Chapter 35 #2
He squeezes, his thumb finding my nipple through the fabric and circling it until it pebbles into a hard, aching point.
A gasp tries to escape my lips, but I bite it back, turning my head into the cool wall.
The sound of muffled chatter from the makeup team is a terrifying counterpoint to the frantic beating of my heart.
He chuckles, a low, dark sound. “Good girl.”
His other hand finds the hem of my dress, his fingers rough against my skin as he slides it up, up, up, until the cool air hits my thighs.
He hooks his thumb into the side of my panties, pulling them aside.
The anticipation is a delicious agony. I’m exposed, vulnerable, trapped between the hard wall and his even harder body.
His fingers find my slick heat, and he groans softly. “So ready for me.”
He doesn’t wait. He frees himself, then he’s pushing into me, one long, relentless stroke that steals the air from my lungs.
I have to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from crying out.
The stretch, the fullness, the sheer rightness of him inside me is overwhelming.
He stills for a moment, buried to the hilt, his forehead resting against mine.
“Feel that?” he grits out. “Feel me? This is real. Not them. Not this house. This is us. God, I’m so fucking excited to be free of this shit.
The five of us will worship you until the day we die.
We’ll give you massages every night. We’ll play lots of naked Twister…
and naked Monopoly…and naked Operation. Fuck, I just want you naked, always.
Naked and safe in my arms. I’ll never let you go, Ellie. Never. None of us will.”
Then he starts to move. His thrusts are deep and hard, each one designed to shove me closer to the edge of my control.
The rhythm is relentless, a primal beat that I feel in my bones.
One of his hands leaves my hip and snakes between us, his fingers finding the sensitive bundle of nerves at the apex of my thighs.
He rubs tight, merciless circles as he fucks me against the wall.
My body is a live wire, every nerve ending screaming for release.
I want to moan, to scream his name, but his warning echoes in my head.
The game. I have to be silent. My nails dig into his shoulders through his shirt, my head thrown back against the wall as I fight the sounds building in my chest. It’s a losing battle. The pleasure is too sharp, too intense.
He feels me tensing, feels the desperate flutter of my muscles around him. “That’s it,” he growls, his voice strained with his own impending climax. “Come for me, princesa. Right here. Right now. But don’t you dare make a sound.”
His words are my undoing. The orgasm crashes through me, a violent, silent wave that bows my back and makes my vision go white.
I bite down hard on my lip, the coppery taste of blood a small price for the ecstasy ripping me apart from the inside out.
He follows me over with a hoarse, choked grunt, burying his face in my neck as he spills himself deep inside me.
For a long moment, we just stay there, breathing heavily, our bodies slick with sweat in the dim hallway. The silk of my dress is ruined, my lipstick is surely smeared, and my lip is bleeding. I have never felt more perfect.
He slowly pulls away, tucking himself back into his trousers before gently smoothing my dress down over my hips. As he notices my bleeding lip, his expression softens for a second before the hard mask is back in place. He leans in and gives me one last, soft, possessive kiss.
“Now go back out there,” he whispers against my lips. “And smile for Aria. But remember who you belong to.”
The air in the car is thick enough to choke on, a suffocating blanket of unspoken dread.
I stare out the tinted window, watching the iron gates of the mansion swing open. They’re the same gates as the first mansion we arrived at, where I sold my soul to Aria, flanked by the same stone lions whose eyes seem to follow you, promising judgment.
We pass the first checkpoint. A masked guard scans the car, his gaze lingering on Aria’s goon in the driver’s seat, then on Beckett in the passenger seat, before finally settling on Dominic and Zane flanking me in the back.
Aria has chosen to drive separately. She claimed she had “things to prepare.”
Terror tries to wrest rational thought from me.
Another fucked-up game?
What, exactly, is her end goal for tonight?
Fear slithers through me like a withering, insidious snake, and I feel physically ill. I place one hand on Zane’s knee and the other on Dominic’s, attempting to keep myself tethered to reality.
“If you keep staring at my girl like that, I’ll have to rip you apart limb from limb.
” Zane offers the guard a cordial smile, a startling contrast to the darkness percolating in his eyes.
“Did you know you can use a man’s intestines to play jump rope?
There’s a song I used to always sing while doing it…
” He taps a finger to his chin in mock contemplation.
“Though, honestly, any song works if you’re creative enough. Do you have a favorite song?”
