Chapter Two #2
In some dark recess of my mind, I truly felt a binding taking place. A black sort of tethering, braiding her heartbeat to mine. Her blood to mine. Her fear and futile future to mine.
An idea unfurled.
Too fast to stop.
Too delicious to refuse.
Swapping the pipette for the knife again, I ran the glinting tip right down her sternum.
Ily struggled and gasped, her eyes wild as she saw things that weren’t real in a room that most certainly was.
I’d never been so clear-headed. So potently aware of every desire and desperation.
Pity she didn’t feel the same.
Pity she allowed her catatonic terror to turn her inside out.
It would be so much more fun if she was truly with me and not skittering between reality and wherever else her mind had taken her.
“Not real,” she whimpered as I shifted my blade slightly to the right, hovering over where her flurrying heart hid beneath flesh, muscle, and bone.
“Not real. He’s not real. This isn’t real. He’s not a vampire. Not a demon. Just a man. Just a—”
“You’re wrong.” I chuckled as I pricked the swell of her upper breast, sighing heavily as red, red blood appeared.
She cried out and fought, her collar making that delicious mocking jingle against the hook holding her in place.
“I’m real. You’re real. This is real.” It was second nature now to gather up her blood in the cleverly designed glass tube. Sucking it up, I siphoned red from her body to paint mine.
This wound bled a little more.
I’d lacerated a little longer.
Marked her a little deeper.
The pipette was full by the time the cut forbid me anymore.
Her gaze tipped up, her eyes blazing gold and almost holy. I froze as I tripped into her celestial stare, once again seeing an angel I’d ensnared from the heavens and dragged down to wicked hell.
Unlike before, whenever I’d see a stunning woman and fought disgraceful urges to hurt her, I no longer hated myself. I no longer punished myself. No gush of sickness. No urge to purge myself from sin.
This was how things were always meant to be.
Victor was right.
Life existed in balance.
Predators and prey.
Monsters and meek.
I couldn’t change who I was; I’d only killed myself by trying.
The world needed men like me because goodness couldn’t exist without evil. Light couldn’t shine without darkness. And Ily would never have existed if she hadn’t been born for me to ruin.
No, not just ruin.
Shred apart.
Feast upon.
Consume.
Placing the pipette and knife on the table holding all manner of torture devices, I grabbed the back of my t-shirt and wrenched it over my head.
Ily shivered as I stood before her bare-chested. Her eyes skittered over me. Her lips thinned as she shook her head and saw things I couldn’t see.
“Just a man. He isn’t made of smoke or shadow. He’s not scaled like a dragon or—”
Grabbing her chin, I forced her eyes to lock on mine. “What do you see when you look at me?”
Fresh tears glimmered in her stare. The glossy wetness punched me in the stomach, and my cock almost crawled out of my trousers.
Biting her bottom lip, she tried to pull her jaw out of my control, but I merely tightened my grip.
My fingers hurt her. I knew they did. Her body tightened with pain.
Her eyes flared with discomfort. But she didn’t speak.
Didn’t obey. She merely slipped into the language I couldn’t understand, making sinister things slither through me.
“Fine. Keep your secrets.” Letting her go, I grabbed the pipette and held out my palm.
My body was oversensitive.
My pulse haywire.
My instincts off the fucking charts.
Numbers were nothing to me now.
Words nothing more than barbaric human communication.
I was above such things.
Yet I had to count...
“Seventeen.” Victor’s cool, collected voice interrupted my black-dripping thoughts.
“You’re at seventeen.” He smirked as I shot him a look.
“Don’t worry, I struggle to keep count too when I’m in the midst of this game.
It’s addictive, isn’t it? Illuminating and invigorating.
” Leaning forward, he licked his lips as he studied Ily and her four shallow wounds.
“By the time you’re done, she’ll be marked and bloodied, and you... ”
“Will be the man who signed and drank her.”
He canted his head with dark respect. “Precisely.” Waving his hand, he grinned. “Continue. I’m rather enjoying the show. In fact.” Snapping his fingers, his gaze shot to Peter still kneeling on the rug. “I’m in need of a skilled mouth, my sweetling.”
Peter couldn’t hide his gulp of disgust.
His skin already held the remnants of a Master cutting him.
His face gaunt.
Eyes broken.
He couldn’t look away from Ily even as he crawled on hands and knees to Victor and waited patiently while Victor shimmied on the chair and yanked down his navy pyjama bottoms. A small part of myself that used to know what jealousy felt like, what covetousness and resentfulness burned like, watched the well-trained slave as he reared up on his knees and fisted Victor’s thick erection.
