Chapter 2 #2
He punctuated the confession with an exaggerated roll of his hips that had her hissing, mumbling distorted French in broken, clipped female pleadings as he worked her over with softly spoken words and clever fingers working to distract.
“How you steal my shirts, even after you have worn them, and hide them in your nest like I won’t notice. My good girl.”
The last sliver of sun vanished beyond the horizon, fire fading from the walls. Exactly as it should be. The only light he needed was hers.
It was almost time.
He’d tortured enough men and women to know when they reached that final moment of clarity.
Where pain was transcended and ego dissolved.
Watched hundreds suffer until their identity floated away.
Their lies, their story, no longer relevant or necessary.
A dissolving of character. The closest thing to true consciousness this side of death.
Where attachment to the one who broke them was inevitable.
And she was so close.
Each time Brenya’s breath hitched, her eyes unfocused briefly. Each time he gave her pleasure, and she tried to mentally float away, he dragged her right back, her gaze snapping to his face with desperation she didn’t understand.
A little more pain.
A little more pressure on her swollen clit when his fly caught on the cute little hood that offered her no protection from the coarseness of his trousers.
This wasn’t about sex, even if his hard meat was pressed to her leaking cunt… even if his hand pushed and molded the gentle swell of her breast.
The damp shirt she wore—his shirt—he slipped it like water down her arms, untangled the fabric from where it hung at her elbows, and left it to puddle on the floor.
And then he had her, his Brenya, naked and wriggling in his lap, watching between their bodies to where his cock was not inside her… but should be.
Far below them, Jacques climaxed again. She arched, spine bowing from a cramp that stole her breath. Elbows catching behind her to brace herself, chest high, breasts heaving, thighs spread wide over his hips.
Running his palm slowly down the trembling plane of her belly, Beta fingers teased, Brenya drunk on scent and sensation, caught in pain and pleasure. So deeply in need that, had he been a malevolent man, exploiting her for his gain would have been laughably fun.
But this was not about his desires.
“That’s it,” Jules murmured, bright blue eyes catching the last of the dying light, transforming them into something otherworldly. “Feel how perfectly you fit against me.”
Hair clung to her temples and neck, damp with exertion as Jules orchestrated her indulgence, laying her down as he directed, guided, unspooled her spine until her back kissed the blood-red floor.
Soft parted thighs locked around his waist, cunt—slick and flushed—cradled the clothed length of him.
He followed her down like a tide pulling wreckage into deeper waters, until she was flat on her back and he was braced above her.
Fully dressed and hard, grinding into the heat of her need, giving her enough friction to keep her teetering on the edge.
ravaged in ways she would never understand, picked apart, put back together, hollow, malleable, and razor sharp.
Her mind was wide open to him, pupils so big there was only a sliver of honey at the edge.
The exact moment Brenya realized he had her on the ground, pinned, perhaps moments away from penetration, fear bloomed in those honey-brown eyes. Pupils contracted, her breath caught.
Jules recognized that look. Had studied it in hours of footage. Invited it in. Peeled back his authority deliberately, inviting the last lash of the whip. Her final suffering.
He let Jacques in.
The Alpha’s ghost hovered between them, allowed to insert itself. Gods only knew what her auditory hallucinations were saying in that cute, twitching limbic brain. Horrors, he hoped. Jacques at his worst. Threatening her, belittling her. Begging.
That voice—he would desensitize her to it. Strip it of power. Reshape it into static noise she must learn to live with.
Her discomfort was the goal. The necessary remedy to her cowardice.
Whatever her knot-starved imagination conjured in those seconds was bleak enough to make her shriek and throw herself around him.
Thin arms wrapping his neck with startling strength.
Fingers burrowed into his hair, Brenya gripping hard enough his roots stung, her body shaking as she pulled her to him in blind panic.
“I’m here. Look at me, Brenya. Stay with me.
” Kisses on her cheeks, light, playful, the exact opposite of whatever was taking place in her unreliable thoughts.
“I am your real mate. Your husband, who would never hurt you. Whatever you think you hear… whatever you remember…” Drawing her fingers to the buttons of his shirt, he tethered her to action.
Giving her a job to focus on. A choice. His expression carefully arranged.
