Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nyx
Flawless – The Neighbourhood
My heart stops for a few seconds. This is the first time Achilles has ever admitted a weakness, and it's not as satisfying as I thought it would be. Actually, it's pretty terrifying for such a proud and strong man.
He watches me intensely, waiting for a response. And when he understands he's made me speechless, his dangerous smirk returns. I'm about to tell him to wipe it off his face when an alarm blaring through the room makes us both jolt.
"Shit," he hisses, releasing me and turning around.
That's when I notice the smoke behind him and the smell of burned bacon.
I hurry to open the kitchen windows before I grab a cloth and climb on a chair to wave it at the smoke alarm. A long minute later, the deafening noise stops, and the pan is discarded in the sink, the smoking bacon thrown out of the window.
"That was drastic," I tell Achilles from my position above him.
"I hate cooking," he admits. "I wanted to make you something since I picked you up from work. And then…" He throws his head back, huffing. "Shit got in the way. As usual."
"You mean, killing Bennett got in the way?" I deadpan.
He smiles brightly at me, like we’re not talking about murder in the middle of the day.
"Do you think you're going to get away with it?"
"Oh. I already have."
That shouldn’t shock me like it does. He got away with Chase's murder too.
"Power, am I right?" He winks, and it's seriously annoying that it makes him cute rather than cringe.
"If you knew the things I got away with, mon trésor, you wouldn't stand here on this chair like perfect prey to me."
I shift on my feet, suddenly feeling exactly as he described. Perfect prey.
"I'm hungry," I state, trying to shift his focus from me back to the food.
His eyes stay on mine, and he bites his lower lip.
"Me too," he purrs.
I gulp as he raises his hands to grab my hips. His head comes right where my pussy is, barely protected by his t-shirt that hits mid-thigh and my panties.
"We're going to play, Nyx," he murmurs against the material protecting my mound.
"We've already played today. You scared me. It inspired you. No more."
My words fall on deaf ears as he wraps an arm around me and lifts me off the chair. I shriek, feeling myself losing balance as he easily moves me from my high position to the wooden kitchen table.
He lays me down on it, his face right above mine, eyes shining with sadism.
"Be a good little muse, and I'll share some of my secrets."
My heart stutters. How many people around Achilles have dreamed of hearing those words? The man with a thousand secrets. The man who looks at the world like he knows everything we don't. The man who appears so unbothered, like he's figured it all out while we run around trying to understand life.
"Which secr—"
He places his thumb on my lips. "Close your eyes."
I hesitate, searching for safety on his face. There's nothing. He never offers that, knowing it would be a reassurance that'd take some of my fear away.
As I breathe through my mouth, my body already feels like it wants to twist to his desires.
And my eyes flutter closed.
"Atta girl," he murmurs above me.
He drops a soft kiss on my lips and disappears.
"I'm going to put something over your eyes, mon trésor."
My stomach sinks with anticipation.
"Achilles," I plead weakly. "Why?"
I startle when I feel the cloth I was holding a second ago against my eyelids. When did he even get it out of my hand?
"Because," he explains gently as he ties the cloth behind my head, careful not to pull my hair, "we're going to rewrite the past."
"What do you mean?"
He disappears for a few seconds, and I hear drawers opening and closing. My senses are heightened, every movement from him making me twitch.
He delicately grabs one of my wrists, wrapping something around it.
"I'm using butcher's twine, so don't pull too hard. I don't want it to cut into your skin and hurt you." His words are accompanied by the thread being wrapped around my wrist over and over again before he pulls it over my head.
I feel him tie it to something, and I can only assume it's the leg of the table. He repeats the process with my other arm, and it's not long before I can't move any of them.
"You're a bastard," I panic, my head shaking from side to side as I try to dislodge the blindfold. "I need to move."
I pull at my binds, and just like he warns, it digs painfully into my skin.
"Don't hurt yourself, Nyx," he orders calmly. "This isn't the point of what we're doing."
"I can't do this." My chest trembles. "I need to be able to move," I repeat. A whimper escapes me when I feel his hand on one of my knees. "I need to see you. Please, let me see you."
"No, baby. But it's me. You know it's me. Playing with you, touching you."
"Please." A sob gets lodged in my chest, my poor lungs a dam about to burst as they try to hold back my swirling emotions.
