Chapter 13 #2
“Are you fucking with me?” Hazard asked. A jitteriness swam in my veins. This wasn’t what I had wanted to happen, but if I played my cards right, it would work out for both of us. I jumped up and ruffled Hazard’s red hair.
“Why would I mess with you on something as important as this?”
“Because you want Ernest dead.”
“Oh, you mistake me for a cheat then!” I laughed.
But I was a cheat. I was getting something out of this.
And I knew it was wrong that I was keeping his sister’s killer a secret, but I needed to be on the board before I let him kill my father.
Hazard was too damn reckless, and I needed power for once.
And if that meant keeping a secret, then I would sew my lips shut.
Maybe Hazard would understand. I leaned into him.
“It’s a perfect coincidence, isn’t it? We both want to kill him. ”
“But he didn’t kill my sister?”
“She was basically a sign-on perk for joining the Marked Blooms Syndicate. The members are offered an arranged marriage with a gorgeous bride with a blank canvas of a past, willing to do anything to make her husband happy. Even take a fake name.”
I was rambling, but I couldn’t stop. I had to do something to make myself concentrate on what I had under my control, and I knew that if I was careful, I could control Hazard. If he was still on my side, then I could eventually give him what he wanted. He deserved that.
I just had to make sure I could get what I wanted first.
“But make a promise to me,” I said. “Please. Let me help you kill Ernest. He killed my mother, and while I can’t kill my father—”
I let those words fall from me. Everything about this Syndicate always pointed back to my father.
But if I got to kill Ernest, then maybe it would give me patience. I could rest easy while we waited for that final kill.
No one will take you seriously no matter how hard you try, Ernest had said. How seriously would he take me when I shoved a knife into his throat?
“I need this as much as you do,” I said quietly. “I have a past with Ernest. I need to kill him too.”
“Revenge?” Hazard asked.
I nodded. “Promise me,” I demanded.
“I promise,” Hazard said. His shoulders broadened with excitement. “Once Ernest is gone, I’ll force your daddy to put you on the board. I’ll make him do it if I have to.”
“He won’t have a choice,” I squealed. I spun around frantically, then pulled him toward the door. “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “I don’t care about the welcome ceremony.”
“Neither do I.”
We ran down the corridor toward the side exit. After dismissing the driver, we took one of the golf carts over to the storage facility where they kept the dungeon equipment. I parked the cart right outside of the door, not caring who saw us in there.
“Let’s celebrate!” I said. “We’ll plan every little detail of their deaths, including their last breaths.”
“You are the fucking devil,” Hazard growled, lust brewing in his chest.
The room was dark, but windows lined the edges of the high ceilings, letting slivers of light swim through the space. Sharp shadows crossed in front of us like trees in a forest. Every piece of black metal gleamed.
“You’ve been thinking about Ernest a lot, then,” Hazard said. “You want to kill him specifically?”
“It’s a fantasy of mine,” I sighed. “I’ve thought about killing him for years.”
“How would you do it?”
There were so many options, and I had gone through all of them in my head, imagining each tragic, but deeply satisfying end.
“Gun?” Hazard asked.
My nostrils flared. “Too easy.”
“Knife?”
“Better, but not quite.”
“Blunt force trauma?”
“Still, too nice for someone like him. He has to feel it, you know?”
He stroked the sides of the guillotine, the same one that I had lain in at the last Masquerade. The same one Hazard had put me inside of when we were alone, right before I subtly convinced him to kill my husband.
“Should we put him in this, my queen?” he asked.
Every time he called me that, my heart swelled, knowing that even if he was using that title to manipulate me, he was also using it to please me, to show me that he knew what I wanted, and that he was willing to give it to me.
“That’s how my mother died,” I said. “Ernest was the final click in her game.”
Hazard licked his lips, his eyes falling to my chest.
“Then that’s how he’ll go, then.”
“You promise?” I asked.
“Would I ever lie to you?”
I laughed loudly. Then I gestured at the lunette, and Hazard opened up that head hole. I straddled the bench, letting the skirt of my dress pool to the sides. My pussy lips rubbed against the leather bench.
“Lock me in it,” I said. “Fuck me in it, Hazard.”
“You trust me with this shit?” he asked, as if to see if I remembered that he had clicked through the last eight rounds in my game. I remembered his bull mask so clearly, the black tattoo circling his cock as he shoved his length down my throat.
I batted my eyelashes. “Not a chance,” I teased him. But it was a lie. I shouldn’t have trusted Hazard with anything, especially not my heart. But he already had that, and I knew he wouldn’t kill me. Not yet, anyway.
“Do you trust me, Hazard?” I asked.
“Should I, my queen?” he said, but I didn’t hear his words. Adrenaline beamed through me—my face burned, my chest heavy with swampy air. It was like the recklessness inside of him had left his body and was now boiling in my chest.
I wanted to do this, even if it meant I died.
“I want you to fuck me with my head locked in there,” I groaned. “I love knowing that you could kill me at any second. It makes me so fucking hot.”
He grabbed my chest, shoving me down on the bench, then he locked the hatch around my neck.