Soft at the edges. A sculpted mask of calm hiding the ravenous beast. The false face of a complicated man who only emoted when it served a purpose.
Every look said stay. Said feel me. Said do not run.
And while she struggled to breathe, to think, he discarded his shirt like it meant nothing and stared at her like she meant everything.
“Each second you give me is a second he loses. Touch me, and he fades like a bad dream.”
Agitated, overwhelmed, slick gushing over his cock, his wife—his mate—shifted against him with aching desperation to be free of her demon.
Her pretty cunt twitching with unmet need as she whined low in her throat, the sound caged behind trembling lips pressed tight to keep from begging.
That muffled noise… that futile effort to contain herself…
did things to Jules he was almost incapable of hiding from the overwrought woman. Almost.
Scars. Da’rin. A killer’s body unapologetically on display.
Catching up her hand in his, he dragged her fingertips over the patterns that had captivated her for weeks, tracing swirls, the line of lithe muscle, as he kneeled between her legs.
A living history he shared. “These marks that have fascinated you, haven’t they?
They’re called Da’rin, a microscopic parasite forced on convicts so they can survive underground without sun for years on end.
The symbols… the artistry… isn’t formed naturally. ”
Guiding her fingers across his ribs, skin drawn tight over muscle, Jules let his other hand drift lower.
His thumb found her clit in a light, maddening stroke as he added, “Those of us who survive long enough learn how to coax them into shape. Personalize the experience.” He took a slow breath.
So did she. “Each mark displays… my accomplishments.”
A dark, amused smirk, and then he pulled her nail over his nipple.
Jules’s sharp intake of breath startled her. She glanced up to find his blue eyes darker, pupils dilating with want.
“Again,” he commanded softly.
She obeyed. His nipple hardening under her touch as she traced her finger over it. Slower. Circling with the sharp tip of her nail.
Next, he drew her fingers to his ribs, guiding her touch over the coiling shapes beneath his skin.
The Da’rin alive just under the surface curled along the ridges of his obliques and over the hard cut of his abdomen.
“These mark the years I spent in the Undercroft,” he said, voice steady, watching her follow one of the spirals with the pad of her finger.
“Do you know what that means? Has anyone told you what the Undercroft is?”
“I was told you’d been imprisoned,” she whispered automatically, breath hitching, thighs shaking with residual ache, but her attention was elsewhere.
Even Jacques’s screaming muffled by her focus.
Blown eyes tracking the marks with uncanny precision, the rest of her body stiff under his touch as her mind pulled taut, narrowing to the work of searching for rhythm, for structure, for meaning in those marks.
They were perfect.
Jules had made them so.
He let her fixate. Encouraged the part of her mind designed for calculation to take over.
And when he finally spoke, his voice curled low, deliberate.
An invocation. “No. Not prison. Hell. Imagine a labyrinthine oubliette under a thriving Dome, where those thrown in there to die are denied light, food, fresh water. Where you will find endless tunnels, darkness, human waste, rotting flesh. A self-contained society of the discarded—innocents and evil alike—going mad as monsters eat them alive. Rape, violence you cannot imagine, broken minds, suffering. There are still men down there even Shepherd did not want to set free in Thólos.” He laughed bitterly under his breath, not at the cruelty, but the strategy.
And for one unguarded second, grief changed his stolid expression.
Caught quickly and tucked away. “What do you see in the patterns, Brenya? It’s all right there. How many years was I incarcerated?”
Her eyes ran over that twisting, beautiful nightmare, unlocking the meaning in the flowing geometry as she breathed, “Fourteen?”
“Fourteen years.” He nodded, voice low. “An innocent man—a celebrated surgeon—who had no way of knowing what became of his wife and children. Who suffered hope. Who survived in the dark for them… only to learn there was no ‘them’ to return to. My sons had been executed, two little boys. Rebecca had been claimed by a man more cunning than Jacques will ever be. Senator Kantor.” He guided her fingers along another coil of Da’rin, letting her trace the shape of it on his skin.
“A celebrated public figure. Viewed as a hero in Thólos. Ruthless. Disgusting. He had our children shot right in front of her as he raped her. That was how he forged their bond. Preparing a ‘clean slate,’ assuring nothing of her past life might distract her from the one he would have her live.”