There’s too much of her blood to just wipe off on the sides of my jeans. I need a shower. I need to scour the bitch from my skin. I need...I need to fucking kill her. Now.
I find her slumped against the floor, her eyes vacant and distant. No one’s home. She doesn’t even react when I pick her knife up from the floor and come toward her with it drawn. The little bitch has flown off again, terrified by whatever she saw even as she rode out her climax and drenched my cock in her release. She looked at me...and she saw his face.
I don’t know whether to strangle her or let her fucking suffer. Let her see the fucking bastard who truly owns her. Let her get high off the fact that he can’t touch her here. Let her fuck her way through the rest of her life trying to pretend that he doesn’t haunt her every step.
Or maybe I should put the little bitch out of her misery now? I am an animal after all... Baring my teeth, I trail my gaze over the rest of her, ignoring the way my cock lurches, still fucking semi-hard. I reach for her with one hand while adjusting the knife on the palm of the other. I don’t think before I cut. One hard jerk of my wrist...and there is no blood. No screaming. No death. There’s only just a lock of ebony hair in my fingers, still warm with the heat of her. It even fucking smells like her. Growling at the realization, I tuck the shit into my pocket and aim for her again. This time, it’s her arm I grab, but for some reason, I don’t cut. I drag her upright instead, watching her head loll against the wall and her vacant body grasp for anything within reach to help her find her balance.
I consider dropping her when the little bitch starts to clutch at my forearm. Her nails scrape my skin and every little pin-prick sensation bolts down directly to my cock. She turns my entire body into her little plaything, stoking a lust I had learned since childhood to suppress and control. Lust made men stupid. It made them fucking weak.
Fucking her made me weak.
My hand drops the knife, and the fingers find her throat. Those hazel eyes watch me, flickering with only a hint of life, as I press hard, sealing off her windpipe. Five minutes, I decide. She’d likely be dead in one, but five would make it slower. Five would make her suffer. For five fucking minutes—her very last—she’ll see my face instead of his. I press harder, and the pain makes her fly back into her body. Slowly, her eyes register me, and she realizes what I’m doing. How I’ll do it. That her death will be drawn out painfully over every last fucking second. She understands it...and if she could, she’d fucking sigh.
It’s about damn time.
I let her go to gasp and wheeze on the air, and while she sways, I throw her over one shoulder. When I reach the bedroom, I pitch her onto the mattress and leave again. In the narrow bathroom, I find a washcloth and I wet it beneath the sink. The creature glowering into the mirror is a stranger. Some sick, stupid fuck with some bitch’s name carved into his chest. He doesn’t even have the nerve to seem ashamed by it. Hell...I think the son of a bitch even got off on the pain of those five little letters being etched into his skin. Thirteen years ago, Dino had tattooed my “new” name on me himself. Kitten, the scared little fuck who one day grew claws.
“You don’t just let any bastard with a needle touch your skin,” he told me. “I’d rather let a bastard kill me than ever ink me without my goddamn permission. This—” He’d pointed to his throat where his own name inked the flesh. “This is your armor. Whatever you put on it should adorn your fucking soul. Those dumbasses who get pussies or birdies tattooed on their arms? Deep down, that’s all they really are. Cartoons and fucking scared little birdies. Every scar and mark you wear with fucking pride, or you don’t let the shit touch you at all.”
I let that little bitch cut me. I let her draw her mark onto my skin. I let her.
Damn her if she thinks I’ll let her get off that fucking easily. When I return to the bedroom, she’s lying limp in the center of the mattress. She doesn’t react when I grab her by the ankle and drag her closer. With one knee propped against the end of the bed, I lean over and drag the rag between her legs. She’s bleeding, but it’s just a streak across the end of the rag. My seed drips from her more steadily than anything else.
The more of her I touch with the rag, the more of her that creeps back into those eyes, watching me warily. She doesn’t like being cleaned. She doesn’t like when the monster of the story wipes his mess from her skin. She likes it even less when that same beast goes to grab a bottle of vodka from the kitchen and carefully pours it onto the brand he made on her skin.
She tries to fight me off, then. “No...no.”
I fight back, pinning her down by her arm until she whines. My name will leave a nasty scar. She’ll never be able to erase it. And him...he’d have to cut out her fucking shoulder to override my claim. The little bitch is mine, for however long I say so.
