6. Celia
Chapter 6
Celia
The car ride back to the club is quiet. Rebel drums his fingertips on his knees, then the armrest, then the back of the driver’s seat, and everywhere else he touches, while Thanatos drives us home on back roads. The club is in full swing when we arrive, so he pulls the car around to the back and cuts the engine. None of us move.
I squeeze Ruin’s hand until he squeezes back. “Ready?”
He grunts noncommittally, and one by one, we peel ourselves off the leather seats to help him up the stairs and through the back door. While Thanatos scans the area and nods toward the two armed guards standing watch, I follow the remaining three brothers inside. Rather than take the grand staircase to the second floor, Rebel leads us to a hidden service elevator in the back hallway. Once inside, Rebel loops his arm over my shoulders and presses a kiss to the top of my head.
As I take a deep breath in, I smell the remnants of smoke in our hair and clothes. It fills the elevator like the start of a bad dream, and when I close my eyes, flames flicker into the night sky.
Ruin takes a sharp breath, his body stiffening in front of me.
“Almost there.” Rage keeps his arm wrapped around his younger brother’s waist, holding him steady as the elevator comes to a stop.
“I’m fine,” Ruin mutters, stepping into the hallway as soon as the doors slide open. “Let’s go.”
Before I can follow them into the apartment, Thanatos grabs my wrist and pulls me to a stop. “We need to take a detour.”
My heart skips a beat. He couldn’t possibly want to train now , could he? One glance at my pajamas makes me wince. They’re silky but skimpy, leaving little room for strenuous movement without showing off the curve of my ass or an ample eyeful of cleavage.
If Thanatos gets me alone, I’m not sure what to expect. Will he be the kind man who breaks me free from handcuffs and apologizes for dropping a vase at my feet, or will he be the force of nature throwing me to the mat and panting in my ear?
Rebel pulls a face as I slip from beneath his arm. “Man, what now? Can’t it wait?” He scratches the top of his head, ruffling his dirty locks. “We’ve all had a shit night and an even shittier day. Let it rest, man.”
Thanatos narrows his eyes. “You know who isn’t resting?” A muscle in his jaw tics as he tightens his grip on my wrist. “Our psychopath father. I need her for a minute. Go take your fucking shower.”
I place my hand on Rebel’s chest and pop up onto my tiptoes to press a quick kiss to his lips. “Go on. I’ll meet you inside in a minute.”
He glowers at Thanatos before stealing a deeper kiss, cupping my face in his hands as he sighs against my lips. “I want you naked the minute you step inside the house, okay? I want to wash your hair.”
Rolling my eyes, I pat his chest. “Okay, tough guy.” I bite my lip as I meet Ruin’s gaze, then Rage’s beside him. “Will you guys be okay?”
“I’ve got him,” Rage assures me, nodding. “We’ll get him settled in.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Ruin murmurs, his wide eyes peering into my soul. An electric tingle rolls down my spine at the intensity of his gaze. The warm glow from the hallway light turns the scars on his cheek a deep orange, but the white bandages trailing down his neck and chest glow like the flames I thought we’d left behind .
I still don’t know where the two of us stand. His obsession with knives—with finding my soul—with the way his fingers dip between my thighs—all feel distant when I barely recognize the man standing in front of me. I know that despite the drastic change in his appearance without the mask, nothing has really changed between us. It’s still Ruin staring at me, like he always does.
But something feels different this time, and it has nothing to do with the scars etched into his body.
“I’ll be there soon,” I promise, giving him a small smile. “I promise.”
Thanatos tugs my arm, finally pulling me free from their gravity.
Walking away from the boys to follow Thanatos feels like a fever dream. In another reality, after everything we’ve been through, I’m sure that it’s the last thing I would ever do. But in this life, I’m thrust into a kind of chaos that I can’t wish away. Thanatos understands that chaos on a level I can’t fathom, so following him across the hall feels like the next step in understanding the darkness pervading these men’s lives… the first step having long since passed unawares.
When did my journey begin? Was it the moment I accepted my invitation to Midnight and gave my body away for a moment’s reprieve from the pain of unending heartbreak? Or was it when Rage first saw me at the Baranova wedding and suddenly decided that I was his new favorite obsession?