The guard waves us through, and though I can’t see his face beneath the mask, I imagine it has drained of color.
I give Zane’s knee a squeeze and bite down on my smile.
As the car pulls to a stop, I can’t help but note we're the only ones who show our faces. Everyone else is a ghost, hidden behind gaudy masks, their identities swallowed by the uniform of Aria’s personal army and her spineless followers. The thought sends a shiver down my spine.
We are lambs willingly walking back into the slaughterhouse, and our faces are the price of admission.
Beckett’s jaw is clenched so tightly that I wouldn’t be surprised if he chipped a tooth. He hasn’t said a word since we left the house, but his tension is a living thing in the car, coiled and ready to strike.
Dominic, beside me, is a statue of cold fury, his hands clenching and unclenching where they rest on his thighs.
Zane is on my other side, and he’s the only one who touches me back, his palm a warm, steady weight on my hand, where it still rests on his knee.
It’s meant to be comforting, a silent promise that he’s here, but all it does is remind me of how easily he can be taken from me.
How easily they all can.
The mansion looms ahead, a monster carved from stone and glass, all its windows glowing like a thousand hungry eyes. My stomach twists into a knot so tight I can barely breathe. This is it. This is where Aria plays her games, where she pulls the strings and watches her puppets dance.
It seems fitting that our final showdown will be here. After all, this is where it all began, when I agreed to be Aria’s pretty little puppet.
We step out of the car, the crunch of gravel under our shoes unnaturally loud in the oppressive silence. The front doors are massive, carved wood that swallows the light. Aria is waiting for us there, bedecked from head to toe in a black cloak, though her mask remains at her side.
“Ellie,” she says, her voice a silken caress that makes my skin crawl.
“So good of you to join us. And you brought my other guests. How thoughtful.” Her icy eyes zero in on me, plunging to negative ten degrees, before she slowly rearranges the mask on her face, obscuring her elfin features from view.
My men stand behind me, a solid wall of muscle and simmering hate. I can feel their presence like a furnace at my back. I want to turn to them, to melt into their strength, but I know I can’t show weakness. Not here. Not in front of her.
We walk through the grand foyer, our footsteps echoing on the marble floor. The air is heavy with the scent of lilies and something else, something metallic and cloying. Blood. It’s always blood with her.
Panic speeds up my heart, but I tell myself that whatever Aria has planned, we’ll fight back. We’ll always fight back.
We won last time, didn’t we? We got Senator Reece out.
Even as I think that, I remember the people who didn’t escape. Innocent men and women forced to play POP’s wicked game.
It’s nearly impossible to swallow around the spike in my throat.
We reach the entrance to the ballroom. The doors are thrown open, revealing a sea of masked figures, their laughter and music spilling out into the hall like poison.
I stop, my feet glued to the floor. “Wait,” I say, my voice barely a whisper.
I turn, seeking out Beckett, Zane, and Dominic. I need their strength. I need—
They’re not behind me anymore.
The air feels heavy, like the breath wants to be pulled directly from my lungs.
Where the fuck are they?
They were there a second ago. I know they were. When did we get separated?
Worst-case scenarios form like toxic chemicals in my head. My stomach moves in riotous swirls as fear skates up my spine and knots in my throat.
Where.
The.
Fuck.
Are.
They?
Aria is beside me in an instant, her hand clamping down on my shoulder. The force is unnecessary, a painful reminder of who’s in charge. Her perfectly manicured nails dig into my skin through the thin fabric of my dress.
For once, she’s not wearing gloves.
“You shouldn’t have betrayed me, Ellie,” she says, her mechanical voice dropping to a low, venomous purr that’s only for me. The warmth of her hand is a brand, a violation.
My blood runs cold. Horror floods my veins, sharp and suffocating.
Betrayed her? My mind races, frantically searching for a misstep, a word I shouldn’t have said, a look I gave away. I’ve done everything she asked. I was her dutiful daughter, even if I did talk back. I’m here.
Is this about Reece? She already punished me for helping him. She killed Doyle and Harvey.
Does she know about my conversation with Fischer? She shouldn’t be surprised by that. She had to have known I’m looking for her black book.
“What do you mean?” I choke out, my voice trembling, despite my best effort to keep it steady.
She doesn’t answer but instead gives my shoulder a final, bruising squeeze. She leans in close, her mechanical voice scraping at my skin.
“You’ll see.”