13. Hyacinth
THIRTEEN
HYACINTH
Why the fuck am I crying?
I drop my face against my bound arm, ignoring the twinge from my other arm.
How pathetic is this? I’m going to get murdered while I’m crying.
I really would rather be fighting back.
Or not dying at all.
If Mom is feeling nice, she’ll make Lionel take my job. If she’s extra mad at me for getting myself killed, she’ll make Chrys do it.
The tears are worse than the nudity. Going out while naked and covered in blood sounds kind of hot, actually. It’s the whole in tears thing that makes this scenario stupid.
Zane lets go of me and unfastens the other cuff from my wrist, even as he shakes his head.
He knows it’s a bad idea.
We both know it’s a bad idea.
But he wraps an arm around the small of my back, ignoring the slickness of blood between us, and he guides me across the room to a small couch. It’s only big enough for two people to sit close together, and he pulls me into his lap.
I can’t remember the last time anyone did something as mundane as hug me.
Maybe Chrys, that night I’d agreed to take her with me to Calamity City.
Crying after sex is pointless.
I got off.
I should be satisfied. Every time I move my shoulders, I can feel the cuts on my back ache deliciously.
It isn’t enough to drown out all the thoughts anymore, though.
“Shh,” he murmurs, kissing the top of my head. “It’s all right.”
I laugh. “It’s not. I let myself get whipped bloody by a man who is probably going to kill me.”
Zane inhales deeply. “It’s kill or be killed,” he agrees. “And I don’t particularly want to die.”
“I’m not going to kill you right now,” I say. “I don’t have the energy for it.”
It would be the perfect time for it, if I still had access to any weapon at all.
I’d made sure to hold my hand in such a way that there would be more leeway when fastened, and my wrist is sore from how I’d had to contort myself to undo the strap.
I wasn’t quite naive enough to let myself get bound without an exit route.
But I am naive enough to sit here in Zane Vilani’s lap, naked, wounded, and crying.
“And for reasons I’ve yet to understand, I find that I’m not going to kill you just yet either,” Zane murmurs. “So I suppose we’re at a standstill.”
So that’s twice in one day that I’ve failed to kill Zane Vilani.
I blink hard to try to stave off the tears.
“Sorry,” I say, quieter. “I’m not usually this pathetic.” I try to get off his lap, but he tightens his embrace.
“Sub drop isn’t pathetic,” Zane replies. “But then, I’m not sure you managed to reach subspace. I may have gone too hard, too fast.”
Sub drop is for the whiny, weak submissives who can’t handle the pain.
I’m not somebody who needs coddling.
I shake my head. “I’m not… I’m fine.” I wipe my eyes. “I could have handled more.”
If he’d gone harder, I would have been able to forget, instead of focusing on all the reasons this is a bad idea.
“Probably,” Zane says, his hand lightly skimming over my back. The blood is starting to get tacky, but he takes care to avoid the cuts. “I never go into a scene when I’m feeling emotional. I could’ve made you fly so high…” He trails off, and when I glance at his expression, I see that it’s distant.
“Emotional?” I probe.
What does he have to be emotional about?
He wasn’t the one who had to deal with my mother. I thought we’d had fun during the standoff.
He’d been so fucking hot driving that man’s face into the flame.
He stares at me. “It’s been a long night,” he finally says. “But I don’t think I was the only one driven by emotions. Was I, Sin?”
That nickname. It doesn’t sound as silly coming out of his lips as when Chrys or Lionel call me that.
I rest my head against his shoulder. “I got a stern talking to about my duties. It clearly didn’t stick, since I came here to get fucked up.”
Zane nods. Instead of asking questions, he murmurs, “Stand up for me for a moment.”
I get up with a wince as my back twinges, and I feel the loss of the warmth of his body as he takes a step away.
“Sit back down,” he orders.
I sink back down onto the leather loveseat, and I watch as he crosses over to a mini fridge. He crouches down, then pulls out a bottle of water. From a nearby cabinet, he plucks out some small, wrapped item before he returns to me.
“Water,” he says, handing the bottle to me. “And a protein bar. The water is sealed.”
There are dirty tricks he could play even with sealed items. Mom would yell at me for being so trusting.
I don’t care.
I open the bottle and down half of it in one go.
The protein bar feels way too heavy, and I really don’t want to deal with unwrapping it. I let it drop onto the sofa cushion, then stretch out as best I can on the small space. The bottle dangles from my hand.
Zane shakes his head. “Let me grab you a blanket.”
He has one of those nearby, too, something soft and fleecy that he drapes over my shoulders.
What an overachiever.
He grabs the protein bar and unwraps it for me, then pulls off a piece of it and holds it to my lips. “You need the sugar,” he tells me. “And you need more of that water.”
I part my lips. He places the snack into my mouth, and I lick his fingers as he pulls them away.
My heartbeat slows.
He nods, then feeds me another piece. I take that, too, this time sucking one of his fingers into my mouth.
“Unless you want to get back down on your knees and take care of any problems you cause, behave,” Zane warns me. “And you still need more water.” He takes the water bottle from me.
I was on the verge of dropping it anyway.
I’m suddenly really, really tired.
A scene like this should have made my adrenaline soar, not left me shaken and lethargic.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
Zane wraps one arm around my shoulders and guides me into sitting up again, then he places the bottle to my lips.
