Chapter 24
KILLIAN
Over the next couple of weeks, my guys track the fuckers responsible for the attack, and eventually I get the call.
“This was the most fun I’ve had gathering intel,” Max says.
“A name, please. Not really interested in hearing about your sexual exploits.”
Fucking his way to answers has always been Max’s thing. It’s his superpower. He’s a good lay and the kind of guy you reveal secrets to. The kind of guy you want in your corner when you’re trying to maintain power in this town.
“Wilmore Cronkite,” he says.
“Cronkite?” I’m surprised. The family has never been on great terms with the Lordes or the Wildes, or really, any of the crime bosses of Fury’s underworld, but this is a leap forward, a desperate power grab perhaps, now that the O’Dells are moving on.
“Apparently he’s got a grudge against the Lordes.”
“And did your contact reveal what that was?”
“He doesn’t know, and I believe him because the way I was edging him until he blabbed, that guy would’ve said anything to get off.”
Guess he’s determined to tell me about his sexual exploits whether I like it or not.
“Keep in mind your pleasure comes at the expense of lives lost,” I say through my teeth.
I hear him gulp. He knows better than to piss me off.
“Where is Wilmore?” I press.
“I already notified Spears, and they’re working on it, but word is he hasn’t been seen since the attack.”
“Thank you, Max.”
“As always, eager to please.”
He’s pushing his luck with that double entendre, but I let it go. I get off the phone, contact Spears, and we coordinate a search.
As much as I wish I wasn’t dealing with this, it’s a nice distraction.
It’s been difficult to keep my distance from Logan.
Painful, even. I keep finding myself tempted to confront him and demand he speak with me, push him to remind me what he tastes like, that mouth and ass, but I restrain myself, with the help of my antianxiety meds.
In some ways I regret what I shared with him about myself, but in others, better he’s fully aware what he’s signing up for before our wedding.
It’s hard for me to understand why I’m even letting him have his space. Surely it’s this demonic side that revels in knowing, from what I’ve seen of him so far, that it’s hurting him too to keep away from me. Or just as bad, that when he finally caves, I’ll have an excuse to punish him for it.
But as he deprives me of his attention, my obsession with him only intensifies.
Tonight, as I lie in bed, I’m watching the security footage on my phone, keeping an eye on my precious falcon.
I’ve seen him locating the cameras, and it seems he deliberately places himself within their range.
He’s standing in the shower right now, jerking his cock, staring at the camera as though peering into my soul.
“You motherfucker,” I tell his image on the screen, seething at his cruelty, though I suppose I should have expected that from the man I watched rip another to shreds.
I retrieve the lube from my nightstand, readying myself and jerking with him as he continues gazing into the camera.
He doesn’t know I’m watching in real time, but he must imagine I’ll watch it at some point.
He can’t know I’m drinking him in at the very moment he’s creating this production to torment me.
I should go down to his room and show him I won’t tolerate this behavior from him, but it excites me too.
My caged bird, thrashing about, trying to grasp the freedom he doesn’t have, rattling around at the bars in vain.
I’ve always known what I am, but I can’t help it. I didn’t make myself this menace, just as neither of us signed up to take on this responsibility, but it is what it is, and here we are.
Logan remains under the shower stream, knowing intuitively this will be the most effective if I have to watch the way the water streams between the grooves in his muscles, envying it the way I envied that girl he flirted with the night of the cage match.
I can’t punish the water for how it trails across his body, but maybe I could find that woman…
what was her name? Alana… No, I wouldn’t do that, but I can’t fight back these nightmarish thoughts, just as I can’t control the things I want to do to Logan—claiming what’s mine once again, regardless of his desires.
But while I may be a monster, I do have my impulses under control enough to keep myself from destroying Logan.
Tonight, at least. That’s as far as I can promise anything.
Logan commands my attention as he spins around to present me with his ass.
I grip my cock too hard while digging my other hand into the sheets, tearing at them like they’re made of paper as I battle the monster in me, feeling like it won’t take much more to make me black out from the strain.
I imagine waking to find Logan lying on the bed, depleted after what this sick thing in me would do to him.
But I protect him from the darkness, hold it back with my everything, even as he seeks to hurt me in a way only he knows how.
He glances over his shoulder, staring at the camera again, and his expression jerks in a way that’s familiar to me…as he deliberately obscures his climax from view, his body trembling.
“Bastard!” I call out as my own eruption furiously pushes free.
The way my body rocks about, it’s like the place has been hit with an earthquake.
I grind my teeth as I keep coming, making a mess across my abdomen, catching my breath as I recover, and find Logan cleaning himself off, acting oblivious to what he just did to me.
I don’t know if it’s his sadism or the fact that my climax has stolen my reason from me, but I break, leaping from my bed.
I find my pajama bottoms and pull them on before rushing for the door, seeing red as I march through the hall with one mission in mind.
When I reach Logan’s room, I bang on the door so loudly, it echoes throughout the hall.
I’m tempted to break into his room, but the knob turns, and Logan stands in the doorway, with only a towel around his waist. Logically, I know he had to throw it on, but a part of me thinks this is another mindfuck, him weaponizing his beautiful body against me.
Before he has a chance to say anything, I shove past him.
“The hell is wrong with you?” he asks, spinning around to face me. There’s something perverse in his gaze as he stares me down.
“You know what’s wrong with me. What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Tonight, his lie stings more than usual.
I rush him, cornering him so his back is against the door, seizing him by his throat.
