Chapter Twenty-Three
Marcus
Idon’t know what I was expecting to happen. Maybe that the demon would snap her neck or stab her. In horror movies, the person gets possessed and throws themselves from the second-floor window.
Sarai continues to unclip the diamond studs from her ears and unclasps the heavy, diamond choker from her throat. She maintains her conversation without faltering while undoing the curlers and letting thick, golden coils bounce around her shoulders.
“I think, now that I no longer have that sniveling baby hanging off my neck, I think it’s time for an upgrade, don’t you?” Fat, pink rollers hit the vanity table. “Julen could use an upgrade from that frigid waste of a woman.”
Hair a wild, sleek wave down her back, she pulls open one of the drawers and fishes out a damp napkin from a packet and starts wiping the makeup off her face.
Without the pink gloss, her lips are white. Ashen almost. Without the foundation and contour, her face is uneven, puckered, with dark patches and deep pores. Without the dark lines, her eyebrows are gone.
She pinches and pulls away the lashes and discards them like torn butterfly wings. The shadows and liners are scrubbed away.
“She would never let you,” the voice on the phone is saying, but Sarai has her fingers tangled up in all that hair she just prepped.
Long, looping strands are torn from the layers. The edges, bloody and clinging to bits of scalp as they’re dropped on the table. More follow. More. Until all that remains is the frayed bob of her natural strands now tinted red.
“You might have to kill her,” the friend is saying as Sarai reaches into another drawer and removes a pair of scissors.
Her arms lift and she starts hacking at what’s left.
Aggressive, sawing snips. Chunks are fisted and dropped to litter the floor around her chair.
Satin tufts that glint faintly in the soft light.
It amazes me how steady she is. Unhurried.
Unbothered. Even her face in the mirror is calm. Blue eyes level.
She doesn’t stop until there is only the torn remains of her ruined scalp on display. The extensions sewn into her head have been ripped free and blood oozes down the back of her neck to soak into her robes.
“Kill her and send those brats to boarding school on the moon,” she says in the same unfazed tone. “I barely wanted to raise mine. Why the fuck would I raise hers?”
The scissors are set aside. The blade, wet with crimson beads and sticky with threads of gold.
Long fingers are lifted and she methodically snaps off each individual nail like she’s snapping open pistachio shells. The subtle rip and click of each one hitting the table makes my stomach churn when I realize she’s torn her real nails off along with the artificial ones.
“At least you won’t have to change your name.” The friend laughs.
Sarai’s face never shifts. No smile. No frown. She continues to watch herself in the mirror as she fluidly rises to her feet. Casually, she disappears into the room she’d emerged from, leaving behind parts of herself.
I think that’s the end of it when she returns.
Naked.
Robe lost somewhere in the other room. Her long, limber limbs bare as they move back to the vanity, not at all the same woman who had entered the first time.
Her face is lined with streaks of blood running down from her brow.
Blood drips from her fingertips, staining the sleek, silver blade pinched between her fingers.
My stomach jumps even before the blade kisses her high, arched cheekbones. Deep arches are cut beneath each one before she moves down to the bottom lip she pinches and extends…
I look away.
It’s not that I haven’t killed my fair share of people. My hands are not clean. But never in all my years of life have I ever tortured a person. I never saw the need. Watching Sarai Duval mutilate her face I realize I may not be cut out for it.
Lenora never looks away.
She watches with the quiet calm of someone surveying an exhibit at the museum. It’s with unfazed, cool detachment. Even when Sarai sets a chunk of tattered flesh on the table, Lenora barely blinks.
And I’m proud of her.
Most men … most people would be appalled. Disgusted. They would be horrified by her actions, but I study her face and my damn cock gets hard. My heart thumps between my ears. I am overcome with a need to have her, so vicious I nearly shatter my teeth to restrain myself.
“Une si gentille fille.” The deep, guttural growl escapes me before I can stop myself.
Lenora lifts her gaze to my face, still so sweet and even. Her expression mirrors the raging erection in my pants even before her fingers drift to my fastens.
“Est-ce que ca te rend dur?”
Her asking me if it makes me hard in French sends my sanity over.
My fingers twist in her heavy curls and I drag her into my chest. My mouth seals over her soft gasp, fighting her as viciously as she tears at my zipper.
Our tongues wage war and I snarl across hers with the first curling of her touch around my cock.
I fist the front of her pretty dress and shred it down the front. The scream of fabric muffles the squelch and plop of Sarai’s progress. Lenora’s deep groan distorts everything but the sweet taste of her nipple in my mouth. Her fingers in my hair.
“My beautiful, perfect girl,” I growl in French as I scoop her up and she locks her knees around my waist.
My feet guide us away from the bed. I find myself next to Sarai.
Her face is an unrecognizable mess with only her eyes to give her away.
They’re no longer glazed but wide with horror and pain.
They meet mine with confusion and pleading when I set Lenora on the vanity and sink my cock in her tight channel.
“Harder,” my baby pleads, eyes never leaving the woman carving the implants from her chest.
Sarai makes a choking sound, watching me rail Lenora, knocking over bottles and brushes. Letting them roll through the crimson puddles.
The razor blade slips from her trembling fingers and clatters to the table.
Lenora pinches it gingerly, unfazed by the blood and flesh clinging to it and hands it back as if returning a dropped pencil.
“Don’t stop,” she tells the other woman, who promptly keeps going.
I take Lenora’s nipple between my teeth and suck. I slam my hips into her with violent drives that cracks the vanity into the wall. She cries my name and I fuck her harder.
“Put her on the bed.”
No questions asked, I do as the demon orders. I take her to the bed, cock in her slick cunt until I reach the mattress.
