Chapter Seven #2
Marcus hesitates and that has my head lifting off his shoulder to peer at the docket splayed open to a series of names.
Etienne Duval.
Sarai Duval.
Augustus & Bernard Duval.
Julen Duval.
Adela Duval.
Noah Duval.
Patricia Duval
I recognize each one. If not by face then by reputation. The Duvals run the docks. Petty, useless crimes that resulted in pain and death. Their empire was built on the bones of all the people they climbed over to reach the highest point of their business.
Including my boys.
“I asked for a rundown of the Duval family,” Marcus mumbles, slapping the page down on his desk. “This seems to be all that’s left of them.”
“There are less of us,” I remind him, never taking my eyes off our targets.
Memorizing each one.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” he goes on. “We were living in peace.”
“Peace is an illusion,” I retort without thinking, but not taking it back. “They started it.”
Marcus sighs. He reaches past me for the sleek, black fountain pen and begins crossing two names off.
Patricia Duval.
Noah Duval.
“Why?” I ask.
“They’re children.”
I think I should care. The previous Lenora would. The other Lenora would tell him to forgive and let it go. But that useless thing is dead.
“Noah is eighteen,” I say instead. “He’s next in line.”
The end of his pen smacks the wood. Once. Twice.
“He’s still a kid.”
“Eighteen is an adult. With the others gone, he will take his father’s place, and it will never end.”
“Let’s leave it for a later conversation.”
Anger wells up in my throat. The hot ashes of an open flame that scorches across my tongue.
“You promised all of them.”
“Not the children, Lenora,” he snaps back. “I don’t hurt children.”
Reminding him yet again that Noah is eighteen, nearly nineteen and most likely already deep in his father’s shadow would do nothing. Despite it all, he continues to hold stubbornly to his nobility.
“Hey.” My chin is captured and my face is tipped to his. “I made you a promise. I will handle this.”
Inaccurately, I think, but bite the word back.
I will deal with Noah myself if I have to.
Etienne Duval.
I take the third bend down the right wing.
His wife Sarai Duval and their two sons, Augustus and Bernard Duval. The two who murdered my boys.
My bare foot sinks into a wet patch in the carpet.
The candlelight shifts and shivers beneath the phantom draft snaking from the endless darkness ahead. My shadow leaps and expands across the damp walls.
Julen Duval.
Julen.
Duval.
His wife Adela Duval.
Their children Noah and Patricia Duval
Patricia is only fifteen. I almost understand sparing her life. I almost feel it’s poetic. I was fifteen when I lost my parents. But she won’t have an Eliah or Ames to keep her safe. I don’t anymore either, but because her family killed them. Snatched them away.
Etienne Duval.
His wife, Sarai Duval and their two sons, Augustus and Bernard Duval. The two who murdered my boys.
I turn another bend. The fire dances. Cobwebs brush my skin. Tangle in my hair.
We can’t let Noah live. It’s reckless. But maybe if he has his little sister to look after, he might reconsider any notion of retaliating.
Julen Duval.
His wife Adela Duval.
Their children Noah and Patricia Duval
Maybe it would be a mercy to let Patricia join her family. The world is so cruel.
Etienne Duval.
His wife, Sarai Duval.
Marcus waits in the corridor outside his bedroom when I finally return. His sweet, gray eyes reflect in the light of my candle. The shadows pool in the curves of his face, giving him an almost eerie complexion.
“I woke up and you were gone,” he says when I reach him. “You had me worried.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I confess. “I thought a walk would help.”
The corners of his mouth bend into a frown that mirrors the pull of his eyebrows.
“You should have woken me.”
He’s worried I’ll try to hurt myself again. Telling him I have no intention of leaving this world until I see every one of our enemies in a puddle of their own blood at my feet won’t matter.
“I will.”
He disbelieves me because he knows I’m lying. Still, he captures my free hand and guides me into his room of mirrors. The sight of them tickles a faint amusement I hide.
“Why are there so many mirrors?” I ask instead, facing him.
Humor glints in his eyes as he claims the candle from my fingers and sets it aside on the dresser. The same long fingers return to close around my throat. The restraint is firm, but gentle. A show of power while locking the air from my lungs.
“Would you like me to show you?”
I do even while the voice in my head prickles with uncertainty. I shouldn’t want this, shouldn’t feel the hot rush of heat between my thighs or the excited tightening of my nipples.