Vincent Stacatto can go fuck himself; he won’t ever fuck her.
“Look at me.”
She does, still trying to bat my hand away. I set the vodka aside without even drinking from it, which would be the smart thing to do—erasing the lust that flares up when she looks up at me with fire in her eyes. Danny...the little bitch who sold her soul to a man who never really had one of his own. Does the thought of that frighten her? Something has her spooked because she tries to stare beyond me. She tries to fly off, but the moment I seal my mouth over hers, she’s trapped. She’s still fighting though, even as she slams her tongue against mine. The cloth in my hand is a whip, and she flinches with every inch of her that I claim with it, bathing the blood from her skin. She’s a rebellious little bitch—she fights me harder than I know she ever did against him, but it’s no use.
With a groan, she surrenders, her hands fisting in my hair and her hip arching into my touch.
For the next five minutes, she’ll forget about him and die in another way—with every kiss I take and the climax I’ll wring out of her with my fingers. For the next five minutes, she’s mine alone. I’ll make sure of that.
I’ll crush the bastard from her skull if I have to.
Mack’s waiting by the mouth of the Kennel for me when I finally leave the garage just after sunset with the taste of blood in my mouth and cunt on my tongue. Three of his men surround him, keeping just enough distance to show that Mack isn’t afraid to face me alone—he just wants to reinforce just how much power he has here. All hail the fucking king.
“Enjoying the guest house?” he wonders, cocking an eyebrow once I come within a yard of him. “You must have broken in the bed, at least. I can smell her on you.”
I say nothing, giving him no ounce of emotion to bite into. I simply stare the bastard down until he remembers the business at hand.
“Tonight,” he grunts out, crossing his arms over his chest. “We do this quickly. Do you have the addresses?”
I jerk my head toward the garage. “She has them.”
Mack chuckles. “Well, then it’s a good thing that I’ve made sure she attends this little party...”
Something in his tone makes me glance over my shoulder just in time to catch a man leaving the garage with a slender woman in tow.
Red. It paints everything beneath a roar so deafening my ears pop. Even knowing Mack is watching can’t stop me from taking a step toward them. My fingers are on fire in a way I have never felt, not even in the cage.
The fucker doesn’t dare touch her, at least. He makes her walk in front of him instead, her head held high, her chin pointed to the sky, those haughty eyes on fire. However, there’s a noticeable limp that she can’t hide. Her ravaged cunt aches with my possession—she won’t feel right again for a week, at least.
“Relax, Dante,” Mack croons from behind me. “I made sure that she’s in safe hands.”
It’s only then that the hair of the man herding her forward catches a flicker of light—copper.
“I’ll have her stay with Arno during our little adventure,” Mack clarifies. “Safe and sound.”
Arno watches me as they come closer. He makes sure to keep enough distance from her, and he doesn’t reach for her, even when she staggers over the uneven ground. He stares me dead in the eye the entire fucking time.
“Now,” Mack starts and I drag my gaze back to him. “Give me the addresses, and we can get this little party started.”
“No.” I clip the word, so it’s clear enough for the bastard to understand. “I handle the girls on my own with Arno’s boys. You take the drug ring.”
Mack chuckles, shaking his head. “Now that wouldn’t be very fun, now would it, Dante?” His expression hardens, and I know without a doubt that he’s already formulated his own plan. “We split up. You take half of Arno’s men, half of mine, and I’ll do the same. You hit the enclaves first. When and only when you give me the signal that you’re all clear, I’ll move on the drug ring—but you play this your way, Dante. You bust open the enclaves without backup, and you get out of there on your own. Any losses you take are on your fucking head, understood?”
I force myself to nod, once. The rules were simple: no holds barred, no easy outs—the same ones we played by whenever we fought in the cage. “I got it.”
“What about me?” Arno pipes up, his voice gruff.
Mack shrugs. “You and the girl will stay out of sight. I’ll tag a few of my men along, of course...but we can’t have her falling into the wrong hands. Yet.”
I don’t like it. I don’t like Mack’s cocky fucking smirk or the way he glances from me to the girl, putting the pieces together with the awkward way she stands and the blood on my shirt.
“Fine. But when this is over, you take Stacatto’s money, and we get the girls. Understood?”
Mack nods, his eyes narrowed. “A fucking waste, but understood.”
“Good,” I toss back. “When do we go?”
Mack smiles. “Now.”