I drop her.
Beautiful. Naked. Pussy soaked.
And opening. Her tiny hole expands around nothing and Lenora sobs. Her back comes off the mattress as the demon fills her. Fucks her. I watch her body jerk and twitch. Her core pulse. Her thighs are pulled to her chest and held by invisible hands that dig into the soft flesh.
“Taste her. Make her cum on my cock.”
I should be pissed.
I was fucking her. I wasn’t done using that hole. But all I can process is how much I love this. How perfect she looks with her cunt open and stretched wide.
I dive between her thighs. I sink my tongue into that gaping hole. I lick the ring of her opening before latching to her clit.
Lenora growls my name and pulls me up by my hair.
“There’s room. I want you both to use me.”
I can’t be certain but either I or the demon groan. Maybe both. But neither ask when I climb between her thighs and add my cock to her already stuffed opening.
He packs around me.
I feel his tendrils coil and slip over top of mine like a sleeve, like he had this morning. The sensation is hot. A warm glove that strokes me with every thrust.
Lenora gushes.
A thick, sticky mess that soaks the sheets. Her back rises and falls with every desperate plunge of her hips as she impales herself over and over with greedy slams.
“Don’t stop. Don’t stop!” she screams, head thrown back as she cums again. “It hurts so much but … oh God, fuck me, Marcus. Hurt me harder.”
We both snarl as we’re given our orders.
We fuck her.
We pound her with a vicious violence that moves the bed. At her back entrance, the demon forces in thin tendrils I feel writhing through the membrane and Lenora wails. She claws at the headboard and nearly rips my dick off with the seizing of her body.
“So … good!” she chokes out. “So much … I can’t stop!”
“Who said you’re allowed to stop, pet? Open wider. We’re not done with your cunt.”
I never thought I would agree with the demon, but when he flips her onto her stomach, I don’t need to be told what to do.
I take her hips and bottom out. I sink to the base and hiss through my teeth when she seizes with the pain and cums.
“You keep cumming. How many is that now?”
Wheezing, Lenora shakes her head, face mashed into the pillow.
“I’ve counted eight,” the demon taunts. “Such a greedy … how do you say it in French? Petite cochonne?”
I bark a laugh at the term with its two meanings. I doubt he’s calling her a little pig. But dirty little slut … I don’t argue.
“Sale petite cochonne,” I agree, calling her a filthy little slut.
Lenora may not be listening when I pull free of the perfect slit and leave the demon to enjoy himself.
I sit back with my cock hard and glossy and watch him rail her.
He’s much stronger and she’s gripping the headboard bars with white knuckles.
At my angle, I have a perfect view of her opening contract with every plunge.
I’m so invested in the view, I almost jump when something in the room croaks. A weak sound of pain that has my head snapping around.
Sarai Duval.
I’d forgotten about her.
What’s left of her lies facedown on the carpet in a thick puddle of mutilated flesh and discarded parts. No part of her is recognizable in the sheen of crimson covering every inch.
But it’s her blue eyes staring into mine that catches my fascination. They have always been so clear, so seductive. I remember the few times we crossed paths during parties and events, and she’d slink through the crowd in some scandalous number, hair a gold crown and our eyes would meet.
For those seconds, I considered the possibility. She was clearly interested and I hadn’t touched a woman in far too long. Our families were at peace and any bad blood between us was under the metaphorical bridge.
What could it hurt?
What stopped me was the fact that I don’t sleep with married women. They may be willing to turn a blind eye on their vows, but I wouldn’t help them.
Still the harder reality was that her eyes weren’t the warm brown of melted chocolate. Her crown wasn’t a cluster of thick raven wings.
Sarai Duval was a carefully curated beauty, but she held no candle to Lenora.
“Please.”
Her feeble croak jars me from my thoughts and I focus once more.
Next to me, Lenora cries out as the demon pulls her up onto her knees.
Her fingers are forced around the metal bars.
In the light, her skin glistens. Black stripes of hair cling to her temples and the smooth column of her throat.
Her full, delicious breasts bounce as she’s ridden from …
somewhere. I’m not entirely sure how he’s doing it or where he actually is, but he never stops.
And I get the pleasure of watching her soak the sheets between her parted knees. It runs down her thighs. I get to see the ecstasy on her face as she drops her head back and groans her pleasure.
I’ve never shared a woman. Not with another man nor a demon. I considered it the night I realized my sons were sharing Lenora. I lay in bed and tried to picture how that would work.
If a third could be added.
In my head, in that moment, I never saw Ames or Eliah. It was never their faces or their bodies. All I saw was her splayed in the center of a small crowd of men, all wanting to be inside her.
Seeing it now, sitting witness to Lenora’s arched spine bowed too far back, head resting on, seemingly, a shoulder. I vaguely wonder if she can see him or if he’s invisible to her, as well.
Focus, I tell myself, moving before I get caught up again. I push to my feet. Slumped across the floor, Sarai tracks my motion. I’ve seen enough death that I am curious how she’s still alive when she’s cut her own stomach open and shredded her intestines.
On the vanity, the phone holds only silence. I wonder if the friend hung up or if Sarai disconnected. But the screen is black and I catch a glimpse of my reflection as I lean over.
From amongst the bloody remains of what Sarai sliced off, I unearth the razor.
Sarai wheezes a sound whistled through the gash in her throat. I recognize it for the death rattle it is, but she’s alert and terrified when I kneel next to her.
“Did Julen kill my brother and his wife?”
Blue eyes blown wide with terror dart between my face and the blade.
She nods.
She tries to speak, but she’s cut her tongue out and all I hear is the gurgle of blood she’s choking on.
“Thank you,” I tell her before moving over her.