Two years later

“Spread your legs.”

They fell open effortlessly as Anteros drew a line from one naked shoulder blade to the next. Tied to a chair, I stared out the window at the glowing, rainbow-colored Times Square Ball. It was New Year’s Eve, in the same hotel room where I’d first carved my initial into his chest. My heart still filled with the memory.

Anteros bent down, squeezing my shoulder. “Is Times Square more interesting?” I shook my head and refocused my attention on the room. On the champagne, on the black rose petals, on Anteros dressed in charcoal slacks with his dress shirt rolled up to his elbows, showcasing his thick, muscled forearms.

And on the man—the stranger—sitting opposite me on the couch.

“Good girl.” Anteros stood up. “Sit up straighter so you can spread your legs wider. Get them as wide as you can. Until it hurts.” I spread my legs so far that I could feel my hipbones groaning in pain, groin muscles twitching. “Wider.” His voice was steel and unbending. “Don’t make me get the bar.”

“But I can’t go wider.” Anteros narrowed his eyes, the threat in his merciless bluegreen eyes clear. I sat forward, putting my feet on their tiptoes, sitting higher until air whispered against the skin where my back used to press against the chair. My arms were behind my head, wrists tied together.

I was absolutely naked.

He came behind me, bending low until his words teased my ear, sliding along my flesh, promising more. “Tell me what you feel.” I closed my eyes, sinking into him. When I didn’t respond, he slid his palm around my neck and squeezed.

“I feel my pussy splitting,” I gasped. “I feel the cool air against the lips.”

“Tell me what you want.” My eyes popped open, meeting the man opposite me on the couch. He was absolutely rapt, watching just me. I’d picked him out of the bar earlier that night when he’d hit on me.

“I want him gone,” I whispered. Anteros slid his right hand down the front of me, spreading over my belly, cupping my pussy.

“You little liar,” he snarled, plunging a finger inside. “You fucking love this.” I did. I fucking loved it. Maybe it should have been gross and seedy, but all I felt was empowered. I had a complete stranger addicted to me, and that itself was addicting. The first time Anteros and I had done it, I’d been scared.

Anteros had walked me through it.

No jealousy, just his hot whispers burning my flesh and melting away my reservations. Now I was hooked on the feeling. On Anteros. On us.

“I can feel you pulsing around my fingers,” Anteros said, voice little more than a growl. His finger slid out of me and I nearly whimpered when his thumb and forefinger spread my lips. “Do you love letting me spread you while he watches?” I inhaled and thrust my head back, hitting the stone wall of his chest. “Or do you love him watching you come?” Anteros thrummed his thumb against my clit. “No,” he continued a few seconds later, a knowing laugh escaping his lips. Then he bent down and whispered so only I could hear him. “You love the power of holding his orgasm in your palm.” I groaned, vision going blurry, skin tingling.

Fuck.

I spread my legs wider, biting my lip.

“Don’t quiet yourself.” Anteros tugged at my captive lip, pulling it free. “Scream for your master, my little slave.” A small cry escaped me as he plunged one, two, three fingers inside. My eyes met the man on the couch, but they didn’t connect. I never connected with him.

It was as Anteros said—I craved the power, craved Anteros touching me, holding me. Craved his words that ignited burning shivers along my arms and spine.

The man across from me was just a toy.

Anteros’s lips connected with my neck as he worked inside me. I squirmed, trying to get him deeper. His free hand came to cup my breast and I thought I would float away on the feelings. I was so close to the edge I could taste the juicy release on my lips.

I focused my blurry vision on the stranger, on his dilated pupils, on the way he palmed himself and sucked in every move I made. It wasn’t about making him orgasm, it was about me coming and him having no choice but to follow.

“You know what I think?” Anteros asked, low laugh rumbling against my skin seconds later. “This has little to do with power—you just can’t help being bad.” He curled his fingers inside me, twisted a nipple, and bit my neck in a delirious threesome that sent me tumbling. The soft fibers of the beard he never ended up shaving tickled my already over-sensitized body.

“Anteros,” I cried, voice shaking as the orgasm pulsed through me.

My head fell back and I locked eyes with him.

