The ends of the black trench coat brushed his ankles when Aiden shrugged into it. He felt like a walking vampire cliché every time he put the thing on, but it had a lot of places to stash his weapons. It also covered the blood seeping from the gashes on his back and staining his shirt.

The lacerations would heal soon enough. When he pulled the shirt off later, he knew from past experiences some of the material would stick to his wounds. It would take time, and more pain, for the material to work its way out of his flesh, but that fresh pain would help to once again re-center him, for a time at least.

“I can do more for you tonight,” Carha purred and fondled his ear.

Aiden recoiled from her touch. She repulsed him almost as much as he repulsed himself these days. “No.”

He didn’t know why she’d bothered to offer. Every time he came to her, she did the same, and every time he turned her down. He’d already acquired what he wanted from her tonight. Dipping into his pocket, he pulled out a roll of hundreds and threw them on the table. Sex with her would be free, but no one would inflict the amount of torture on him Carha did, and for that, she charged a lot.

The money was worth the release she gave him. Or at least it used to be worth it. That release had once lasted a month, then a couple of weeks. Then a week. Now, an hour hadn’t passed, and he could already feel the tension creeping back into him. He’d have to find a different way to get some release soon, but it would not be with her. Not even he had sunk that low yet.

No. Never so low as to be with Carha. He knew if he did, he wouldn’t be himself anymore. He would be a far more twisted version of himself, one he could never come back from.

He’d love nothing more than to walk out of here and never see Carha again, but every time he tried to keep away, he found himself irresistibly drawn back to this place, and Carha. He’d started losing the battle to stay away at an accelerated rate.

“You don’t have to pay.” She rubbed his ear again.

“I said get off!” he snarled and bared his fangs at her.

She smiled back at him, unfazed by his fangs as she leaned close to offer him a view of her cleavage. Despite his revulsion of her, he found himself growing aroused before he tore his eyes away. He didn’t desire her, but he craved sex as much as pain, and he hadn’t fucked anyone today. Unlike some of her other clients, he received no sexual release while in this room. This place was strictly about the pain for him.

“I already got off,” Carha replied and slid her hands between the legs of what he knew were crotch-less black pants. She’d flashed him more than a few times while she’d been cutting him. Pulling her hand away from herself, she flicked her whip against the ground. Drops of his blood splattered across the floor when they flew off the tip of the whip. “Now I’m offering to get you off too.”

Within her green cat-like eyes, he could see the sick twistedness of her soul. She was not a killer of innocents, he would smell it on her if she were, but she couldn’t hide the evil nature within her. If she started killing innocents and turned Savage, he wouldn’t be surprised. It shocked him more she hadn’t already done exactly that.

Carha’s black hair hung in a thick braid over her shoulder. She was one of the most stunning women he’d ever seen with her Jessica Rabbit body and refined features, yet his arousal faded while he gazed at her.

Perhaps she had such an adverse effect on him because, in her eyes, he saw where he was heading. Carha was beautiful, yet twisted. And he came to her once a week to ease his needs. No, now he sought her out more than once a week.

After only making it six days last week, he’d been determined to make it seven days before turning to Carha; he hadn’t held out past day five. With the way he’d been descending this past year, and his increased spiral into his viler inclinations since Christmas, he would find himself coming here every day within three months.

But maybe, even if he did have to come here every day, have sex once and sometimes twice a day, as well as feed more than an average vampire, and if he continued to kill Savages, he could keep himself in control. Maybe he wouldn’t spiral into the thing he hated the most: the killer vamps who stalked the innocents of this world.

He told himself this and tried to hope it would be true, but he knew eventually he would need more. He always needed more. This insatiable, empty pit inside him couldn’t be filled no matter how hard he tried.

He should go to Ronan and ask Ronan to kill him now, before he lost complete control and turned into a bloodthirsty monster.

His fingers tore into the flesh of his palms as he turned away from Carha. No, no matter how empty he felt, he would hold out. He may be cracking, but he would not break. Not yet anyway. He still had time to find a way to get a handle on this before it became too late for him.

Inhaling a deep breath, his gaze fell on the metal poles sticking up from the concrete ground in the center of the room. A dim red bulb, hanging directly over the poles and the heavy chains attached to them, was the only illumination in the chamber. The thick cuffs dangling from the ends of the chains had never bound his wrists. If they did, he would be able to break free from them, but he would never allow Carha to chain him.

Between those poles, puddles of his blood glistened in the light as it had countless times over the past year and a half he’d been coming to Carha. Near one of the puddles was a drain. The body fluids spilled here were hosed into the drain before the next client entered.

The room sickened him. Two years ago, he never could have pictured himself walking into such a place. Then, he’d stopped aging and everything changed. Now, he couldn’t picture how he would survive without the relief Carha’s whip gave him.

He wasn’t Carha’s only client, but she’d once revealed to him that he was the only one she flayed open until even she flinched. He hadn’t believed Carha could flinch for any other living creature, but he’d seen her do it for him. It didn’t stop her from pulling her hand back and slicing him open as it had the other women he’d gone to before her.

Carha expertly sliced him until his ribs showed through and the blood loss made him unsteady. Earlier, he’d only remained upright by holding the chains while she delivered blow after flesh-rending blow. Only when his legs were about to buckle, and he was dizzy from blood loss, did he ask her to stop. That had been less than half an hour ago, but he already felt stronger. It would be a couple of hours before the world stopped spinning whenever he turned his head too fast.

“I’ve never seen anyone who can withstand my whip like you,” she murmured.

Carha had no idea he was a purebred vampire, and she never would. He wouldn’t put it past her to try to use the knowledge to her advantage. The underground ring of vampires Drake had run to capture purebreds—like his sister, Vicky—and feed on them, was mostly eradicated. There were a few stragglers who had helped Drake, but they’d scattered when Drake died. However, there were those out there who would use a pureblooded vampire to their advantage, if they could find a way to do so, and Carha was one of them.

“Soon,” she purred when he turned away from his blood and the posts. “You’ll be begging to have me.”

“That will be the last time I come here,” he assured her. Or it would mean he’d lost control and someone like Carha was who he would prefer having sex with. The possibility made him shudder.

“Oh, I doubt that will be the last time,” she murmured.

He didn’t look back at her as he opened the thick metal door of the soundproof room. He didn’t need the door to hide his cries. No matter how deeply Carha cut him, or how often she did it, he’d never screamed. Stepping into the hall, lit by the flame-shaped candles casting shadows over the red carpet, Aiden closed the door behind him.