Chapter 19 #2
He was baiting me, forcing me to stand in front of the thing that had defined my childhood and my fear and maybe he was forcing me to stare it down so that it wouldn’t define the rest of me. Why should I? My hands trembled on the knob but I didn’t turn it. “I don’t have to prove anything to you.”
“No.” His pale gaze held mine. “But you damn sure should prove it to yourself. You’ve lived in fear of him and of silence and being alone too long. You think that doesn’t stem from this?”
“You’re one to talk!” I screamed, shoving at his chest. “You won’t even look at me because of a damn arrangement our parents made. For family, right?”
“You live for you from now on,” he said, voice low and lethal. “Not them. Not even me. Overcome that right now and I’ll do the same.”
He didn’t move. Didn’t push. He waited for me to make the decision.
And that’s when it clicked. This was the real Bane—not the executioner at the dinner table, not the cold stranger that sometimes would come to me in the night.
This was the version of him that existed under all of that: The one who forced the people he cared about to confront what would otherwise destroy them.
He wasn’t dragging me here to hurt me. He was dragging me here to show me I could stand in front of it and not break. That the silence and the loneliness would never own me again.
My hand shook on the knob. The lock was still on the outside. My father’s lock.
I turned to Bane. His silhouette filled the hallway behind me, his pale eyes fixed on me but softer now, waiting. He didn’t push. He just stood there, hands at his sides like he was ready to catch me if I ran.
But instead of running, I reached for him.
I fisted his tie, yanked him forward and crushed my mouth to his, dragging him into the black with me as I stepped backward over the threshold.
We fell into the darkness together, my back hitting cold steel, my heart hammering against my ribs like it wanted out.
Bane slammed the door behind us and the sound hit me as hard as it did as when I was young. Fear and darkness overtook me.
I felt the panic first as I ripped my lips from his to gasp for air, but his hand was at my chin pulling me back to him, so he could take and take and take. He didn’t give me space or a moment to catch my breath.
He was unyielding and unrelenting.
He didn’t allow room for the panic to rattle me or give me time to scream. He chased it away with how he bit at my bottom lip, how he shoved me up against the back of the closet, us so close together that nothing, not even a painful memory could come between us now.
And that’s when the heat of his touch really rolled through me. His presence filled every inch of that closet I used to fear so much and became a solid unyielding force that couldn’t be reckoned with.
I knew we were in the dark, just the way he liked to be.
It was his loophole that I couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see his eyes.
But tonight I didn’t care. Tonight, it wasn’t about Bane Black, the executioner, or Bianca Zarelli, the pawn.
This was about a new me now, about how I’d hated this silence, this prison, and this loneliness, but I was making a new sound within it on my own terms. As his mouth crashed over mine again, I realized I wasn’t falling into the closet.
I was falling into myself—into the version of me that could finally stand here and not break.
I wouldn’t be what any of them tried to shape me as ever again because I was going to shape myself.
Tonight, I’d desecrate the place that used to bring me to my knees. And I’d take what I wanted too.
I bit back at Bane’s lips and clawed at his neck as I dragged my fingertips up and into his hair.
I pulled him hard against me, wanting to make my mark.
Then, I tore my lips from his and went for his neck, biting so hard I tasted blood as his palm slid up my thigh, fingers curling possessively when they got to my center.
I heard the tremor of his breath against my temple, “You feel that? How you control it? You control every fucking thing around you, Pink.”
“Even you?” I breathed out as his fingers pushed my panties to the side and my hands went to his trousers to undo them and then I wrapped my fingers around his cock. “Do I get to control you from now on?”
“You always did,” he admitted. “You always will even when I’m halfway across the world trying to make sure you don’t.”
I shoved him against the door and got on my knees then. I felt his pre-cum against my thumb as I brushed over it, but I wanted all of it. I wanted to taste and hear and feel how he completely unraveled for me alone in this space. I wanted to rewrite the memory of it.
I wasn’t a little girl locked away doing what everyone told me now. I was a woman who had power over a man that not even my family could reign in.
“Tell me how you like it, Bane,” I whispered before I took his length into my mouth. I didn’t do anything like this much at all, but I knew to take him all the way back. My body wanted all of him in any way I could have him. I sucked him into the back of my throat and moaned.
His fingers found the pulse at my throat, thumb stroking once before moving to my neck and groaning, “I like the feel of my cock at the back of your throat, Pink. All the way down it. You take it so good.”
I shuddered at how he gave me praise even while I was on my knees, how he knew maybe better than I did that even when he thought he was punishing me, he was at my mercy, too.
I moved up and down his length, swirling my tongue and digging my nails into his thighs as he encouraged me further. “Just like that, Pink.
He pulled me from his cock and lifted me up. “This is where he tried to make you small,” he said, voice rough. “You feel that way anymore?”
I took a breath and then let it out slow, realizing there wasn’t a shakiness to it anymore. “I’m not scared anymore, Bane.”
I felt the pads of his fingertips across my cheek as he murmured, “You never should have been scared. You were always strong enough. And I’m going to make sure you always feel that. You understand?”
