The Sins that Ruin (Obsidian Knights Secret Society #3)

8. Scarlett

EIGHT

This is nothing like the last kiss we shared. This one is pure sex.

He takes me hard, his tongue dancing with mine, fucking mine, and in the dirty depths of the kiss something rises in me, a hunger he awoke when he fucked my ass. Now… now it’s alive and needy and so much more erotic than what happened in his office.

This is pure, distilled sex. Pagan. It’s blood and flesh and fire and the heavy beat of a heart. I kiss him back with the same ache and fervor, every cell in my body sparking flames of desire that rage through me.

I need more than what he’s giving, and I tug at him, trying to pull it out. Right in this moment, there’s nothing but this kiss. I slide my fingers into his hair, fisting it, and he pushes a hand down into my jeans, sliding over my lower back to my ass cheek.

It makes me throb and hum with a deeper need. He’s hard and I grind against him as everything in my mind and body goes haywire. His mouth is hot and wet, and I’ve never tasted anything so decadent and forbidden.

He kisses a line from my mouth to my throat where he bites and sucks, and then his mouth is back on mine. It’s different now. Pure hunger and?—

Malone suddenly rips his mouth away and pulls free from my grasp. For a moment, I see something in his dark gaze that resembles shock, but then it’s gone, like I imagined it.

He rakes a hand through his hair, takes a breath, and in steady tones says, “Your outfit for tonight is hanging on the inside of the closet door. Put it on and meet me in the living room in half an hour.”

He’s gone before I can say a word to him, and I raise a shaking hand, putting it to my tingling, burning lips.

I can still feel him.

Like he’s tattooed himself on me.

The thing is, I don’t know what he wants from me, not really. There are so many girls who’d fall over themselves for him. Rich and pampered, the type so much higher up the social ladder than me. I know they’d want him. He’s the exact kind of dangerous that appeals to a certain type.

Even I’m not immune.

Lying to myself isn’t something I like to do. I’m not a virgin—clearly—but my experiences are small, counted on one hand and very freaking vanilla.

He…

I swallow, then grit my teeth.

I’m smart. Why did I get into this situation? No one’s got an upper hand if we both want something, so…

“Shit,” I mutter, walking on shaky legs to the window. I pull the linen blinds back to look at the SoHo skyline with the glitter of Manhattan rising up around this little neighborhood. “Just keep it together, Scar. Play the game.”

The game.

There’s always a game. Maybe Malone’s just more open about it.

Because when I was younger, it was the guy pretending to be into me to get into my pants. Or someone who wanted to be closer to my family’s money. Or?—

I give the glass a little pound with my fist.

It doesn’t matter. The only thing here that matters is my family.

I let the blinds fall and glance around at the huge, tastefully bland room. It drips money. The soulless kind. And I hate it.

I’d be more impressed if it matched his fucking office, everything made for sex and sensual experiences. Instead of this… criminal’s display of cash wrapped up in wannabe hedge fund manager chic.

With a shuddering breath, I push open the door and walk into the closet.

I stop dead when I step inside of the pale-peach and white closet.

The kind of dresses to the left are ones I like to wear to work or when I go out. Tasteful and expensive. But the sight of the outfits makes the pit of my stomach twist, because… it’s not what I expect. At all. Not from the man who bends a girl over his desk to fuck her ass while watching sex acts on the big screen in his depraved club.

I run my fingers over the luxe material, then pull open the drawers and stare at the lacy, girly lingerie. My eyes fall to the shoe racks lined with high heels.

“Who the fuck are you?” I whisper.

But as I turn to look at the right, my question is answered.

Leather.

Lace.

Latex.

The three Ls.

I don’t even pull one of them down off the rack to look at it. I’m betting the lingerie drawer on that side of the closet is either empty or full of the kinds of things I’ve only seen at his sex club and at one of the sex shops that dot the city with their dildos and maid outfits and trashy, crotchless underwear made for fucking.

Except way more X-rated than those.