I stretch my fingers and swallow hard, the memory of Rage’s throat in my hands burning in the depths of my mind. I squeezed as hard as I could, and the man smiled at me before passing out. That could have been the moment I unwittingly sealed my fate to these men—by taking a piece of their darkness and claiming it as my own.
In the end, where the journey began doesn’t matter.
It’s how the journey ends that’s important.
I won’t let another arrogant piece of shit determine my fate, no matter whose father he claims to be. From what the brothers have told me, he wasn’t much of a father at all. Just a sperm donor who stuck around way longer than was welcome.
Thanatos unlocks an unmarked door on the same hallway as the brothers’ apartment. Recessed lighting outlines the perimeter of the room and reveals a single panel of chain-link fence directly in front of us, sectioning off the entryway from the rest of the room. Behind a locked gate lies dozens and dozens of weapons ranging from serrated hunting knives to metal baseball bats and gleaming handguns, all neatly organized, with ammo boxes and larger rifles and shotguns stacked waist-high on the floor.
“I should have known you’d have an armory,” I murmur, quickly memorizing the code Thanatos puts into the electric lock. He scans his palm, too, just like the brothers do for all the other doors on the second floor. The lock clicks open, and he swings the gate wide enough for me to step through. I nod toward the chain-link fence. “Someone could easily cut that.”
Grunting, Thanatos grabs a pair of gloves sitting on top of an open box of ammo, puts them on, and closes the gate behind us. Once it clicks into place, a low hum fills the room with a buzzing sound, and the hairs on my arms stand on end. He reaches out and grabs the fence, and a spark of electricity zaps his gloved fingers. Lifting an eyebrow at me, he releases the metal fence then shucks the gloves, tossing them onto a cardboard box.
“It’s electrified,” he explains after a moment. “If someone tries to cut the fence, they’ll get one hell of a jolt.”
“You could have said that instead of putting on a show.” Rolling my eyes, I shoulder past him toward the weapons on display. I haven’t the faintest idea which one I should grab—or if we’re here not just for me, but for all of us. “Does everyone have a favorite?” I eye the knives, wondering if they’ve all been used before. They gleam in the light, looking sharp and dangerous as hell. Each one has a leather sheath strapped to its side.
I can’t imagine wearing one of those on my belt.
Glancing at the guns, I bite my bottom lip. Hell, I can’t imagine wearing one of those , either . Shuffling toward the baseball bats, I notice that a few of them are dented and worn, and a heavy metal crowbar lays discarded on the silver counter beneath them. A dried, flaky brown substance has chipped off, dusting the metal surface like rust. I try to keep a poker face.
I really don’t want to know what happened.
“Those are Rebel’s.” Thanatos comes up behind me and pulls one of the most worn bats from the wall. He swings it underhanded toward his elbow, making a whooshing sound as it whirls through the air. “This one’s seen a lot of damage. It’s unbalanced. Heavier at the top.” As he places the bat back onto the prongs along the wall, I try not to picture it swinging into someone’s temple and bashing their skull in.
I fail miserably.
Shivering, I wrap my arms around my middle. “I didn’t think he was a fighter.” Maybe that’s stupid of me, but out of the four of them, he seems the most like a lover.
Thanatos meets my eyes. There’s no pity or annoyance, only truth. “We all are, Princess. We have to be, or we won’t survive.” He grabs a knife and places it in my palm. “I’ve taught you the basics of unarmed self-defense. We need to practice what to do when you have a weapon. Let’s start with knives, and then we’ll move up to guns.”
“Aren’t guns more practical?”
“They’re faster,” he admits, looking away from me to stare at a wall of pistols. “But if you miss, you’re fucked. A knife is more intimate than a gun and harder to knock out of your hand. After seeing what my dad’s doing to the other girls—” His teeth clench. “Let’s just say, he won’t want to make this a clean death. Guns are pretty clean overall. Knives aren’t. Bats and other blunt objects are the best for prolonging a victim’s pain, but he doesn’t have the stamina for them, and none of the victims showed signs of blunt force trauma. They were all carved first, then burned.”
My stomach churns. “That’s—that’s what he wants to do to me?”
