room while the young one didn’t move, didn’t take his beady eyes from me, nor his hand. Then he exhaled and the sense of rot intensified, accompanied by a sharp sting as he pressed the pads of his fingers into my inner thigh as hard as he could.

I didn’t give him the satisfaction of crying out, though tears did threaten the corners of my eyes. I realized I probably should’ve let them fall, to add to the whole ‘victim’ act. But I couldn’t.

I found I couldn’t act like the victim anymore, even if my life depended on it. My life depended on not being weak anymore. So I jutted my chin up in defiance, moved back in my seat purposefully, daintily—Mother would’ve been quite proud of how ladylike it was—placing my hands on my knees, one on top of the other, and meeting his stare.

His fists clenched slightly at my wordless show of defiance, of strength. Not something he usually liked or kept in his victims, I was sure. And he had victims. Many.

My blood boiled, and I had to dig my nails painfully into the top of my hand to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid like strangle him.

Again, danger lurked in the air.

“Are we going to talk business, or are you going to waste my time, Eli?” Lukyan asked calmly, pouring himself another drink. “You know I’m a man who despises wasting time.” The threat was all but painted with blood on the floor.

I hid my satisfaction at the way the man jumped to attention, leaning back and giving me one last glare before focusing on Lukyan. “Of course, I wouldn’t dream of wasting your time, Oliver,” he said. “I value my life.”

Lukyan tilted his head in speculation of the man much like he was a species of insect he couldn’t decide was a pest or too inconsequential to focus on. “And here I was thinking the opposite.”

“The information,” the older man probed. “We have our wire transfer ready whenever your time allows you to send it.”

Lukyan, of course, didn’t answer immediately. He spent a great deal of time looking at the younger man, then sipping at his vodka. Unhurried, without a care in the world. Like a man who controlled the world.

He finally focused on the older man, reaching into his pocket to produce a sleek black phone. He tapped at the screen. “The information is now with you. And of course, I’ll be deleting any copies that remain on my person.” He glanced up. “Would you like to witness the process?”

The older man waved his hand. “Of course not. You’re a man of your word.”

“That I am,” Lukyan agreed with menace that settled on Eli, even though he hadn’t even looked at him.

“As are we,” the older man said, tapping at his own phone as he stood up. “The wire transfer is completed.”

Lukyan glanced downward at the screen once more. “Ah, so it is.”

The older man glanced at me, and meeting his eyes was like venturing into an empty tomb at a graveyard. Impossibly cold and damp, full of a kind of death that seemed so permanent, so dangerous, it stuck to the pores of your skin.

He was the most dangerous of the two. Because he knew not to act with menace or violence. In public, at least.

I resisted the urge to shiver when he focused his attention on Eli, jerking his head for him to stand. The younger man did so with the air of a teenager who hated that they still had to listen to their parents.

“We don’t want to waste any more of your time, and of course, we want to value your”—he looked to me again—“privacy. So we’ll be going. We appreciate your hospitality.”

Lukyan nodded once, not making a move to show them out.

Eli glanced at me, but his gaze no longer affected me after I’d been the focus of the true danger from his colleague.

“Call me if you ever get bored with her,” he said. “Or even after you’re done.” His eyes ran up and down my body. I resumed my posture. “Doesn’t matter whether she’s breathing or not. I’ll still be able to… utilize her.”

This time I did shiver. Because this wasn’t a taunt or a threat. This was a real request, one of a man who had a sickening and very real fetish.

Lukyan didn’t reply. Instead he nodded once to the older man. “Morris, I hope we don’t cross paths again.”

Morris nodded back, something on his face betraying a sort of resignation, and let out a small sigh.

I didn’t quite understand until the roar of a gunshot chased away the remnants of the soft sigh.

The low thump of a body hitting the carpet seemed to be more forceful than the sound of the bullet that put it there.

I regarded Eli’s lifeless stare, focused on my ankles. A thin stream of blood escaped from his temple. I demurely moved my feet so they were out of the direction of the stream, but otherwise I didn’t move nor speak.

Morris didn’t even glance at the body. Nothing about his demeanor changed. “Be well, Oliver,” he said. And then he left without a backward glance, leaving the man he came in with dead on the floor like a serving plate someone might accidentally on purpose abandon at a dinner party because they didn’t like it.

Once the sound of his footsteps was chased away by the dim slam of the front doors, there was only silence left.

Lukyan finished his drink and unbuttoned his suit jacket. He didn’t glance at me at all. Instead he walked over to the bar cart, placed his empty glass on it and then walked back.

The body in the room ceased to exist.

For him, at least.

I had a strange flashback of that time in the kitchen with my mother. It chilled my blood.

“Would you like to change for dinner?” he asked.

I blinked my gaze away from death’s unyielding stare to another stare, even more unyielding than death. I was going to ask about Eli. About why he killed him. About what that meant about the future safety. About those oceans of blood. Maybe scream about it. Throw up, perhaps.

