14. Monroe
Jin’s cool, callous voice slithers through me like a snake. I snap my eyes shut and shudder against my will.
I can’t say I’m surprised he’s tracked me down.
Even as I spent hours trying, and more often than not, failing at undoing the cuff with one of the hairpins Jin had bought me, deep down, I knew he’d come. He wouldn’t stop ’til he hunted me and took me back.
But I did it anyway.
Maybe because some small part of me yearned for the chase. The thrill these moments bring.
Maybe because I really have lost my damn mind.
Jin holds me tight against him, his fury palpable. He’s pinned me against the brick wall of a dark alley, his fingers digging into my hips, his blade pressing into my skin.
Just firmly enough that I feel the pressure of its sharp point. My pulse flutters against it, quickening by the second.
His lips brush my ear so intimately even as he issues his threat. His words drip with dark and carnal intention.
“What have I told you?” he hisses, biting my ear hard enough that I wince. His teeth gnaw against the tender flesh in an almost animalistic way, like he’s truly about to devour me. “You will never outrun the mark. You belong to me now.”
I can only choke out his name.
My mind’s gone blank. My body refuses to cooperate. His name leaves my lips as a strangled, hoarse sound.
All I can do is squirm in his hold, a rabbit trapped in a snare.
And now the ferocious, carnivorous tiger is about to swallow me whole.
Jin’s lips travel from the shell of my ear along the curve of my jaw. I try to turn my head slightly, but he grips me by the chin and wrenches it straight. Nipping at my jaw, his warm breath fans out across my skin as he speaks.
“Tell me what you think you were doing,” he demands. “Tell me why.”
I’m not even sure I can tell him. As he pushes me against the jagged brick and the cool blade grazes my skin, I can’t even come up with an answer.
Just that I had decided on day one when I asked for supplies that I would make an escape attempt. I had written out the list of things, subtly including hairpins with the laundry list of items, hoping he wouldn’t grow suspicious.
It had worked—Jin grabbed me every item on the list. No questions asked.
It took me hours to pick the lock around my ankle. Mostly because it’s an awkward position to work from, even as I sat on the floor with my legs curled toward my chest. But also because I’m definitely no locks expert.
I was working off a hope and a prayer that movies and TV hadn’t told me wrong—a hairpin really could pick a lock.
By the time it clicked open, it was dark out. I was at a crossroads.
Chicken out and stay put or go for it and make my escape. I think a part of me sensed from the start that Jin would come and he’d punish me.
You wanted it. You wanted his attention. For him to be driven to this kind of state because of you.
“I… I don’t know,” I finally answer him.
“Don’t lie,” he hisses, crushing my hip under his grip. “Don’t lie about what you’re doing.”
“It’s the truth!” I blurt out. “I just… it’s been difficult cooped up in your apartment and you’re gone for hours! I asked for the bobby pins so that I could pick the lock and then… then…”
“Then what ?!” he snaps.
I flinch, my breaths coming out as short gasps. “I told you I don’t know! I knew… I knew that you’d…”
He shoves me forward against the wall until the jagged brick bites into me and he’s practically on top of me. I can feel the hard groove of his body pinned to mine. He feels like a wall of muscle, somehow firmer and harder than the brick itself.
But that’s not the only thing I can feel—his cock presses between my ass cheeks, thick and heavy even inside his pants.
Hot desire floods me.
I clench my eyes shut and nibble on my bottom lip, trying to shut it out. I can’t possibly be turned on right now, not as Jin grips me up in a dark alley and holds a knife to my throat.
I’m damn sure not the only one though.
Jin sounds pleased when I trail off. “You knew that what, Monroe?” he asks quietly, calmly. The intense fury is gone, at least for now. “You knew that I would come, is that so? You knew that I would hunt you?”
I lick my lips and mutter, “Yes… I knew you would.”
“Smart girl. You were correct—I will always come for you. There is no corner of the earth you can escape to where I won’t find you. Where you can outrun my mark. Because I own you now. You are mine to do with as I wish.”
I shudder as he drags the knife down my throat in slow, menacing fashion. He does so firmly but gently, demonstrating an understanding of how to wield it with true expertise.
The night is a warm and humid one. Yet the cool blade feels like ice against my skin. It travels down my throat, then scrapes across my collarbone. One wrong move, one misjudgment, and it would pierce my skin. It would make me bleed.
But I screw my eyes shut and concentrate on the sensations.
The measured drag of the blade across my flesh as Jin presses his cheek to mine and holds me tight.
