Lucifer makes it too easy. Too easy to forget the words branded onto my skin. Too easy to forget the unsettling sensation of Vinny’s touch. The man casts a shadow—not as wide or as twisted as Vinny’s but potent enough to outlast him here.
And I want to drown beneath the swell.
I want him to dredge out the old memories that he replanted into my head. With violence. With hate. I want him to mark over my scars like graffiti. I need for this man to taint and violate every single part of me so that if I do go back to Vinny alive...there will be nothing left for him to destroy.
Lucifer will kill me in one way or the other—even if I have to make him drive the knife into my chest myself.
When he lets me go, I press my forehead against the counter and brace my hands on either side of me. They shake, and it takes me two tries to be able to finally push up and turn around to face him. He doesn’t back away when I do. He violates my personal space, gauging my reaction the whole while.
I scan his face: the black stubble along his chin, the faint scar slicing through his left upper eyebrow, the mole on his neck, the anger in his gaze.
I recall the night when the artist accused me of “playing with fire.” Matches and old paper were merely a child’s game. This was the true definition of that peculiar saying. I was playing with Lucifer the same way a suicidal thrill-seeker might play Russian roulette.
Which part of him contained the bullet? I would only learn through trial and error.
He doesn’t react when I cut my gaze over to the knife, but I sense a slight shift in his posture. He’ll stop me from reaching it, though I have enough sense to know that it’s out of the fear that I’ll use the blade on him rather than myself. And maybe I could. I’d slash a jagged wound across his face. His neck. I’d goad him into killing me, even if by accident.
The thoughts swirl my mind, and a laugh trickles out of my mouth before I can bite it back. I’m dizzy beneath my own insanity. There’s no true identity lurking beneath the shackles Vinny’s used to conform me since the day we first met. I’m a puddle of nothing but rage and desperation, melting the moment I’m cut loose from my cage.
And Lucifer...he’s watching me like he isn’t hungry to do every violent thing I know he’s capable of. Control is a drug to him, I can sense it. He prides himself on maintaining it, no matter the temptation.
My right hand skims my thigh, drifting down to curl around the hem of my borrowed shirt. I finger the bloodied, sweat-soaked fabric while Lucifer watches. He pretends not to notice or care when I begin to drag the fabric up to my waist. My other hand comes down, and within seconds and a few stiff motions of my arms, I have the shirt over my head, and it hits the floor at my feet.
Fire begins a dangerous dance down my spine. Lucifer doesn’t enjoy being played with. His jaw clenches, and he doesn’t allow his gaze to travel down to the cleavage bared by the lacy bra. I don’t know why I decide to take it off, fumbling with the fastenings as if I have all the time in the world to strip myself naked before a monster.
Maybe I want him to fuck me again—split me open, ruin me utterly for any other man. Or perhaps bash my brains out against the cupboards? Maybe I want him to do both?
I don’t know, and it’s a terrifying, suffocating sort of tension to watch him watch me as I take two steps back until the rim of a counter juts into my spine. I brace both hands on either side of me, and then I haul myself upright so that my ass hits the surface.
Lucifer glowers. I think he’ll opt for the second of my two twisted scenarios as I spread my legs wide, allowing him to see what little the patchwork of black lace and silk attempts to hide. Deep down, I know it’s insanity to taunt a man like him. Maybe this hollow shell of a woman is who Vinny’s reduced me to. Only the newer pain keeps him at bay now...and I need Lucifer to blind me. Smash my skull so that I don’t have to think. Cut out my throat. Tear apart my soul. Fuck me until I bleed.
Anything to prove that as long as I can feel again, I’m not there. Vinny’s specter, lurking in the corners, isn’t real. He won’t ever own me again.
The floor creaks when Lucifer finally moves. I expect him to walk away. He doesn’t. His gaze holds mine as he stalks forward like a bored, exhausted wolf unable to resist the willing throat the sacrificial doe presents.
His grip is hard when he seizes my wrist and drags me from the counter. I stagger forward, and he uses that momentum to shove me into the main room. I don’t stop moving until my hands hit the back of the couch. The force sends me to my knees, and my chin smacks off one of the seat cushions.
Lucifer is already behind me. He fists his hand in my hair so hard that I can’t silence a cry. A scream. The pain floods my system, a powerful narcotic. My vision blurs, obscuring those haunting shadows.
To block them out completely, he shoves me forward as if he means to suffocate me against the cotton and padding. The act forces me higher on my knees, and the fingers of his free hand are there to seize the waistband of the panties and drag them down my legs.
He doesn’t prepare me this time. I hear his zipper come undone. I hear him groan. I feel him. I’m impaled by him. On him...
My entire body screams to life at the invasion. Everything feels different when I’m not the one setting the pace. I moan, digging my nails into the couch’s upholstery, breaking some of them, and Lucifer doesn’t hold back. He slams his hips into me, forcing me to accept him. There is no more room for any dark memories. I’m stuffed to the brim, and it hurts the same way the burning alcohol did when poured onto my ear. Darkness dies screaming...and with every brutal, harsh, violent thrust new shadows are forced into the spaces Vincent Stacatto used to infest.
I go numb beneath the assault. My brain is a slave to the sensation. I don’t even register the act for what it is—sex. This is demolition.
Lucifer growls into my ear, the sound part pleasure, part aggravation. He’s a beast, feasting on a fresh kill that he never really wanted to hunt. He gorges himself on the feel of me anyway. The taste. I don’t flinch when his teeth rake my neck as if biting is the only way he can prove his lack of attraction.