But instead I stood, rounding the chair so it sat between me and Lukyan.

Somehow, the body in the room didn’t exist anymore. Not for Lukyan, not for me. Because Lukyan was more than that. More than death. And the shame and hurt coiled into every part of me was more urgent than a dead psychopath on the ground.

“T-the way you did that, tr-treated me,” I stuttered, my voice small and raw and utterly weak.

I hated that the depth of this effect seeped into my tone and leaked into the air, confronting me with my own weakness. I met his eyes through the fog. I restrained my flinch at his unfeeling expression and the fact that it was still hauntingly beautiful, even when etched with disinterest.

“You acted like I was nothing.” It was barely a whisper at this point, and my hands were clenched so tightly into fists my nails scored the inside of my palms.

His cool gaze never lowered from mine.

“It hurt,” I rasped.

Something flickered. Like the heat reflecting off a hot road in the summer, glimmering in a mirage before flickering back into nonexistence. I could’ve imagined it. It could’ve been a trick of the light. It was so fleeting, to grab onto it was like clutching smoke. But I tried.

“I hurt your feelings,” he deduced, voice a low tremor that vibrated the room. That jarred the marrow of my bones with how distant it was from this room. From me.

I managed a stiff nod, still clutching the hope that this was an act. Ignoring the more likely possibility that how he treated me in front of those men was the glimpse behind the curtain at what an act everything before it had been.

“I don’t give a shit about your feelings,” he said.

I did flinch that time.

Another flicker. It lasted longer but remained incorporeal.

“If it’s a choice between saving your life or preserving your feelings, I’ll choose your life. Always, solnyshko.” He stepped forward, and despite his icy tone and marble-glazed stare, the air around us blazed with heat as he brushed my body with his. “I’ll live with you being pissed at me, hurt by me, even hating me. But I won’t live with you dead. It’s that simple. Your feelings don’t factor into this. You do. And you’ll need to learn that I’ll do anything to keep you alive, even if it means killing what we have between us. Even if it means destroying your soul. I’ll do it.”

“I think—” I swallowed. “—you’ve already done that.”

He regarded me with the same cold blank look, not depicting any sort of feeling or reaction from the words. “No, solnyshko. You’ll know when I do it. No thinking about it.”

My stomach dipped as he knelt in front of me, like he was a man praying, worshipping. They fastened over the exact spot Eli’s grip had bruised. His thumb moved over the tender skin. “I think the thing that’s troubling you the most about what just happened is not that it hurt you or sickened you,” he murmured from below me, his hand moving upward. “It’s that it excited you.”

I choked on the air around us, the stuff that was swirling with death, fear, filth, and most of all, sex.

Unlike Eli’s, his hands didn’t move slowly. They quickly snaked up my legs, one brushing at the electrified skin, one bunching at my dress and yanking it upward. The cold air kissed at my hips, at my panties when he yanked it over my hips, his palm ghosting over my sex before continuing up my stomach.

My dress was over my head and fluttering to the floor before I could rightly understand he’d managed to navigate my slip too. The same with my bra. My nipples stiffened in the open air, screaming out for Lukyan’s attention.

His thumb brushed my areola before he pinched my nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Hard.

I cried out. Both in pleasure and in pain.

I could make that sound now. There was only Lukyan and a dead man to hear me. Wetness pooled between my legs.

His mouth ghosted toward my neck, his teeth meeting the skin first. More pain. My panties soaked with the power of my sickening arousal.

“Didn’t you, solnyshko?” he asked.

My breath was coming too harshly for me to answer, my brain too scrambled by his words.

“What happened to you before scarred you,” he rasped.

My stomach churned with acid of the memories he was wrenching to the surface, the ones I’d been trying to shove down. He noticed my change, but he didn’t stop. He palmed my breast, softly this time.

“It’s a fact. You’re strong enough to overcome it.”

The comfort of his grip on my breast disappeared in search of pleasure. His fingers dipped into my still-wet panties, my clit already throbbing, aching for him despite the thin film of filth he was tugging at from the shadowed corners of my mind.

“You’re strong enough to let me overcome it,” he murmured against my neck. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not going to inform everything that comes after it. It means your tastes are darker now. There’s a need inside you that you’re too afraid to satisfy because it comes from him.”

I cried out as he entered me with his fingers. A single tear trailed down my cheek. One that took with it all my preconceptions that I could separate my trauma with my pleasure. That it wouldn’t always be here, between us. Something lightened inside me with that tear. With acceptance of my forced depravity.

“But solnyshko, I’m not afraid,” Lukyan said, his strong voice building up my resolve at the same time it stoked my desire. “Not of your darkness. And I’ll satisfy it. I’ll let you consume my darkness.”

His fingers moved against me as he nipped at my bottom lip with his teeth. Coppery-smelling warmth trickled down my chin as he broke the skin. His tongue lapped up the liquid, my insides pulsing against his fingers with the gesture. With him coaxing out my monster, showing me he liked it.

