CHAPTER 4 #2
I didn't let her go. I twisted my grip and shoved her backward with the sheer force of my heavy body.
Her boots skidded uselessly on the gray concrete, leaving black rubber scuff marks on the floor as I drove her back until she slammed hard against the wall.
The rough, unfinished concrete scraped audibly against the back of her neck, leaving fine gray dust clinging to her dark hair.
I slammed my full weight into her, pinning her completely against the cold stone.
Her breath huffed out in a harsh, desperate gasp as the air was forcefully punched from her lungs.
I caged her in. The stark contrast between the freezing air of the cell and the radiating heat of my broad chest pressing against her was suffocating.
I could break her right here, I realized in the back of my head.
I could just lean my weight into her ribcage until she stopped breathing altogether.
"Nowhere left to run," I murmured, my face inches from hers. "Look at me."
I shifted my grip, taking both of her wrists in one of my massive hands and pinning them brutally above her head against the wall.
My fingers wrapped entirely around both her delicate wrists, locking them in a vise grip she couldn't even begin to fight.
I used my free hand to grip her jaw, my calloused fingers digging into the soft flesh of her cheeks, forcing her head up, forcing her to look me dead in the eyes.
We were so close our noses were nearly touching.
I breathed in her panicked oxygen. She tried to fight dirty, lifting her knee to drive it straight up into my groin, but I anticipated the strike instantly.
I shifted my leg and drove my thigh forward, forcefully pinning both of her legs against the wall with my own heavy, immovable weight.
"Fight me all you want. You're still in my house," I told her, the smell of the scotch I'd drank an hour ago heavy on my breath as I spoke right into her face.
My thumb rubbed roughly against her jawline.
"You think this is a game? You think I'm just going to let you walk out of here because you have a temper? "
Margarita thrashed against the wall, her oversized, blood-stained scrubs rustling harshly against the concrete, but she couldn't move a single fucking inch.
She was totally immobilized. Stripped of her weapon and her mobility, she resorted to the only weapon she had left.
She opened her mouth and started spitting pure venom.
She cursed me out, a rapid-fire stream of hatred attacking my character, my syndicate, my past, and the ugly, raised scars covering my body.
She glared at me like she wanted to rip my throat out with her teeth.
"You're nothing but a scarred piece of trash, Damon!
" she screamed, her voice echoing shrilly in the confined space, vibrating right through my own chest. She twisted her wrists under my grip, her heels scraping wildly against the floor trying to find purchase.
"Kill me! Just do it and get it over with! You're a goddamn monster!"
She was trying to find a crack in the armor, trying to wound me psychologically because she couldn't do it physically.
She didn't realize I didn't have any cracks left.
I squeezed her jaw harder, not enough to snap the bone, but enough to firmly shut her mouth and cut off her tirade.
I leaned my head down, my mouth hovering right next to her ear.
The rough, dark stubble on my jaw scraped harshly against the incredibly soft skin of her earlobe and neck, the sharp friction causing her to flinch.
I lowered my voice into a terrifying, gravelly rumble that vibrated straight through her skull.
"Keep talking and I'll give you something real to scream about," I whispered, the hot air of my breath washing over her neck. I pressed my thumb harder into her chin, maintaining the absolute physical dominance. "You’re mine, Margarita. Every drop of blood in your veins belongs to me now."
She went rigid against the wall. I thought I had broken her. I thought the reality of her total helplessness had finally set in. But then, in a final, unhinged act of absolute defiance, Margarita turned her head slightly and spit directly into my face.
The warm saliva landed high on my cheekbone, right beneath my left eye.
The room went completely, dead silent. The sudden absence of noise was deafening.
I froze. The ticking of my expensive watch on my wrist sounded like a goddamn bomb counting down to zero.
A single drop of her spit traveled slowly, mockingly down my cheek, catching the harsh light from the flickering bulb overhead.
She stared at me, her chest heaving, her eyes wide with a chaotic mixture of sheer terror and vindictive triumph.
She had crossed a line that couldn't be uncrossed.
"Go to hell," she breathed out, her voice trembling but thick with hate. "I'll never belong to you."
Something in my brain snapped violently in half.
The cold, tactical syndicate boss I had spent years building up evaporated in a millisecond, replaced by something entirely feral and primal.
Everything went white. The logic, the plan, the patience—it was all fucking gone.
I didn't even bother wiping the spit off my face.
My eyes darkened into something bottomless as I stared fixedly at her lips.
I drew in a sharp, ragged breath, my nostrils flaring as the sharp metallic scent of gun oil radiating off my own skin filled my head.
"You shouldn't have done that," I stated, my voice completely devoid of anything resembling humanity. I stared at her mouth. "Now I have to break you."
I didn't give her a fraction of a second to scream or turn her head.
I crashed my mouth down onto hers in a violent, punishing collision.
It wasn't a kiss; it was a goddamn assault.
I smashed her lips against her own teeth, the blunt force of my face bumping hard against her nose, hard enough to instantly bring involuntary tears welling up in her eyes.
She tried to keep her mouth clamped shut, but I used the hand gripping her jaw to forcefully squeeze and pry her mouth open, invading her completely.
I claimed her mouth with a territorial, ravenous hunger, asserting my dominance in the most visceral way possible.
"Mine," I growled directly against her mouth, swallowing her gasp. "Shut up and take it."
The kiss was utterly brutal. Our teeth clashed painfully.
The overwhelming, potent taste of me—cheap whiskey and expensive tobacco—flooded her senses.
She moaned, a muffled, frantic sound of protest against my lips as she tried to twist her head away, but I held her rigidly in place.
Her hands, still locked above her head in my crushing one-handed grip, curled into fists.
She clawed desperately at my fingers, her short fingernails digging into my knuckles, leaving bright red crescent marks in my flesh.
I didn't care. I bit down on her soft lower lip, biting hard enough to split the skin.
The immediate, warm, metallic taste of copper flooded both of our mouths, mixing sickeningly with the heat of our shared rage.
I was marking her. I was making sure that every single breath she took for the rest of the week tasted like my violence.
"Taste it, Margarita," I commanded roughly against her bloody lips, licking the blood off her skin with a rough swipe of my tongue. "This is what happens when you bite."
And then I felt it. Beneath the frantic struggling, beneath the hatred and the clawing, a faint, involuntary tremor ran directly through Margarita's entire body.
It wasn't the rigid shaking of pure terror or the thrashing of a fight.
It was a physical, unmistakable shudder of biological response.
I felt the muscles in her thighs, pinned tightly under my own, suddenly tense up and then go inexplicably soft for a split second.
Her body was betraying her logic. She was responding to the heavy, suffocating heat of my body and the absolute dominance of my mouth, even while her brain was screaming in total protest. She was biologically reacting to the predator caging her.