There’s an impulse to force him to confess, but I battle it, shaking my head as I war against this part of myself until I feel like it’s about to tear me apart. Why is he doing this to me?
“I’m honest with you, Logan, share my most private thoughts, and this is what you think I deserve?”
“I’m sure you deserve a lot worse than this,” he throws back at me.
“I have given you your space. I have respected your need to wrap your mind around everything I told you…and you just…”
“Is it really giving me my space to watch me in the security footage?”
“This is my house, and you know these cameras are up. I saw you discover where they were so you could inflict this on me.”
He’s silent, not denying it, but I notice for the first time since I placed my hand against his throat that he’s not resisting or pushing me away.
I start to pry my hand away, but he snatches my wrist, keeping it in place.
I yank it away from him. If this is what he wants from me, he sure as hell doesn’t deserve it.
“I don’t know what to think of these games you’re playing with me,” I say, feeling like they might tear right through me.
“If it’s so painful what I do to you, then maybe you should show me just how painful.”
A wickedness rises within me at the thought, something I quickly dismiss. “You don’t want that.”
“You don’t know what I want.”
He’s not wrong, especially as he stands there, full of determination.
“Then tell me,” I demand.
His expression shifts to fear. He hesitates, then starts to speak just as there’s a knock at the door.
“Boss, boss!” Krychek calls from the other side.
“As if now’s the fucking time,” I mutter. Logan moves aside so I can open the door. “What do you want?”
But I can tell by the way his eyes bulge that he has news.
“They found Wilmore.”
Before I know it, Logan’s at my side, and it seems we’ve both set aside our fight.
We have bigger problems to worry about.
*
It’s not thirty minutes before my guys deliver two men to us, with bags over their heads, which Jaime and Krychek remove before strapping the men up naked, having set another stand for our guests in one of the rooms in our basement—a nice clean one to get as messy as necessary.
Logan’s got that wild look in his eyes, teetering on the edge, at any moment likely to snap and let the animal loose on them. But like me, he’s learned to quiet those impulses, knows we won’t get anything out of them if we lose ourselves to the whims of our darker sides.
“You’re making a huge mistake,” Jeff Hartlow, Wilmore’s bodyguard, says. “You touch a hair on my head, and you’ll have the wrath of our allies raining down on you.”
“Once we kill you, you think anyone’s gonna fuck with us again?” I ask.
“Kill us? For fucking what?” He sounds genuinely oblivious, but I’d be just as compelling if I were in his position.
“The raid on our warehouse two weeks ago.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Wilmore insists, and unlike Hartlow, his expression wavers slightly, revealing where their weakness lies.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. You killed seven of my guys, and now the underworld thinks we’re easy targets. So it’s our job to remind everyone that the Lordes and Wildes are far from that.”
“We haven’t done anything,” Hartlow tries again. “You’re going after the wrong guys.”
He’s too damn convincing, which makes me wonder if this was done at Wilmore’s bidding rather than a sanctioned, unified attack from the Cronkites.
“Why the hell do you even think it’s us?” Hartlow asks.
“Did you really think we’d believe it was the Raiders simply because you put some swag on them? We’ve traced one of the attackers to you.”
“Who?”
“Dar Crane.”
“He could’ve been doing a side gig. Or maybe we’ve been set up.”
My instincts tell me Hartlow truly doesn’t know anything, or at least not much. Wilmore, on the other hand, is hiding something, and it’s only a matter of time before we get to the bottom of this.
The door opens, and I hear Jaime leading the cart over to me.
It’s something I would normally keep between me and my victims, but I don’t mind Logan seeing this side of me.
If anything, I owe him this much after what he shared with me when he brutalized Sik Vik.
Jaime parks the cart beside Hartlow, who eyes Old Terror’s toys with horror.
“Oh God! Oh fuck no. You have to believe us.”
“It’s too late for what any of us believe,” I say. “The good news is, if neither of you knows anything, I’ll know the truth once I’m finished, and then I won’t have to punish the rest of the Cronkites.”
I kind of feel bad for Hartlow, but I’m too bloodthirsty to sympathize. A confession will be made tonight, even if it’s only lies they hope may spare them some pain, but no amount of pleading will relieve their suffering.
I step toward the cart, a jolt of adrenaline sweeping through me, this sadistic part of me that wishes I could pull these out more often.
I turn to Logan, noticing a glint in his eyes, as though he wants to play with them too.
I’m tempted to invite him, but because of what he did with Sik Vik, I have something to prove to him.
I squat down and open the bottom drawer, retrieving the defibrillator and setting it on the top tray.
“What the hell is that for?” Hartlow asks. Sweat is already forming on his forehead, which pulls my lips into a smile.
“You should see it as an honor.” I grab a cable noose and take it over to Wilmore, hooking it around his neck and tugging it snug. “Most people only get to die once in their lives. But not you two. We will see just how many lives you have in you.”
I selected Wilmore first since he’s the more likely to crack, but I glare at Hartlow so he’ll see the quiet assurance that he’ll get his turn for me to test his honesty or lack thereof.
As Hartlow’s eyes widen, I know just how evil I am by how it thrills me to see his terror.
“You’re not getting anything out of us,” Wilmore says, “because we don’t know anything.”
I tighten the noose, this time without restraint, hearing a crack as I put pressure on his windpipe. “I hope for your sake that’s not true because that just means it will last so much longer.”
He’s managed to save face so far, but fear flashes in his eyes, and oh, the way it brings me to life, awakening this monster within me.