I turn to look behind the door.

The outfit’s there, just like he said.

And my stomach plummets into my feet.

Shiny latex. Vixen red. Fishnet stockings. And the highest sluttiest stripper heels I’ve ever seen.

I swallow. Hard. “No way. No way at all. Not happening.”

I’m about to stomp out the door when a thought occurs to me and I stop short.

“If he wants a show pony, I’ll give him one.”

And with that, I smile, then stalk out and into the en suite bathroom.

It’s not until I’m about to step under the hot shower spray that his final words come back to me. He’d extinguished all of my panicked thoughts with that soul-searing kiss, and now that my head is clear, the anxiety is back in force.

First night out as my fiancée.

He’s insane for even thinking I’d go along with that.

“He can bite my ass.”

“We,” I say, “are not getting engaged.”

He’s on his phone in the living room, looking at I don’t know what—probably porn or guns or piles of stolen money. I don’t know. What I do know is he doesn’t look up, just takes a sip of his drink and puts his booted feet on what’s probably a ten-thousand-dollar stone coffee table.

“I don’t actually want to marry you, Scarlett. I’m just using you to open doors.”

“You can do that, Sir,” I say, heavily leaning on the Sir with sarcasm, something that I swear to God turns the corner of his mouth up into the thinnest ghost of a smile. “Without the engagement lie.”

This time, he raises his blond head. Startling green eyes laser into me. “Then we’ll do it for real.”

He puts his feet on the ground and rises, pocketing his phone. And my heart… that traitorous thing with some kind of hard-wired connection to my libido, throbs in time with my clit.

Because, oh, fuck, does he look…

Good isn’t the word.

Good’s bland.

He’s wearing dark gold, almost caramel. The suit’s trendy and expensive with the merest thread of gold weaved into a checkered pattern. And his silk shirt’s a black-green. He has on gold cufflinks, coupled with a gold and black striped tie.

Modern day pimp. Sex. Dangerous.

The words fly at me like the sharpest razor blades.

Hard and fast because he’s an assault on my senses. He’s elegant, tyrannical, and the outfit shouldn’t work, but it does.

He runs his gaze over me.

“You look… hot.” His voice is dark and soft, something that can lick against me, up my thighs and along my already wet slit.

I don’t like him. I want him. It’s visceral, this want. And goddamn, I hate it.

“Except the hair.”

“I’m not cutting my hair.”

He comes right up, drink still in one strong hand. Malone winds my hair between the fingers of his other hand. Pulling my head back, he bites my throat, sucking until the skin in his mouth throbs and beats, and a small wave of electric excitement ignites me deep within.

“I don’t want you cutting your hair. I want it up. A braid. Tight. High.”

He nods to the hall where the bedrooms are and I walk away, my legs wobbling, and not just because of the slut heels.

I’m seething, everything’s hot as I put my palms on the vanity. I look myself in the eye.

He appears behind me, tall, built, a runner’s body lithe in the suit but swathed in power. It’s in the control he wields.

Malone puts down his glass, and the smoke of the scotch cuts through the pure decadence of him. I don’t know the scent, but it’s not the dark, hedonistic boozy scent that seems to come from his skin. This is more salt and money and animalistic charm from a bottle of men’s cologne that has a hefty price tag.

I prefer the other one. But this one… it almost feels safe, and I’ll take whatever safety I can get.

Wait, what am I thinking? I don’t prefer anything that comes from him. Except, maybe the goodbye that waits at the end of this long damn road.

“Put your hair up. If you don’t have any girly shit for hair, which I highly fucking doubt, you’ll find it in the top right-hand drawer.”

I glare. “Things your lovers left behind?”

“I don’t bring anyone here. So pull the claws back in, princess. This is our… love palace.”

“You’re an asswipe.”

“Sir,” he says.

I narrow my eyes. “Sir.”