“Wow, that was—” the guy started, but Anteros pulled a gun out of his waistband holster and shot him before he could finish, bluegreen stare still on me. One bullet, clean in the head, silencer on so no one would disturb us. Gun still aloft, Anteros consumed me with his eyes. I never got used to it—the look that said he was drinking in everything about me.

“Are you going to kill everyone who watches me come?” I murmured, twisting my head to lightly kiss his exposed forearm.

“Yes,” Anteros replied simply and without hesitation. He put the safety back on, shoved the gun back in the holster, and then smiled down at me with a dazzling, devious, crooked smile that I’d come to know as something only for me. One cheek quirked, teeth ultra bright, his turquoise eyes smoldering—a smile that would bring me to me my knees if I weren’t already sitting down.

Still at my back, Anteros gently kissed my neck and shoulders as he untied the rope keeping me bound.

“I’m not going to stop showing off,” I said, reaching for him as he finished untying me, planting feverish kisses on his lips. “Not going to stop wanting and needing to be seen.”

“I have a lot of bullets,” he said, returning my embrace.

* * *

A few minutes later we both held each other, staring out at Times Square. He tugged my wrist, spinning me back into his chest, and locked me tight against him. The New Year was approaching, and in a little over an hour, the countdown would begin.

“How are you doing?” Anteros gently pushed the sweaty hair from my face. Even when I wasn’t having a sick day, Anteros was always protecting me.

“I’m okay.” Business wasn’t the only thing that changed for us that day—Anteros had changed. Only for me, but that was the only thing that would ever matter.

He swayed with me even though there wasn’t any music. As much as I would have loved to stay and be held while we watched the changing neon lights out in Times Square, I had to tell Anteros about his present. The man had been an anniversary gift for me, but I’d gotten him something as well.

“You know it’s been almost a two years since the night…the night…” The night that changed everything. I swallowed, blinking up at Anteros. In the two years that had passed since we’d killed Lucia and Crazy A, my name had become feared. I was respected. Powerful.

When it came to Anteros, though, I would always be his slave.

“Yes, mio cuore,” he whispered against my ear. “I remember.”

“I got you an anniversary present.” Anteros spun around, searching my eyes. Nikolai’s escape had been a constant thorn underfoot. Some days I thought I felt Anteros’s pain more than he did, and sometimes I thought it was the same way for him. So every night I worked to find Nikolai.

Until I did.

I led him down the suite’s hallway to where I’d stuffed his present. We stopped just outside the extra bedroom and I paused, looking into his eyes.

“If you’ve got another man in there, I’ll need to reload,” he joked.

“I found Nikolai,” I said. His features hardened instantly. Pain and rage rippled across his face like light over the surface of a waterfall, but satisfaction was there too. I felt it as well. Finally this could end.

Like the fucking snake he was, Nikolai had been trying to amass forces to take us down. If Nikolai had just lain low, I probably never would have found him, so I supposed I should thank his reptilian nature because, in the end, it was why I got to hand him over to Anteros.

Anteros said nothing to me as he pushed the door open, but the appreciation in his gaze was clear. Nikolai was tied to the chair like I’d left him. There was a soldier guarding him, a soldier we could fucking trust—finally. The past years had been full of trials, but we’d gotten through them. Together. We told the soldier to leave and then it was just Nikolai, Anteros, and me.

Against the wall, I watched Anteros get to work. It always mesmerized me watching him, bloodthirsty but calculated, a level fury. I pitied anyone who got in his way.

Anteros took his time with Nikolai, and I got lost watching him. Bloody hands, sweaty hair clinging to his forehead—this was the Anteros I’d come to know as we’d built our empire. I rubbed the back of my neck as my tongue darted out to lick my lips. I hadn’t thought it was possible to love him or need him more, but then I’d watched him kill and we’d killed together.

And I realized there was no end to how much my soul would tear for him.

“I never told you the story of your parents, Nikolai.” Anteros took a seat, wiping his bloody hands on a rag. Nikolai was a mess, barely alive, but he was conscious and cognizant. There was no terror in his eyes, but there was a brokenness to him. All the time I’d known Nikolai, this was the first I’d finally seen him fightless.

