Chapter 16 When Monsters Love
WHEN MONSTERS LOVE
DANI
Iwoke up alone again, but this time the emptiness felt…different.
Heavier. Like something had shifted in the space between sleeping and waking, between dreaming up normal and accepting I was never going to see it again.
My body ached. Not just from the sex—though that was definitely part of it. It was a restless, buzzing frustration that had nothing to do with being trapped and everything to do with the man who’d whispered things in the dark last night he had no right to say.
I never wanted this life… Some of us are born into hell… Until you.
He never wanted this life. Neither did I.
So what the hell were we doing to each other?
The penthouse was quiet, that late-night hush where even the city below sounded like it had dialed itself down. I could hear faint traffic under the double glazing, the occasional distant horn, the soft whoosh of the HVAC.
I found him in the living room.
He stood by the windows in nothing but dark pajama pants, city lights and snow halos painting his bare back in silver.
A tumbler of amber sat loose in his hand, half-full.
The Christmas tree in the corner glowed softly, white lights blinking on a timer.
In the street below, I heard the faint echo of a carol—someone leaving a bar singing badly, or a TV left on in another apartment.
“Drinking alone at midnight,” I said, padding across the cold marble. “Very on-brand.”
He didn’t turn right away, but his shoulders tightened at the sound of my voice.
“Sleep is a luxury I can’t afford,” he said.
Always the cryptic answers. Always the walls.
I moved closer, drawn by something I didn’t want to name. The way the moonlight on the snow outside bounced back up through the glass, cutting across the scars on his back. Little white lines and puckered marks. Not accidents. Not clumsy childhood disasters.
Violence survived.
“What happened to you?” The question slipped out before I could drag it back.
This time, he turned.
Ice water eyes met mine. Raw. Unguarded. Like he’d forgotten to put on his armor tonight and only remembered when I walked in.
“The same thing that’s happening to you,” he said quietly. “I’m being destroyed by something I can’t control.”
By me.
Is he meaning me?
I should’ve stepped back. Wrapped myself in sarcasm, put the walls up, gone back to bed and pretended nothing was changing.
Instead, I stepped closer. Close enough to see the pulse kicking at his throat. Close enough to smell the whiskey on his breath and the clean scent of his skin underneath.
“Maybe we’re destroying each other,” I whispered.
His laugh was short and bitter. “Maybe that’s the point.”
Maybe it was. Maybe we were both too broken to do anything but draw blood from ourselves and call it love.
He set his glass down with deliberate care on the table. Like one wrong move would shatter whatever fragile thing was trying to grow between us.
When he looked at me again, I saw something in his expression I’d never seen before.
Uncertainty.
“Dani.” My name on his lips sounded like a prayer and a curse twisted together. “You should go back to bed.”
Because you’re dangerous, that tone said. Because I’m dangerous. Because this is.
“What if I don’t want to?” I asked.
His control cracked.
Not a lot. Not visible to people who didn’t know him. But I knew enough now to see it: the way his jaw clenched, how his fingers twitched like he didn’t know what to do with them if they weren’t holding a weapon or a steering wheel or me.
“Then we’re both fucked,” he said.
We already were.
We’d been fucked—metaphorically and literally—since that night in the tree lot. Since his shower. Since every time I’d said yes with my body and no with my mouth and then failed to follow through.
I reached out slowly, like I was trying not to spook a wild animal. Dragged one fingertip along a thin white scar that cut across his ribs.
His breath hitched, audible in the quiet.
He didn’t move away. Didn’t grab my wrist. Didn’t shut it down.
He let me map the damage with my fingers. A nick here, a long slice there. Stories I didn’t know, written on his skin.
“Who did this?” I asked, tracing another line.
“Someone who thought they owned me,” he said, voice rough. “Someone who was wrong.”
Like you think you own me, I thought.
Except that wasn’t the whole truth anymore. Ownership was too small a word for this.
His hand came up and covered mine, pinning my palm flat against his chest. Heat radiated through my skin. His heart thudded against my hand, hard and fast.
Human.
“I can’t promise you anything,” he said, voice cracking on the last word. “I can’t promise you’ll survive loving me.”
Loving.