But I remember forgetting. For those fleeting seconds last night, I only knew the coil and release of my body. The thrill muffled my grief. The pain. There was nothing but that breath of surrender.
Would it be terrible if I need it again? Need the crutch. It could be alcohol or drugs. It’s only orgasms, and I have already promised him my body.
“Yes.”
The light in his gaze only darkens. The hunger of a wolf capturing his wounded rabbit, too helpless to fight. Not that I would. Instead, I let myself be guided back. I let the back of my knees catch the edges of the mattress. I tumble across the tangled sheets.
Overhead, the mirror-me bounces. Dark locks spill across white fabric. Her gown hem bunches high around her thighs, thighs that are pushed wide by the big hands of the dark-haired man looming over her.
“Don’t look away,” Marcus tells me in that low gravelly purr that scatters my skin with goose bumps. “Watch how beautiful you look for me.”
I obey.
I lie still and watch long fingers hook into thin straps and pull them down my arms. The layers of fabric follow over my breasts, over the lines and valleys of my torso. It’s tossed aside and I’m flushed and bare to the room.
The mirror.
To the thing inside the mirror.
The eyes of the man studying me with a need that almost scares me.
“Open, Linny. Wider. More. Lift your hips so you can see your pretty hole.”
Ames talked like that. He used to whisper the filthiest commands in my ear while making me rub my mound over the hard length of him. He’d guide my hips and taunt how I was soaking him. That everyone at dinner would smell me on him and know what a dirty girl I was.
But he’d never done this. Never splayed me so wide I could see my slick and glossy opening reflected down at me.
Carefully, Marcus reclines next to me, head balanced on one hand while the other ventures back to my jaw.
My stare-off with myself is momentarily broken with the tilt of my face to his.
To the mouth he closes over mine. The tongue he sweeps in.
There is no hurry. Like we have years to get to the end.
“Eyes open,” he coaxes. “Keep watching.”
The hand at my jaw unfurls and drifts down to cup my breast. Brush the sensitive nipples. No pinching. No tugging. Light skims that have my hips twitching restlessly.
“So responsive,” he murmurs, lips grazing the side of my face. “Une si bonne fille pour moi.”
The throaty praise telling me I’m being such a good girl for him has a pool of arousal rushing from my body. Has my stomach muscles tightening with a need only he can satiate.
As a reward, he gives my nipple the lightest pinch. The very sweetest taste of pain that rockets straight through me.
“Marcus…”
“Shhh. Watch.”
I do.
I can’t stop even if I wanted. I am transfixed by the sight of him paying the most detailed attention to the under curve of my breast. The weight with every palm. His thumb circles the pink ring before sweeping over the peak.
Just when I think I might lose my mind, his mouth joins the torture.
It takes the ignored breast between teeth so sharp I cry out.
He nips and pulls while his thumb continues to skim with loving strokes.
The conflicting rush of pain and pleasure has my thighs pressing closed.
Has them rubbing frantically together for relief.
“Keep them open,” he warns without lifting his head from his task. “I want you to watch how wet you get for me.”
“I’m already so…”
Nipple caught between his teeth, he lifts his head, eyebrow quirked in question.
Embarrassment burns to the tips of my ears, but I whisper, “Wet.”
Nipple pops free and he smirks. “Are you?”
The hand in the mirror dips. It skirts down my quivering abdomen to the place I’m weeping to feel him, and I whine with the first stroke of his fingers.
And he groans.
He releases a low, rumbling purr that has me catching my bottom lip between my teeth.
“Fuck, mon p’tit. You’ve soaked my sheets.”
My reflection jerks her hips up into the steady rub of his fingers. I watch the digits shine in the light of the candle, growing damper with every pass he makes from opening to clit.
Against my ear, he growls words of such filth, alternating between French and English. Fluent in both, the words blur in a stream of such depravity I expel harder against his strokes, and he feels it. Feels the hot rush.
“Soon, you will take every inch of my cock in here. I’ll spread you open and you’ll watch me stretch this tiny hole wide.”
It’s with that promise that I cum with a cry of his name. The world hums beneath an ocean of nothing and there is nothing but that moment of bliss. My body heaves under his unhurried strokes, chasing my release until the very end.
But it all comes rushing back with the first bounce of my hips hitting the mattress. Only five heartbeats of peace before I’m reminded that I shouldn’t be happy when they are dead.