To think I cared that he was aware of Ily.
So what?
He’s nothing.
Victor gave him a doting look, running his hands through Peter’s dark brown hair. “I’m so glad you’re back to behaving, Peter darling. Please don’t disappoint me like that again. It hurt.”
“I won’t, Sir V.”
Victor shuddered as Peter gave him a hand-job, his gaze still pinned on my trophy strapped to the cross.
Ily breathed shallow and quick; her entire attention locked on Peter.
There was that connection again.
Some sort of bond that had no fucking right to exist.
My chest swelled with possession.
Ily studied him with despair and pity.
But Peter watched her with respect and hope.
Hope?
Fuck.
I saw through all his training.
I arrowed straight to the truth he couldn’t hide.
He wasn’t just aware of her; he wanted her.
This obedient, broken little slave had enough audacity to want what was mine.
“If you ever touch her, I’ll make you wish you were dead,” I hissed, jerking his gaze to mine. “I see what you feel. I see you wanting.”
Victor stilled and grabbed Peter’s chin. “Is this true? You? Out of all my jewels? You would be stupid enough to lust after what isn’t yours?”
Peter dropped his eyes. “She’s new, Sir V. I’m merely concerned her mind will break if you play with her too long.”
“That’s not your concern now, is it?”
“No, Sir V.”
“Your only concern is how to please me.” Victor’s voice turned to acid. “So...please me.”
“Yes, Sir V.” With a final snatched look at Ily, Peter leaned forward and deep-throated his Master’s cock.
Ily let out a savage little scream.
Another stream of foreign language spilled out of her.
She thrashed and fought.
Her belly flexed with panic. Her legs flailed uselessly.
I crossed my arms while she lost herself.
I sank even deeper into the heart of darkness that made everything so viciously free. Her goodness was what made her sad for Peter. Her kindness would be her downfall. I wanted to take every shred of that empathy and sympathy and burn it to fucking dust.
Raising the pipette again, I squeezed out her clotting blood.
“Seventeen.” I grunted as the plop stained my palm.
“Eighteen.” I groaned as Ily stopped fighting and hung dejected and drained in her chains.
“Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two.” I kept counting, losing myself deeper and deeper with every drop. “Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five.” By the time drop number thirty puddled in my hand, I could barely stand up straight.
I ached.
Fucking ached to snap every restraint and be done with this fucking game.
I wanted to drink from the source. Lap from her vein. Count as each bead soaked directly onto my tongue.
Ignoring the sucking noises behind me, I smeared my palm over my heart in the exact spot where I’d drawn the blood from Ily.
Her eyes met mine.
She shook her head with a wet-sad stare.
And I lost myself.
Time ceased to exist as I cut her again, this time above her belly button, slicing through perfect tender skin. Ten droplets from there. Ten to mark my own stomach.
My eyes drifted to her bare pussy.
To the trimmed line of curly black hair.
To the part of her that I’d claimed twice, yet hadn’t truly mastered.
She’d given me her body because she believed I was better than what I was.
It was time I took her against her will because I would never be anything more than a beast.
With steadfast hands, I unbuttoned and unzipped.
Shoving down my trousers, I wrenched off my boxers and stood before my jewel as bare as her.
She didn’t react.
Her eyes filmed over with horrors.
Her skin pallid and cold.
I didn’t like it.
I hated it.
She’d given me no reaction when I’d been an idiotic wannabe hero—a monster doing his best to be a saint. She’d frustrated me as I’d used her, and she fucking irritated me now that I obeyed no such pact.
I wanted her tears.
Her struggles.
I wanted her to break.
Yet she merely blinked with dead eyes and did her best to ignore me.
Let’s see how she ignores this.
Dropping to my knees between her spread and buckled legs, I looked up at her as if I truly did dwell in hell. She stiffened as I pressed the knife against her ankle, nicking her with a nasty flick.
Tears trembled on her lower lashes, but she didn’t try to kick me again. Didn’t mutter words I didn’t know or see things I couldn’t envision. She merely sighed and closed her eyes as if she sought inner peace.
Allowing her to avoid me for just a little longer, I siphoned up her blood, surprised at how many drops filled the pipette.
I must have cut deeper than I thought as fifteen pretty beads of blood filled my palm.
I smeared them on my matching ankle before reaching for her other one.
She didn’t even suck in a breath as I sliced her again just above the leather binding her.
Not as much in this harvest.
Merely eight little droplets to stain my skin, painting me in primitive ink.
What’s that? Sixty-three so far?
My mind didn’t want to keep count anymore.
It wanted more than just one hundred and two measly drops.
It wanted all of them.