“I can’t promise I’ll survive not trying,” I whispered back. “You don’t have to be a monster all the time.”
“What if that’s all I am?” he asked, so dark it made goosebumps race over my arms.
I shook my head, throat tight, and turned like I was going back to bed, because if I didn’t I was going to say something that dragged this into territory neither of us knew how to navigate.
He didn’t let me get very far.
His fingers wrapped gently but firmly around my wrists, drawing me back to him.
“Tell me no,” he said, whiskey and winter in his breath. “And I’ll stop.”
“Maybe I don’t want you to stop,” I said.
There it was. The moment everything tipped from “we shouldn’t” to “we’ve already gone too far to pretend we can reverse.”
He kissed me.
Not like he had in the shower, not like he had at the altar or against the door. This wasn’t conquest or claiming. This was surrender.
His mouth was soft against mine, almost cautious. Desperate in a way that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with begging me not to crush the last fragile piece of him he hadn’t handed to anyone else.
This wasn’t the killer from the tree lot.
This was the man underneath—the one who hadn’t wanted any of this, who’d been handed a crown and a crime family and learned to live with blood under his fingernails.
My hands slid up his chest, over old scars and new tension, and around his neck. His hair was softer than I expected between my fingers. He groaned into my mouth, the sound pure need, and I felt it everywhere.
“Dani,” he breathed when he tore his mouth from mine for air. It was almost a gasp. “If we do this—this—there’s no going back.”
There had been no going back the night his bullets hit snow instead of me.
“I know,” I said. And I did.
What happened next wasn’t like the other times.
He didn’t throw me against a wall. Didn’t pin me with a bruising grip and fuck me like this might be the last time.
He touched me like he had all night. All year. Forever.
His hands slid under the hem of his T-shirt I was wearing, pushing it up, fingers spreading over my stomach, my ribs, my breasts with reverence. Every place he’d claimed before, he visited again—slower this time. Memorizing.
I pushed back, refusing to let this be just him owning me. I slid my palms over his shoulders, down his back, mapping every notch of spine and valley of muscle. Daring him to lower his guard. Daring myself to let mine fall too.
When he guided me back toward the couch instead of the bed, my chest tightened. The tree’s white lights reflected in the glass behind it, casting pale halos over the dark leather.
He sat and pulled me into his lap, turning me until I straddled him. My nightgown rode up; cool air kissed the backs of my thighs. His erection pressed hot and insistent against me, even through the thin barrier of his pants.
Too many clothes between us. Too many lies.
Somehow, my nightgown hit the floor. Then his pajama pants. I found myself naked in his lap, his hands shaking slightly as they slid up my sides like he was terrified and ecstatic at the same time.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
It sounded like a statement he’d finally allowed himself to say out loud instead of a line.
No one had ever touched me like this. Like they were learning me through their fingers. Like every reaction I had mattered.
City lights painted him in silver and shadow. The scars, the ink, the places I knew he kept knives. No armor. No shirt. No lies—at least not the easy ones.
He knelt between my legs a moment later, his body all coiled muscle and control, and drew me forward until I was centered above him, back resting against the cushions, legs open over his thighs. His cock nudged at my entrance, hot and heavy, a promise instead of a demand.
His eyes met mine.
Those winter eyes had dragged me into hell. Tonight they looked like they might be the only way through it.
He slid his thumb over my clit in slow, deliberate circles. Not a tease this time. A methodical unraveling. My hips jerked without my permission.
“Dani,” he murmured.
I needed to hear it again. Needed to save the sound somewhere inside me for when this all went to shit.
“Konstantin,” I breathed.
Saying his name felt like drawing runes on skin. Binding us with something invisible and irreversible.
“If we do this…” His voice caught. For once, the unflappable crime lord was having trouble finishing a sentence. “If we cross this particular line… I’m going to make you come so hard you’ll see stars.”
“Promises, promises,” I said, voice shaking, a little wild.
“I always keep my promises,” he said.
He held my hips and lifted, guiding me down on him one excruciating inch at a time. No hard thrust. No forcing.
I sank onto him slowly, the stretch just as shocking and just as perfect as the first time, but different now. Cleaner. Like there was nothing else in the room besides the feeling of him filling me.
