Chapter Three #2
Then again, it was possible I was just looking to make a gift out of the usual shit show that was life as Boris Ardelean’s daughter. Maybe it didn’t really matter either way.
“Last chance,” Jovi said in that cool, pitiless voice of his. Even with his warm accent, he sounded like what he was.
Deadly.
“To save myself?” I asked. “But without my hands or the use of my legs? I’m not sure what that would look like.”
“I can put you to sleep, baggiana,” he told me. Then he reached over and fitted his hand around my neck.
At first it was gentle. As if he was learning the shape of me and feeling my pulse in his palm. But then his grip tightened.
Just a little.
Then a little more.
Then more still, until I felt my mouth drop open, my breath escape me, and that ripe weighted softness between my legs bloom into a hectic kind of blaze.
“Then,” he told me, his voice almost something like a croon, “you can cling to the notion that this is something that is happening to you only. And that you have no choices. That you are nothing at all but a hapless victim, caught up in the clutches of dangerous men.”
“That’s exactly what I am.” But my chin lifted up of its own accord.
“But I’ve come to terms with my lot in life.
Do you really think I didn’t expect to see you one of these days?
You or someone like you. The angel of death at my bedside.
One way or another, it was always going to be like this for me. ”
“It was always going to be ugly,” he agreed, though when his fingers flexed against my throat—just enough to get my attention—I thought I’d hit a nerve. Somewhere in there, very deep. “But tonight, it turns out, it is me. And I have a different aesthetic than butchers like your father.”
“Art is in the eye of the beholder,” I managed to get out, that hand tight enough that I wasn’t entirely certain he was going to let me keep breathing.
I wondered if this had been all an elaborate setup on his part, making it seem as if I would have more time when he knew if he would snuff me out, just like this.
Making it seem like talking to him worked, or might work.
Making it seem like this was anything other than what it was.
The execution of an asset, to be used as leverage against a more important player.
Maybe what he really liked was toying with hope.
“Don’t worry,” I managed to squeak out. “I promise to give you an excellent review.”
Once again, the dark ferocity in his gaze seemed to…thicken.
Jovi didn’t squeeze his hand tighter. Instead, he let go of my throat, and before I could truly process that, he was tying first one strip of ripped pillowcase over my mouth.
He secured it tightly enough so that it pulled between my lips and made me have to think entirely too much about the placement of my tongue.
But he wasn’t done. He took another strip and tied it over the first, this one wide enough to cover the lower part of my face entirely.
Then he stepped back, checked his work with a few quick jerks of his fingers, then moved back again—this time to cast his cool gaze around the room, letting it land on the bed.
“Now, I’m afraid, I need your blood.” And I was sure that I saw something like a smile in his gaze when I jerked at that. “Calm yourself, Rux. I only require a little. We need to leave a message, you understand.”
And I didn’t know what he was going to do. What I knew was that I wanted to make the decision. This might be nothing more than false hope I was selling myself, this might be a farce all the way around—but if I chose it, it was mine.
This was the kind of mantra that had gotten me through my childhood. If I chose to talk back to my father—which could be anything from saying hello at the wrong time, or being too much, whatever that meant—if I chose the beating, it hurt less.
If I chose the things this man planned to do to me, then they were mine, too.
Or maybe I thought he might be as well.
So I nodded as if he was asking for my permission. I followed that up by jerking my head toward my bedside table where a very small nail kit lay open with a sharp pair of scissors readily at hand.
He followed my gaze, then looked back at me. “What a bossy thing you are, assuming a man like me does not come prepared. But this is even better.”
And then he reached over and picked up the scissors. My choice, I told myself.
Then he turned back to me and hauled me up with one arm, tossing me face down onto the bed in a single, easy movement.
Everything inside me went still, then seemed to catapult off into the ether as he climbed onto the bed after me.
Then his hands were on me.
And before I could process that, I hissed at the sting of the pinprick I felt in one finger, grateful that he hadn’t given me any warning—
Then less grateful as I felt that same prick in another finger and another.
In all of them, one after the next, with relentless precision.
I buried my face in the bed. I gave myself over to the inevitability.
Then his hands were on my hands, pressing them in a way that didn’t make sense until I thought about the fact that he wanted blood.