Exhaling slowly, Thanatos sinks lower as his shoulders slump. He leans closer to me, refilling his lungs the same moment I do. The echoes of smoke and flame overwhelm my senses, starting with the grit on my teeth and quickly advancing to the unexpected heat burning my lungs. He draws a breath as he wraps his hands around mine, closing my fingers over the handle of the knife. “I don’t know what he wants to do with you, Celia, but I know it won’t be pretty. If he gets a hold of you, it’s going to hurt. A lot.” Pulling my hands closer to his body, he aims the sharp edge of the knife at a soft spot on his side. The serration catches on his t-shirt and tears a small hole in the fabric. “You need to gut him before he can hurt you. Right here,” he says, holding the knife to his body, “or here.”
As Thanatos shows me every weak spot on the male body, I pay close attention to remember every detail. It’s not just my life at stake—but Ruin’s, too. And although Rage may claim that Ruin is a fighter, he’s clearly hurting from his injuries.
What I fear the most aren’t the burns, though—it’s the damage hidden underneath.
“What was it like the last time Ruin was burned?”
The question catches Thanatos off guard, and the tip of the knife slips against his abdomen. The t-shirt cuts like butter, but so does his skin. A thin line of red appears instantly, welling with blood. He doesn’t react other than to frown at the cut.
I pull the knife away and quickly apologize. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to?—”
“It’s alright.” Lifting his shirt, he presses the hemline to the wound to stem the blood flow. “You don’t have to push hard to make someone bleed, so remember to really go in with intent to hurt someone, or it’ll only be a surface wound. See?” He lifts his shirt higher for me to see the cut. “It’s barely bleeding.”
A bead of sweat rolls down his abs, disappearing into the waistline of his black cargo pants. I’ve seen Thanatos half naked a dozen times now, if you count tank tops and gym shorts as partially nude, but the way his brow crinkles as he stares down at the injury, quickly followed with his heavy gray eyes flicking up to mine beneath those long lashes, makes my body heat in a way that it really, really shouldn’t.
I quickly move to put the knife back into place on the wall, only for Thanatos to grab my hand to stop me. He guides the knife back to his body and wipes the blade on his shirt to clean it. “Never put a dirty weapon back on the rack.”
My throat clicks on a swallow as his shirt rides up, revealing the flat plane of his muscles underneath. Damn it. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I notice something other than how warm his skin is through his shirt or how firmly he grips my fingers in his? “That doesn’t seem very sanitary,” I murmur, completely and utterly lame in my response . Who worries about how sanitary cutting someone is when you’re learning to kill?
He grabs a clear bottle of liquid on the counter beside him and squeezes a few drops onto his t-shirt. As intense alcohol stings my nose, he continues to “clean” the blade with his shirt, only succeeding in cutting a strip clear off the bottom. He doesn’t seem to care, too focused on his task.
I can see where Rage gets his cleanliness habits from.
Once the knife is shining again, he releases my hand and lets me put it back into place on the rack. “Try out a few different sized knives to see which you like most. Consider your grip—how well can you hold it? Try moving your arms and body to get a feel for each stroke. Use some of the moves we’ve practiced during our lessons.”
My brain melts with each new thing he says. He’s staring right at me—studying my reaction or, heaven forbid, gauging how well my body moves under his direction. It’s the same thing we do on the sparring mat, except the stakes are higher and the space much smaller.
I pick up a different hunting knife while Thanatos’s voice echoes in my head.
A knife is more intimate than a gun.
Unbidden desire rolls through my body like a steady fever, making me sweat. All of a sudden, it’s like I’m sitting on the bathroom counter all over again while Ruin pries my thighs apart to play with my pussy.
With his knife.
As Thanatos rambles on about proper weapon usage, I fight the embers of need blooming deep inside my belly. I’ve seen Ruin’s dick in the morning sunrise inside my bedroom—it’s veiny on top, with a red blush that extends from the narrow tip halfway down his shaft. A slight curve up towards his stomach makes me wonder what it would feel like inside of me—as hard and unforgiving as the handle he slipped past my lips, or would it be as soft and shy as his kisses, building slowly into a toe-curling crescendo?—
“Are you alright?”