I shuddered. Not from fear but from the absolute finality in his promise. I nodded slowly.
“Good. You’re not going to be scared of a single thing. And damn sure not a single person but me, Pink.”
I chuckled at that. “You can’t conquer all my fears, Bane.”
His growl ricocheted off the walls of the small space. “Watch me.”
He opened the door then and pulled me out from what used to be my hell to lead me down the hall to my room. He made me sit on my bed and then he went to the drawer and pulled each of the masks out. All of them.
“Pick one.” His original skull balaclava mask, Ghostface, another intricate skull on all black, the phantom. He even had a spiked gas mask, but none of those were the one that came to me that night in Rafe’s bedroom. These all chased away the dread of that one mask and left heat in fear’s wake.
Yet, as I stared at him with those perfect high cheekbones, that strong jaw and scruff from not shaving all day, I knew I wanted even more.
I wanted all of him as he stood at the bottom of my bed.
“You going to be only the stranger who fucks me again? I don’t want you in the dark no matter how good it is.
No matter if we fuck in the closet while I chase away all my fears.
I don’t want the mask either. I want the real you, not the ghost of you. ”
“You know you can’t have me that way, Pink. Obligations are what they are.”
“I’m sick of obligations, and I’m sick of doing what’s expected of us.
” I got off the bed and walked around my room.
I went to my drawer and pulled the lighter from it to light the candles around my room.
“My mother used to say candles gave her hope, that they could burn so long even with so little light around them.”
“She wasn’t there for you. She’s as much to blame as him.”
“Maybe…but she was a product of her upbringing and experience. She was the one who let me finish my doctorate rather than marry your brother early.”
“And? She could have chosen not to lock you in that closet,” he pointed out. “Choice should defeat nurture and nature at some point, baby girl.”
“I agree. But then again, I’m contemplating being with a man who can’t choose me over obligation.”
His jaw worked. “Not the same.”
“Isn’t it?” I looked at the masks on the bed and then at him before I told him, “Keep the masks if you want. I’ll have you like I would have a stranger but nothing more, Bane.”
He seemed to be considering what I meant, but I didn’t have time to tell him. Instead, I went to find my father’s liquor in his study and started to take them from his hutch. Bane had followed and watched without asking questions.
I picked up a bottle of his favorite whiskey. “This one’s his favorite.”
“Decent taste, baby doll, but I’ll get you that back home. You don’t need his.” He shrugged as he leaned on my father’s desk, eyeing me curiously.
I didn’t want a drink. The smell of it actually turned my stomach. It reminded me of how mad he’d get when he drank it. Instead, I wanted to do what we came here to, I wanted every memory destroyed into something better.
I held Bane’s gaze as I tipped the bottle slowly and we both watched as the amber liquid swayed toward the bottle’s opening and then splashed out on the Persian rug. I stepped back and kept going, pouring it everywhere in the room.
I took bottle after bottle and poured.
“Fuck, Pink,” Bane swore but he didn’t move.
He watched me and licked his lips as if he was mesmerized by my destruction.
I reached for another bottle and another and another to fold into the crook of my arms and then I walked up the stairs pouring it on each step.
I made sure to douse the closet’s door too, and then I left a trail to my room.
I wanted that place to burn.
But before we left, I turned to Bane who’d followed me and told him. “Take the masks and put one on.”
He didn’t fight with me about it. He did as he was told, choosing a tear gas mask to slide on, one he knew I freaking loved. It felt like home, like comfort, like a language we both knew even when no one else did.
We walked back to the foyer and then he pulled a metal lighter from his pocket, handing it to me. “Light away, Pink. Burn down all those memories you hate.” I immediately heard how his voice had changed from the mask, how it lowered, and my whole body tightened with the sound.
“We’re going to get in a shit ton of trouble.”
“I’ll take trouble over your pain. I intend to burn down every single memory you hate and extinguish every fear you have anyway. If you hate your childhood home, we burn it down. If you hate the memories, we make new ones.”
“But I hate the silence too, Bane. I hate the silence from you most.”
He nodded like he finally understood. “I’ll work on that.”
“And what about the rest?” I held the lighter tight as I waited for his answer.
“I can work on the rest, baby girl. I’ll work on whatever you need me to as long as you don’t hurt yourself again. I hurt you. No one else. Especially not yourself.”
“Then wreck me tonight, Bane, because I don’t exactly enjoy doing your job for you.”
The memories of how he’d fucked me before in that mask he wore came back immediately. He’d never been gentle with the tear gas, and I didn’t want gentle now.
I wanted hard and unapologetic and vicious.
The blaze flickered over the leather of it and there was that small instinct to run, to escape. I felt the adrenaline pounding in my veins and I embraced and reveled in it.
There was something about standing in your memories and facing them down, standing in your fears and not jerking back, something beautiful and empowering.
“Promise me you’ll fuck me like you want to tonight.”
“How’s that?”
“Like you hate me … Like I slept with your brother, Bane, because I did.”