“I told you I would kill you,” he says matter-of-factly. The blade reaches the swell of my breast and he pauses long enough I hold my breath. “But you already know I can’t do that. You counted on it, Tokki-ya. So instead of running you through with my blade, I’m going to do the next best thing.”
I gasp and flinch in his arms as, with masterful skill, he flicks the blade and cuts me on the top of my breast. It’s like a slash mark, a scratch that barely beads blood, but the sharp sting thrums through my breast just the same.
“Mmmm,” he moans into my ear, licking at the shell. He switches from English to Hangugeo. “Your blood is so beautiful, Tokki-ya. How about another?”
“Argh!” I cry out as he gives another sharp swipe of the knife and the front of my shirt falls apart. Then the cool blade’s returning to my breasts, where he rests it against my sternum.
I’m reeling from the sting of the first cut and the fear that’s exploded inside me. I’m out of breath as I draw for air but find myself empty. All I can think about is how the knife is pushing into me and with one fell swoop, he can hurt me.
Kill me if he wanted.
Yet there’s a sense of thrill about it too.
It’s some twisted game where I don’t know the outcome. I simply have to trust in him and find out what happens.
“This will hurt,” he warns, hissing into my ear. “But pain can be a good thing. Pain teaches lessons words never could. You disobeyed my command. Now you will pay with your body.”
I cry out and twist in his hold as he flicks the blade and nicks me across the side of my breast. But thrashing from within his arms does nothing.
He simply squeezes me tighter against him and bites at my jaw, running his tongue across the pulse point at my throat.
As if it excites him to feel how it speeds up.
He holds the blade under the fresh cut, waiting for the droplet of blood to trickle onto it. Then he holds it up for us to admire.
“Look, Tokki-ya,” he says almost tenderly. “Your blood looks so sweet. I can’t wait to taste it.”
I watch in shock as he swipes his tongue along the blade and licks it up.
“Mmm, yes,” he says satisfactorily. “As sweet as I bet the rest of you tastes.”
The blade returns to my body, skimming from my stinging breasts to the flat stretch that’s my stomach. It shouldn’t surprise me when another sharp sting radiates through me, yet it still does as Jin slices a new mark on my stomach.
The sharp pain mists my eyes. It makes my whole body clench in protest.
But it also dials up the heat I feel within. It intensifies the desire pooled inside me until I’m not sure if I’m feeling aroused or afraid or I’m just too damn shocked to process any of it.
Jin drags the blade down the rest of my stomach, pushing the basketball shorts of his that I’m wearing down my hips. He nicks a small incision when he does, a biting sting that reminds me of a paper cut, then slashes the blade across the front of my panties.
My loudest gasp yet sputters out of me. I go still in his arms, realizing I’m basically naked. The shorts are around my ankles and my t-shirt’s shredded open, hanging uselessly off my shoulders. Now my panties have been slashed away.
He presses himself against me until I’m sure I feel his erection. I’d sensed it before but know it now as it throbs against me.
“Look at this little pussy,” he growls into my ear. He combs the blade across the fuzzy patch of pubic hair I keep nice and trimmed.
I close my eyes and release a moan that sounds shocking even to my ears.
But it feels amazing, the cool, sharp blade scraping across such an intimate part of me. It feels twisted and taboo and wrong in so many ways. Which only makes me wetter, makes my pussy throb harder.
“You like that?” he breathes. “You like feeling the blade on such sensitive skin? On your delicate little pussy?”
I bite down on my bottom lip to keep from answering. Other tells give me away, like the fast, breathless cadence of my breathing and the tremors that keep passing through me. He experiments, combing the blade back and forth across my fuzzy little mound ’til I’m not even trying to hide it anymore.
I’m freaking panting in his arms. I hold out a hand to the brick wall as if afraid I’ll fall through it if I’m not careful.
Hot sparks of pleasure have started shooting through me. I’m not just wet. I’m dripping. I’m grinding back against Jin as he teases me with the blade and the stinging cuts on my chest and stomach throb away.
“You like the thrill, Monroe,” he observes. “You like the fear. You enjoy some viciousness, don’t you? But I’m far from through with you. I told you I won’t run you through with my blade, Tokki-ya. But I will do the next best thing.”
“AHHH!”
The scream that leaves me is sharp and wild, high-pitched enough to shatter glass.
Jin’s flipped the knife in his hands and driven it into my pussy handle first. The hard, stiff object slides right into my dripping wet pussy like fingers would, except so much more forbidden and wrong.