Thanatos presses his calloused palm to my forehead, hovering way too close for me not to smell him. The usual scent of sea salt and clean linen from his morning shower have long since been replaced with the musk that only men can produce—a heady, full-bodied scent that touches something primal inside of me, and I barely manage to choke back a needy moan.
His onyx eyes bore into mine, widening the moment my lips part.
Shit , did I just moan out loud?
He inhales calmly, way too damn calmly , and trails his fingertips from my forehead down to my cheekbone. “You feel flushed.”
My skin tingles from his touch while my heartbeat kicks into overdrive. “I’m—I’m fine. Just the, uh, fire. I got a little burned. Not, like, hurt. But like a sunburn.” For some reason, I think that pulling my pajama top to the side to show him my flushed neck and shoulder is the key to diverting his attention away from the fact that not only is my body on fire, but my panties are suddenly soaked .
I hastily clear my throat. “See? Just a sunburn.”
His fingers travel lower, ghosting across my jawline on their way to my collarbone. Pressing his thumb against it, he swipes a perfect stripe across my heated skin, all the way to the tip of my shoulder. Licking his lips, he hums deep in his chest. “I see.”
Fuck.
It feels wrong to picture both Ruin and Thanatos naked in the same breath, but all of a sudden, not only is Ruin kneeling between my thighs without his mask on, but Thanatos’s body is hovering over mine, his back bent so that he can lower his lips to the very spot his fingers now touch.
But when I refocus my attention and flick my gaze back up to his face, his lips aren’t ghosting across my shoulder like they were in my mind—they’re hovering a mere inch from my lips.
I jump back so fast that I stumble, gasping as I blindly reach out for something to hold on to. I trip over a metal ammo box on the floor and fall backwards in my haste to put some distance between me and Thanatos.
He’s quick to react, snatching me from the air before I manage to grab onto— oh yeah —the fucking electrified fence. As he spins us around, we tumble against the weapon rack, his breath hot and heavy on my neck as he shoves my back into the wall of guns. Clenching his eyes shut, he shudders from head to toe and growls in the back of his throat. “Learn how your body reacts?—”
The hard length of his cock presses against my stomach, a reminder of how strongly his body affects mine. The silver flash of heat in his eyes as he snaps them open is new, though, as is the tight clench of his jaw.
He’s not reminding me of our very first lesson together—he’s reminding himself.
“—and control it,” we say in unison, our breaths mingling in the air.
“Exactly.” Slowly peeling his body from mine, he sighs. “ Control. ” Once he’s safely retreated a few more feet away, he buries his hands in his pockets and stares at the weapons over my head.
Shit. This isn’t good.
It’s one thing for him to have to master his own body—but it’s another if mine is reacting to him, too. We can’t both be tempted. It’s a disaster waiting to happen. A horrible, terrible thing that can never, ever, ever become reality. I feel like a shitty person for even being tempted in the first place.
Grimacing, I tell myself that it’s because he looks so much like his brothers. That’s it. They all look alike, and I’m attracted to Rage, Rebel, and Ruin, so it makes sense that I could be attracted to their older brother, too. It’s genetic, or biological, or whatever. Pheromones. Hormones. Tricky, little bastards that get humans in trouble.
Or knocked up.
The air punches from my lungs.
If I couldn’t get knocked up by three boyfriends, maybe four ?—
I clench my fists hard enough for my manicure to cut into my palms. No. No way. I’m not going down that path. It’s selfish and cruel and manipulative to use someone for their sperm. I want a baby—a family—and I’ll get one without sleeping with the older brother as an insurance policy, thank you very much.
The whole idea feels even more absurd once I realize Thanatos won’t even look at me. He gestures vaguely to the wall of hunting knives without making eye contact. “Grab a few to take with you. We’ll start practicing with them.”
“Great,” I murmur under my breath. “Can’t wait.”
If I’m expecting a reply, I don’t get one. Instead, he mechanically unlocks the gate, then the exit, and walks me across the hall to the apartment. Once I’ve stepped inside, he wastes no time in releasing the door so that it slams shut behind me.
He didn’t even bother saying goodbye.
I hate how much that hurts.