His lips brushed my neck. His teeth grazed skin, just enough pressure to make my toes curl. His thumb never left my clit, circling, pressing, pushing me higher.
He said my name again, low and wrecked, and I almost shattered just from that.
He didn’t ask for permission this time. Didn’t wait to see if I’d change my mind. He just took what we both knew I’d already given.
I rolled my hips, grinding down, finding a rhythm that made sparks shoot up my spine. He matched me, thrusting up with controlled power, hand in my hair angling my mouth back to his.
He kissed me like he never wanted to breathe without me again.
My hands dug into his shoulders, nails biting into skin. Marking him. Claiming him in return.
“So greedy,” he whispered against my lips. “So beautiful.”
The way he said beautiful sounded like fact, not flattery. Like he didn’t know how to see me any other way now.
His pace picked up. Thumb merciless at my clit, cock driving into me just right, everything narrowing to the places our bodies met.
Every nerve was fire. Every breath felt stolen from some world where I was smart enough not to do this.
When he came, it was with a growl that shook his chest against mine, somewhere between a curse and a vow. His arms locked around me, holding me so tight I almost couldn’t breathe, as if letting go meant losing something he’d finally admitted he wanted.
“Don’t touch me like I’m precious,” I panted when I could think again, grabbing his chin so he had to look at me. “Don’t treat me like I’m something you’re afraid will break. I’m not made of glass. I won’t shatter.”
“You shouldn’t have to be strong,” he murmured, fingers trailing up my spine. Goosebumps followed in their wake. “Not for my sake.”
“Everyone should get to be weak sometimes,” I said, dropping my forehead to his. “Even monsters.”
We didn’t know how to be weak.
Not really.
But for a moment, with me sprawled over him and his heart beating hard against my chest, it felt like we were learning.
Fear didn’t go away.
It changed shape.
It wasn’t fear of him that made my stomach knot anymore. It was fear of losing him. Of losing this warped, impossible, intoxicating thing between us.
I turned, letting him pull me back against his chest, his arms locking around me from behind. His body was a wall between me and the rest of the world. For a moment, it felt like nothing could touch us there, on a couch in a glass box, while snow fell quietly outside.
I realized, with a jolt, that he was trembling.
Actually trembling.
Whatever this was, it had cracked him, too.
For the first time, it felt like we were making love, not war.
“Are you okay?” I asked softly, twisting enough to press a kiss over one of the scars near his heart.
His arms tightened. “No,” he said honestly. “You?”
Terrified. Exhilarated. Completely wrecked.
“No,” I admitted. “But maybe that’s okay.”
We stayed there for a long time, breathing in sync. City lights played across the glass, over the tree, over our reflections. Two silhouettes tangled together instead of isolated shapes on either side of the bed.
“I never thought I’d want to live past thirty,” he said eventually, voice rough with something I’d never heard from him before. “Then you looked at me in that lot, and suddenly I wanted… forever.”
Forever.
In his world, forever was measured in seconds between bullets. In mine, it had vanished the second I’d stepped into his.
I lifted my head and studied his face. The vulnerability there, the way his usual composure had finally, completely shattered.
“What does that mean for us?” I asked.
His hand came up, cupping my cheek, thumb brushing across my skin like he was memorizing it.
“It means,” he said slowly, “I’m going to do everything I can to keep you alive. Even if it kills me.”
Even if it kills us both.
The fragile line between desire and danger had been obliterated. Whatever this was, it wasn’t just possession anymore. It wasn’t just need or desperation.
It was love. Messy, impossible, probably deadly love between two people who should’ve run screaming in opposite directions and somehow hadn’t.
I opened my mouth to say it—that maybe survival wasn’t the point anymore, that maybe some things were worth burning out for—but stopped.
For now, this was enough.
For now, we were enough.
We lay there in the half-dark, snow falling silently outside, Christmas tree lights reflecting off the glass in soft pulses. I let myself relax fully into his arms for the first time.
Tomorrow would bring new lies. New enemies. New reasons to run.
Tonight, there was just us.
And somehow, terrifying as it was, that felt like the safest place I’d ever been.