He strokes a hand over the mark on my throat, a bruise. A gift from him, and his touch on that sensitive spot makes my nipples harden, something he doesn’t miss as his gaze drops to them in the mirror. He puts an open ring box on the table near the door.

“Have a drink, and put your hair up and the ring on.”

Then he turns and leaves.

The square cut diamond is big. Obnoxious. Ostentatious. I glare at it before I pull it from the box and then slide it on, hating that it fits. Not perfectly, but it fits.

Then I do my hair, and when I’m done, I pick up the glass and down the remaining drops of booze before eyeing myself in the mirror.

I look…

Like some creature from his sex club. But in red. The latex is low-cut, ending right above my nipples. And the skirt’s so high that it just barely covers my pussy. He didn’t put out underwear, but there’s quite a gap between the top of the stockings and the bottom of the skirt.

There’s no way I can go out in public like this. I look like he hired me for the night. I look… I look like someone who’d drag his reputation down, not up.

“Scarlett?” he calls out. “Time to go.”

I take a breath and head into the living room.

There’s nothing like being pathetically grateful over a coat and it pisses me off.

The drive to Alphabet City is short, and we don’t go in the front door. There’s a back entrance that to me is like a torture maze of dark halls. When he opens a door, it leads to another bar, but it’s nothing like the one upstairs.

Everything in this room is black. A glass cage sits at the other end, in lieu of a stage, and inside…

My breaths are short and sharp as my impending reality smacks me in the face.

There’s one of those St. Andrews Crosses inside, and next to it is a wall of whips, floggers, and paddles that look like torture devices.

The music’s low and I look around to see that there are mostly men in front of the cage. In suits. They sit around a table, drinking, smoking, a deck of cards scattered over the top with piles of poker chips in front of each player.

My whole body throbs when my gaze hits the woman seated at one end of the table. She’s in shining straps and her thighs are parted, breasts on display and nipples hard as a man fingers her.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you a party favor.” Malone’s fingers slip down my spine. “At least not in the next ten minutes.”

Then he joins the table.

I stand there, not sure what to do.

But he takes that decision from me when he snaps his fingers.

For a second, a sweet, fluttery second, I almost ignore him. But I don’t know his limits, or if he even has any. And after making me crawl to him, after taking my ass and making me give him a blow job on our second meeting, I don’t want to test him in public.

Or… test him here, in front of people in a private event, where he just might make me a party favor if I do anything to disobey.

So I go to him and I sink down to my knees, hating my fucking life. He casts me a look, one that I can’t read, and it makes my insides spin.

“Up. On my thigh, legs parted.”

No one’s speaking. There’s only the music reverberating between my ears, and I don’t need to look at the audience to confirm that I’m the center of attention. I do as asked, and the humiliation burns deep, so deep I almost play his game and hike my dress up.

But who’s that going to hurt? Me. No one but me.

Malone’s hand comes down between my thighs and he slides a finger over my pussy.

“Your cunt is wet, Scarlett.” He bites my shoulder. “Gentlemen, my fiancée.” This is said carelessly, and he then dismisses me and leans into the conversation.

Other girls in differing states of nakedness walk into the room. Some give lap dances, others stand there to be mauled and felt up, and one or two give blow jobs. Malone acts like this is normal.

But Jesus, this is so fucked up.

I keep trying to tune into what Malone is saying to the man next to him, but my attention slips away as he toys with me. He doesn’t push a finger into me. It’s so much worse. He just teases with slow, long strokes over my pussy lips, just inside them, avoiding my clit.

All this does is drive me out of my mind.

Sometimes, his finger shifts into me, just the slightest bit, enough for my pussy to clamp down onto it and beckon it to move deeper, but then it moves on. I try to stop myself from moving, from chasing this unwanted golden dragon of a touch, but I can’t help it, I’m rocking on him. I’m?—

“I think my girl wants to give us a show. Get on the table, Red. And spread your thighs. Time to let my friends taste the reason I decided to tie the knot.” He cups my chin with his free hand and pulls my face down to him. “Now.”