I shiver and shudder beneath the feeling, his teeth grinding my skin between them. Marking me. It would be so easy to just let him take me. All of me. Corruption is best delivered in steady, mind-numbing doses—Vinny taught me that. I shouldn’t be so greedy for it. So impatient.
I bite my tongue when he thrusts again, his hips slapping my backside, pressing my stomach against the edge of the couch. It’s searing friction; he’s impossibly deep.
But it’s still not deep enough.
My sweat-soaked hands fumble against the cushions, finding enough leverage to allow me to push back. There. My mind swims. The walls of the room shift and shatter. I’m falling and then flying, my stomach churning too quickly to make out which direction is which.
I taste blood on my tongue as a craving for more goads me to flex my hips when he shoves himself into me again. Again. Again.
I can’t smother the sounds I make: desperate, pathetic, triumphant, bitter, brutal, animalistic sounds. Lucifer doesn’t appreciate my little bid for power. He shoves his hand down on my hip, holding me steady while he pounds his essence into me, every naughty little drop. I swallow it all down. I’m choking on him. I’m drunk on him.
My knees flex against the floor. My hips swivel, chasing an even deeper, darker sensation. I want to feel him everywhere. Everywhere...
And then I do, but his presence doesn’t inspire pain. The fire burns hotter, spreading too quickly and turning ravenous. I want the agony, not the pleasure, but it drives the most tortured sounds out of me. Moans. Squeals. Whimpers. It, more than anything, takes control of my body, forcing me to throw myself at him. Arch my back. Reach for him with my hand, plunging my nails into the side of his ass. He flinches at the contact and bends the offending arm against my back. I’m at his mercy again, and I expect to feel that same fearful desperation that had gnawed holes into my soul living with Vinny.
Instead, all I feel is...
Hungry. I want more. I need him to hold me tighter. Force me down. Force himself inside. Bite. With every depraved thought, the heat surging through me gets even hotter. Higher. My skin crackles and burns. My blood boils. Then it bubbles over, and it hits me like a wave: pure, aching, smoldering pleasure. Too much. Not enough. I gasp as if I can catch more of it on the air. I breathe him in. He’s swelling inside of me, branding the shape of his cock onto my inner walls.
And it still isn’t enough.
“S-Stop,” I rasp.
Lucifer stills his brutal pounding, and I don’t let myself dwell on how sudden—how easily—he listened to the plea. I don’t care that the monster heeds the commanding pull on his leash. I twist out from under him, hissing as he withdraws, still impossibly thick. I’m transfixed on the gleaming, swollen head of him—wet from me. Throbbing for me.
I flip over until my back is pressed against the couch, and I dig my heels into the floor, spreading my legs wide on either side of him and lift my hips. He stares at the offering between my legs, and his eyes shoot black. One of his hands catches the side of my waist, wrenching me forward and he sinks deep. To the goddamn hilt.
My head falls back as my eyes shut and my teeth clatter against the carnal, incredible pleasure. Yes. This is better. I throw myself on him, feeling resistant parts of me spread easily, letting him in even deeper. Harder.
Yes.
My knees tighten, trapping his hips between them while he continues to thrust. My heels dig into the backs of his thighs, urging him on, driving him deeper still. I’m gasping, staring up at the ceiling as my eyes flutter open when he hits some soft, inner part of me that makes sparks shoot through every single nerve ending. My toes curl. My hands find his shoulders, using the grip for leverage to thrust against him. Fuck him back.
“God,” I hear myself croak, clawing at his shirt. “Damn. F-Fuck. S-Shit.” The curses come like candy, another display that would be forbidden around Vinny—but even they aren’t enough to describe it. I have to dig deeper into my arsenal of words. “Fuck. Fuck. Bosta. Filho da puta—”
Lucifer’s growl swallows up my voice, and we both spiral. I’m exploding. My blood is pure gasoline, thrown onto an untamable flame. It’s too much—pain, pleasure, everything. I lose myself. Daniela Manzano is finally annihilated, and she relishes the carnage made of her own skin.
I’m still on fire when Lucifer pulls out of me a second time and flips me onto my belly so that I’m lying flat on the carpet. He strokes himself—there’s no mistaking the audible glide of flesh against wet, tender flesh. I hear him groan, and then I feel the mark of his release, burning ropes of it, lash against my lower back.
My heart races. I can’t shut out the memory of Vinny doing the same, and I expect the same disgust to flare up. But it doesn’t. Lucifer seems to like the sight of his semen on my skin, though. He leans over me, his weight grinding my chin into the carpet amid a stinging ache. Something sweeps up from the side of my belly over to my spine, and I flinch in surprise. His hand. He’s marking me, rubbing his seed into my skin.
It’s the worst thing he could possibly do to me.
The substance is an antiseptic against the festering wound I’d forgotten dwelled there. I go limp in shock and just listen to the startlingly wet sound as my skin accepts him. My body quakes against his calloused fingertips, chasing that relief. It hurts that I crave this base, violent claiming almost as much as I’d craved the violent sex. Tears sting my eyes, and I can’t blink them back. My throat contracts around the hint of a sob, and it’s like a dam breaking. Within seconds I’m writhing, eyes streaming, choking on gasping, wrenching sobs as the fire he set slowly consumes the rest of my body.