Pushing my dress up around my legs, he licked my pussy, from my ass all the way to my clit, leaving a trail of warm saliva in the valleys of my body, every inch of my exposed skin burning, a shiver blowing up my spine, to the gentle pressure of the lunettes around my neck.
“Being locked up in a guillotine makes you wet, doesn’t it, my queen?” he growled. “Fear makes you wet. It’s the fear of knowing that this is how your mother died. And how you’re going to kill the man who took her life.”
He grabbed the remote, but I raised my hand.
“No—” I shouted. “Do it manually. It’s so much more fun that way.”
A smirk danced on his lips as he returned the remote, then played with a device on the side of the contraption, removing a small black metal object that kept the blade synced with the remote.
With the rope clutched in his palm, the sharp, angled blade at the other end, he beamed down at me.
His hand was the only thing keeping me from the end of my life.
“God, you are depraved,” he howled.
He was playing with my life, but I knew he wanted to fuck me more than he wanted to kill me.
I had never felt more alive.
“Watch that blade, little bloom,” he said. “Eyes on the blade. Watch it.”
He stuck his dick inside of me and my vision burst with stars.
Logan had fucked me in this same contraption, but I had been on my hands and knees, and hadn’t seen anything that was going on.
It had been so dull. Thrust, thrust, thrust. All mechanics.
But like this? Lying on the bench, my line of vision cut in half by the top of the lunette, being forced to look between Hazard’s fiery red hair and the angled blade?
It was like my whole body was melting and being born again, filled with power. His cock stabbed into me and I grunted.
“What would you do if I died right now?” I asked in a hoarse voice. “Tell me!”
“I’d keep fucking your body until I came,” he murmured.
“I don’t give a fuck if you live or die because all I want right now is to feel your cunt squeeze around my dick.
I want to feel your body pulse around me like you have nothing left but involuntary reactions.
Like a chicken with its head cut off, your sweet little cunt would still react to me, wouldn’t it, my queen?
” He growled, power swelling inside of him, almost as if it was flickering between us, fighting to fill both of us up.
“And if killing you is what makes your cunt squeeze my dick, then I’m going to do it. ”
I gasped, so turned on I couldn’t think straight, but he kept fucking me, and I kicked my legs, trying to do anything to get more of him.
I was a fiend and he was my addiction; I needed all of him, every single drop of his blood and his breath and every twitch of his cock.
But trapped in that head hole, all I could do was touch him.
Run my hands over his stomach. Pinch his nipples.
Reach for his neck. Tighten my legs around him.
His sweat laced my fingertips, and I was completely at his mercy.
And I spread my legs wider, clenched my pelvic muscles along his long cock, hoping to everything in this unholy world that I was making him feel exactly like he wanted.
Exactly like I wanted. Because there was more to this than sex.
He wanted to conquer me, just like I wanted to conquer him.
He groaned, throwing his head back, letting the blade fall a little further down. I jolted, my pussy walls contracting around him. He laughed, pleasure crossing his face.
“I’m going to let it fall,” he said.
“Do it,” I shouted. “Please. Do it. Make it slow. I want to feel it!”
“You want this blade to come down on your neck, you little slut?”
“Do it while I come!” I screamed.
And he let it fall, barely a few inches above my neck, and he laughed, then curled the rope around his fist until he hoisted up. Tears ran down my face, everything in my mind so confused about what I was supposed to be feeling. Fear. Frustration. Rage. Power. Devotion. Hope. And loneliness.
Because I knew I was keeping a secret that would tear our bond apart.
He pulled out, coming on my dress, the blade coming dangerously close to my neck as he came.
He fell to his knees, tonguing my pussy and jerked two bony fingers inside of me until I came too, then he hooked the rope back into the right place, syncing the device with the remote.
I unhooked the lunette’s upper latch myself, then sat up, straightening my dress, letting his come smother it in dark stains.
Now that we had gotten that out of our systems, it was time for a plan.
“You’re going to need help getting Ernest,” I said.
I motioned at his pockets and he gave me his new board member phone.
Once he ran through the controls, I gave him new numbers to add to his contacts.
“The first one is the number for Finn Carter; he owns an assassin company. And the second number is for Desmond Callen; he owns a few pharmaceutical and medical companies. He can get you sedatives.”
“For what?” Hazard asked, his expression deadpanned.
“Ernest Dumas isn’t like Logan or Toben or even Simon,” I said. “They were small fries compared to Ernest. You’re going to need backup.”
“You underestimate me, my queen,” he snarled.
I blinked, then put a finger into his chest. “Trust me; I don’t doubt your capabilities. But Ernest has guards. Plenty of them. And if you want the ability to drag him out in one piece, so that we can both kill him together, like you promised, you’re going to need some backup.”
Hazard groaned, and I squeezed his arm.
“Just think about it,” I said. “That’s all I want.”
His brows furrowed, but he kissed my forehead, trying to appease me. I slid the phone back into his pocket, and we wandered back through the Bloom Estate together, never quite making it back to his welcome ceremony. We had other things on our minds.