I drink without protest, my eyes on him the entire time.
“There you go,” he says. He nudges me over on the small sofa so he can sit next to me. “I’ll clean your back in a few minutes, all right? But I want to make sure you’re okay before I leave the room.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I ask. My head lolls against his shoulder again. “You didn’t hurt me that badly. Fucking knew you were all talk.”
Zane laughs, stroking my hair. “Am I?” he asks. “You’re the first person to say so. Usually, it’s safe-word-central if I try to go all out.”
Safewords.
I’d had one, once.
But what’s the point of safewords if nobody respects them?
‘Please! Mom, please, I’m scared!’ Chrys had shouted through the doors, like it was going to make Mom turn on the lights, like she ever listened.
‘Red,’ I’d said, even though I knew I could take more. He’d called me out on lying, and I’d never bothered again after that because I’ve gone through so much worse.
What’s a whipping, compared to glass shredding the soles of my feet?
“Now you know. I’ll tell everybody. Zane Vilani: world’s softest Dom,” I say, but I turn my head so it’s pressed against his throat. I breathe in his scent, musky from sweat and copper-tainted.
“You’ll say no such thing,” he grumbles, but he continues to stroke my hair.
I wonder what would hurt him more: if I told people he was bisexual, or if I told them he was soft.
I raise my hand up to his chest and press it against his heartbeat. His skin is a few shades darker than mine, a deep olive to my pale cream.
I should have used the razor-tipped nails Chrys prepared for me. Then I could carve him open right now.
Zane takes my hand and twines his fingers through mine.
“What do you think happens next?” he muses. “When do you try to kill me again? Do I refuse to let you leave here tonight?”
“When I’ve come to my senses. You should hope it’s me that kills you. I’ll make it personal. Hot. Loving. I’ll kiss your dying breath from your lips while I dip my fingers into your blood.” I lick the pulse point on his throat. “It’ll be so glorious.”
“For you,” he says dryly. “Somehow, I think I’d get the shitty end of that bargain.” He sighs. “We can’t do this, Sin.”
I scowl and shake my hand free. “Do what? So we had sex. That doesn’t mean anything. You fucked Colt, and it meant nothing. He screamed like a child when I sliced his throat, by the way.”
It had better mean nothing.
Either way, I’m glad I murdered Colt. He didn’t deserve Zane.
Zane’s lips thin into a line. “I don’t have a death wish, Sin.”
“You could’ve fooled me,” I retort. “You invited me over. And you keep not listening to your bodyguard. You’re paranoid, but apparently not paranoid enough to avoid getting into small, enclosed spaces with me.”
The languid energy inside me drains away, replaced by sheer anger at myself.
I’m putting not just myself in danger by being here. I’m risking everything I’ve done for Chrys and Lionel.
“I’m going to get something to clean your injuries up with,” he says, getting up.
Without his warm body next to me, a chill seeps into me. My fingers and toes ache from it.
Pathetic.
Quit whining.
You’ll need to endure worse than this.
My brain can’t decide if it’s a feminine or masculine voice chiding me.
Zane leaves the room, shutting—and locking—the door behind him.
I stand, too, and for one split second I’m in a dark room with only the sliver of light from under the door to guide me through the mess of sharp objects on the floor.
I shake the vision away and move to the cross. My back twinges in pain, but Zane didn’t cut me too badly. Only a few of the lashes broke my skin, I think.
I bend down and grab the blade I’d dropped behind the cross, small enough to hide in my closed hand. It shouldn’t have been so easy to sneak it past his security. I’d been naked, for fuck’s sake. He really needs to hire more competent people.
Then I go to the drawers, where I find a long, thick hemp rope.
The window opens easily, and unlike the homes closer to the city center, there are no bars on it.
I really don’t want to escape through a window again.
I glance back at the couch and consider lying down again. Zane will tend to my wounds, and then…
There’s nothing. Zane will lock me up, if I’m lucky.
Part of me yearns for it.
Locked up, unable to do anything but what he asks of me.
Be there only for him.
Exist only to please him.
But I’ve done that before. It doesn’t lead to anything good.
I tie the rope around the St. Andrew’s cross and feed it through the window, adjusting the blanket so it’ll stay around my shoulders as I make my way to the ground.
He’ll be back any moment now. All it would take is for me to do absolutely nothing. Stay here, become his, or let him kill me. Either way, it’s all over.
I can’t do that to Chrys or Lionel though.
Ignoring the pain stretching across my back, I grab hold of the rope and rappel myself down the side of the building. The blanket threatens to slide down, but it stays mostly in place until I reach the base of the house.
I cut a length of rope from the end, and with that in hand, I run across the well maintained yard.
I hear shouting in the background.
“Sin! Sin, what the fuck are you doing?” Zane calls out. He curses, but I know he’s not going to follow me outside using the rope.
It’ll buy me a few moments as he gets dressed and heads downstairs.
It’s only once I’m outside his property that I fashion myself a dress out of the blanket, with the rope tied around my waist to keep everything in place.
No need to flash the entire city while I make my way back to the hotel.
The bliss from the whipping and orgasm are long gone. Only anger and self-loathing are left behind.
I might need to kill somebody to get rid of this feeling.
Nothing sad or pathetic about me.