“I’ll let it consume me,” he said, lips against mine, his hardness spearing into my stomach.

Despite being seconds away from climax, my inner fury took over. The monster he’d been leading into the darkness that was this moment emerged. And attacked.

We were both on the floor before I quite knew what happened. Eye level with the corpse I’d been so obsessed with moments ago. I barely even glanced at it. My eyes were on Lukyan. On his slightly widened and dark irises, full of hunger.

He was on his back, splayed out to where I’d pushed him. Where I put him. My blood ran hot with the power of my control. I attached my mouth to his, controlling the kiss, commanding it as my fingers snaked into his hair, yanking at the strands, testing their strength. I rubbed myself against his hardness, fervently, fanatically, the friction of our clothed arousal pushing me over the edge. He grunted as I climaxed on top of him, with no connection but our eyes and our mouths.

Everything else become dreamlike yet stark at the edges. My knees were stiff, but somehow I was confidently able to push myself to my feet, to stand over him and hook my thumbs around my panties and take them off, letting them fall beside his palm. He immediately clenched them in his fist, his cock straining in his slacks as he did so.

I smiled at him, my foot going to his chest, exerting enough pressure to toy with pain. His swift intake of breath told me this. The way his hand circled my bare ankle, moving it to press it harder told me he liked it. The pain.

He exerted enough pressure to move the angle of my foot so my legs were splayed. I was exposed to him, his gaze seeing into me.

The grip tightened again, this time not to move me gently but to yank me down. My knees hit the floor painfully but not enough to give me pause—he’d placed his hands on my hips before I made impact.

He moved me slightly so my knees were on either side of his head, his face inches away from my pussy, his eyes devouring it before his mouth could even begin.

My breathing was nothing more than swift intakes and outtakes of air, everything focused on his gaze, my position of power and servitude.

Then he yanked me down. Right down. So I made the most deliciously perfect contact with his mouth in the most deliciously perfect spot.

He didn’t let me ride his face. His hands bit into my hips, yanking them up and down so I had the power and he had the control.

Even my monster didn’t care at that moment. Nothing mattered but the harsh and violent rhythm he was making me keep. It might’ve been hours like that. Long enough for the bones in my knees and shins to scream out in pain, long enough for the delicate nerve endings in my clit to cry out for an end and then beg for more.

I didn’t care about any of it. My mind was on Lukyan. So it all but exploded when he lifted me, set me on my hands and knees, and with no warning but the unzipping of his pants, entered me.

I screamed with the intense and deep angle and what it did to my already tender body. Lukyan grunted in response, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t need to. He knew I could handle pain. He knew I needed it now.

Agony exploded in my head as he gripped my ponytail, yanking my head backward so his mouth brushed against my cheek. The angle showed me what he wanted from me. What he wanted me to see.

I watched the stare of death confront me as the man responsible for it, my very own grim reaper, took me to the edge of life and back again.

And I loved every fucking second.

* * *

Lukyan

He closed the door quietly, though he didn’t know why he did so. Elizabeth was out, her body and mind both so spent that unconsciousness was going to hold her in its clutches for a long while. Nothing, not even him, was going to pry her away.

He liked that.

That he’d fucked her into oblivion while staring into the dead eyes of a man who’d dared touch her. The man he’d killed for degrading her.

It was a slip, killing him, one he might pay for, but he had to do it. Everything in him thirsted for him to do it.

She’d loved it too. That had pushed him over the edge. Made him go too far. He knew this because of the bruises that covered every inch of her body. The ones that had intensified with startling quickness between the time she’d passed out and the time he’d carried her upstairs and placed her in his bed.

He’d examined them a long while, those marks. It filled him with dark satisfaction, seeing them. But also something else. A sharp discomfort at causing her pain.

Pain she’d liked.

Pain she’d loved.

Lukyan’s cock pulsed even with the memory of it. She was never going to be one thing. He was never going to categorize her, learn her. And he found this exciting instead of unsettling. Every day would come with a discovery. A new piece of her, yanked from the dark corners she pretended weren’t there.

Lukyan entered his operations rooms, the light of the screens, numbers, contracts not exciting him as they once had.

Excited might’ve been too strong a word. He didn’t get such rousing emotions, not from anything. Killing was satisfying because it fed into the emptiness he had inside him. He liked looking into the eyes of people when they were taking their last breath, liked being sucked into their demise.

Being responsible for it.

He’d first thought he wanted that with Elizabeth. To watch her demise. To taste it. But he’d already done that. He did that every day. Death was attached to her very pores. She already lived in the abyss.

He found himself being more excited at the prospect of living some warped life with her than spending a split second enjoying her death.

Her death.

The thought filled him with something other than enjoyment.

Fear.

He focused on the screen because he wasn’t giving himself the luxury of fear. The very presence of the emotion meant that he needed to be in front of his screen.

He needed to kill.