His hands take hold of the elastic band of my panties, and he talks softly as he lowers them. Slowly. So…slowly. I imagine him standing at the end of the table where my knees are bent and feet hanging.
"I'm going to mind-fuck you, mon trésor. I'm going to replace the nightmares with daydreams, and you’ll never be haunted by that memory again."
My entire body shakes as my underwear disappears.
"And you're going to help me." His hands trace goosebumps as they go up my thighs.
I can feel that his arms are going under my legs, lifting them at the same time, and when his hands reappear at my hip dips, he wraps his fingers there.
"I don’t want that. Just leave it alone."
With a sudden movement, I'm pulled lower on the table, the back of my knees resting on his shoulders.
"What happened that night?" he murmurs against my core.
"I don't need this to be fixed, Achilles," I pant. "Just let me go. I'll do anything else you want, okay? I'll—I'll… What do you want?"
"You were hurt," he tells me simply. "Let me soothe the ache."
"No. You're sick…you're fucking sick."
"I hope it's contagious," he says seriously. "That you catch it too. And that we spiral down our sickness together."
I pull at the thread again and feel it cut into my skin.
"Fuck!" I shriek, fury building inside me. "Let me go!"
He kisses my hip bone, tracing his lips all the way to my mound again. "You're past denial, bargaining, and anger. We're almost there, baby."
I pause to try to take a breath through the panic, and a wave of anguish grips my soul.
"I don't want to talk about it," I say as tears gather behind the cloth.
"But you know how it works between us." He kisses me lower, and lower, getting closer to where he's keeping me wide open by having my legs on each of his shoulders. "I push you, and you get wet for me. I break you open, and you spill your pain for me."
"Why are you doing this?" I cry out. "What did I do for you to torture me?"
"Your mind is mine to bend, mon trésor. Let me do it for the sake of making you feel better."
He kisses my clit, almost chastely, and a shiver ripples through my body.
"Was it just one man?" he asks.
A sob bursts from my mouth, but the answer comes easier than it ever has. "Yes."
"Where?"
"At home," I whisper. And the answer gets me another kiss, harder this time.
"How did he get in?"
"He knocked on the door. I opened it…and a man wearing a balaclava with a skull on it pushed inside."
My lower stomach melts when he presses his mouth to my clit, and his tongue licks me in a slow but deliberate movement.
"What happened when he got in?"
I shiver at his breath against my wetness, and then I tremble at the memory.
"H-He took me by surprise," I say through a whimper when he repeats the languid movement of his tongue on my clit. "He pushed me to the floor and asked where my dad hid money."
I gasp when he starts circling, a moan forming at the back of my throat.
"We had none. We never have any. Nothing was valuable in that house, and he didn't like that."
I try to breathe deeply, but I choke on another moan. "Fuck, Achilles…"
"What did he do when he had you on the floor?" The rumble of his voice against my skin makes me shake harder.
"He had rope. He tied my hands behind my back, and he ransacked the house. And when he didn't find anything…oh God… Fuck." His tongue works me over with more pressure, pushing away the feeling of the ropes around my wrists.
Instead, I feel the thread Achilles used. They keep me in the present, and so does the pleasure. It grounds me, links me to him in ways he hasn't done before.
"God, Nyx," he growls against me. "You're doing so well, baby. Tell me about the blindfold."
"I don't know why he blindfolded me," I admit, panting. "I think it was just another way to scare me."
Teeth nibble at my clit as a reward, and I sink into the sensation.
"He kept me on my front," I grunt and grind my hips. "He crushed me with his weight. And when I tried to fight back, he slipped his hand around my throat. And he squeezed."
Achilles teases my entrance with two fingers, and slowly, he pushes in, driving me to the brink of sanity.
There are no more flashes; the night is just unfolding through my lips, but I'm very much in the present.
I'm writhing under his touch, pleasure overwhelming me as I feel myself about to burst at the seams.
"It wasn't very long," I moan. "But I was defenseless.
" Just like I am now, stuck in Achilles's web, having accepted my fate.
"I thought I was going to pass out at some point.
He was making me so dizzy, but I couldn't tell if my vision was blacking because of the blindfold. I—I— Fuck, I'm going to come."
My breath stutters, my head spinning, and he doesn't stop.
I come harder than I ever have before, a deliverance tearing me apart and leaving me in a million broken pieces.
But the comedown is worse than ever before.