The stinging faded, and when it did, I could pay more attention to the position that I was in, on my bed with my ass in the air and my hands behind my back and him—
But he flipped me over, and looking at him was…worse.
And much, much better than any little bit of stinging.
Jovi’s gaze was bright. Hot, I was sure of it.
But his voice was like ice when he said, “Roll.”
I forgot I couldn’t speak, but the noise I made must have indicated confusion.
“Roll around,” he told me, the words a soft but implacable order. “Make a mess.”
So that was what I did.
And it should have been sickening. It should have been creepy and strange, but that wasn’t what it felt as I writhed about on the bed, spurred on by his merciless gaze. As I got too warm and my pajama top rode up and I could feel his gaze on the swath of my belly it showed him.
That wasn’t what I felt as I flung myself this way and that, rolling and shaking myself over my sheets and the covers, and anything else I could touch my hands. I made myself hot. I made myself feel disheveled.
Inside and out.
And I could feel all of it throbbing between my legs, like he was branding me without even laying a finger upon me. With nothing more than that intent, hot gaze.
The first person in my entire life who had ever really seen me. All of me.
That notion made me shudder so hard it was like a terrible wave, a cramp and a rush and almost—
“Enough,” he said, and I stopped, and didn’t know why I felt a sort of sob roll through my chest, like loss. I swallowed it down.
I didn’t know how long I’d been rolling around like that. A few moments? An hour? A whole lifetime? I couldn’t tell.
Jovi moved toward me then and looked at me, almost curiously, as he pushed my hair back out of my face. I felt a moment of wonder and terrible shame that he could feel the damp heat of my skin.
That mouth of his curved again. Then he hauled me to the edge of the bed and bent me over it, so I was face down once more.
That wasn’t better, either.
Nor was the way that he took his time sucking on each and every one of the fingertips he’d hurt.
Until I was…
I didn’t know what I was. I didn’t know what he was doing.
But it was more than just a wave. It was like a storm. It was terrible.
It was something very much not terrible at all. It was heat and suction and the wetness of his mouth, and I was remembering what his mouth looked like, that sensual impossibility—
My legs were pressed together, and I was already overstimulated, and my breasts were pressed down into the bed so I could feel my nipples drag against the mattress with every breath I took.
And I could feel a different storm beginning, deep between my legs, rolling and surging and growing and almost—
Once more with the almost—
But he pulled me up again then. He stood me beside the bed and when he looked down at my face, I had the impression that he was laughing.
Though of course he made no sound.
I couldn’t bear to look at him with all the sensation careening around inside me, so I looked over at the bed instead.
Something in me hitched, because I could see the blood everywhere.
Not a lot, but enough to terrify anyone who came inside, I’d think.
And the bed was a mess, the covers strewn all about and the pillow ripped and shredded, with feathers everywhere. Almost as if—
“You see it now,” he said, much too close to my ear. “My vision. A present for your father from Il Serpente.”
He didn’t wait for me to react. Or maybe I had finally frozen in fear the way a normal person would have a long time ago—though there was not one part of me that thought this was fear, only that it should be.
The bed could look however it looked. I was the one who knew what had and hadn’t happened there. I also knew that no one in this house would mourn me or what they would imagine had occurred here when they saw it.
The only thing my father would mourn was his bargaining power.
Somehow, that soothed me. Somehow, it made me more deeply appreciative of Jovi’s artistry, such as it was.
He lifted me up then and tossed me over his shoulder as if, once again, I weighed no more than a single down feather.
And that left me all alone with the thoughts in my head as his shoulder pressed into my soft belly.
I could hold on to nothing as he moved. I had nothing to do but feel the faint ache in my fingertips, far outweighed by the sensation and memory of his mouth on each and every one of them.
I had nothing but the memories of my reaction to his touch, the sure knowledge that he knew exactly what he had done to me.
So I did the only thing I could.
I shut my eyes and told myself the thing I always did.
This is my choice. This is what I want. I am getting exactly what I deserve.
And then he opened the door to my bedroom and stepped through it, into whenever waited for us outside.
Directly into the fate I’d chosen, so whatever happened, it was mine.