“Your mother cried,” Anteros continued. “Your father tried to save everyone, but he was the easiest to take down.” Anteros stood up and walked closer to Nikolai. He was so close, his words so low, I almost didn’t hear what he said next. “Men like us, we know there are fates worse than death. You never should have run, Nikolai. You could have died that day with Lucia and Crazy A and been spared the truth.” A flicker of fear flashed across Nikolai’s face. “The truth is, I never killed your baby sister.”

Nikolai started screaming and moaning. It sounded like he was trying to say words, but Anteros had removed his tongue. The sound was inhuman, blood-curdling.

“She’s alive. It’s been…” Anteros pretended to count on his fingers. “Eleven years. She’s almost a teenager. Little Nadia is nearly ready for The Institute.” Nikolai’s eyes grew even wider in horror, his unintelligible words more frantic.

I watched the exchange, arms folded, betraying nothing. I knew Anteros was lying. Finally, after everything Anteros and I had endured, there were no lies between us. Our souls were so naked it hurt at times, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Anteros was just using Nikolai’s deepest pain against him, so his death would be as agonizing as possible. After what Lucia had done to me, after what I’d seen and learned in that box and at Lucia’s “club”, I couldn’t willingly work with sex slavers. We weren’t perfect people—we weren’t even good people—but I wasn’t going to do that. Some days I even still thought about Leanna and what may have happened to her, but it was one thing to cancel a contract with The Institute, another entirely to go against them.

I would never have to see Dr. Wyatt again. Good thing, too, because if I ever saw his aging, date rape, frat boy face again, I’d put a bullet in it.

With a final pat on the shoulder, Anteros stood up and walked away from Nikolai. The screams grew louder, but we ignored him as we shut the door behind us. He would scream until he died, his punishment knowing that he was going to die and couldn’t do a thing to help the sister he thought was still alive.

Anteros and I walked out onto the balcony, his arms the only barrier I needed against the bitter wind. It was only two minutes from the New Year and the excitement from the crowd was a buzz in the air.

“Do you really believe that?” I asked, putting my chin to his chest. “That the truth is worse than death?”

“No.” He put a hand to the small of my back, pulling me closer. “But a lie can be, and I just told Nikolai a lie that will destroy him more than any weapon could.” I twisted into the embrace, his words touching my marrow. Lies had destroyed Anteros and me more times than I cared to count.

Lies about our past, lies about our present, lies about who we were and what we wanted to be—so many lies that we turned our very souls into liars. It wasn’t until I met Anteros that I realized just how much I’d been lying to myself.

I looked up, but he was already looking at me. His eyes said he was thinking the same thing.

“What would you like to do with him, mio cuore?” Anteros caressed my hair, scalp to lower back.

“I know what he means to you—you decide.”

“We’re in this together,” he responded simply. I thought about it, really thought about it. Over the past year, Anteros and I had grown the business. We weren’t Pavonis, we weren’t Sokolovs, we were just us, growing our kingdom in the underworld together.

That meant there were a lot of people trying to vie for top dog, nipping at our heels.

“I think we should cut him up and send the pieces to all the people who’ve tried to rise past us.”

He grinned wickedly then dipped his head to rumble against my ear, “I think that’s a brilliant idea, mio cuore.” Slowly he lifted his lips from my ear, his deep, rumbling voice vibrating in my blood. Our eyes locked and I gripped his shirt, lifting myself to kiss him just as the sound of thousands of people counting down drifted up. Mouths separated by a heated breath, I turned to watch the ball’s descent, marking the start of another new year.

Once upon a time, Nikolai had said I would have to rebirth myself. In the very beginning, Anteros told me Frankie Notte was dead. At the time, both of those realities were horrifying, but that was because I hadn’t understood that Frankie Notte was already dead and if I hadn’t met Anteros, I would have lived in my coffin forever.

The ball dropped, confetti fell, and I looked back at my Beast, the animal that tore me apart so I could see who I really was. As the cheering grew to a deafening roar, we closed the thread of space between us, lips fusing for another mind-bending kiss. Our beginning was bloody and ruinous, and at the time I hadn’t understood how love could be so hateful. Now it was loud and clear as the cheering in my ears.

We’d destroyed each other, so together we could rise from the ashes.

THE END.