Chapter 42
COLE
For one perfect moment, the dungeon is silent. All the build-up, all the taunting, all the psychological horror of years—it’s suspended in an eyeblink outside of time.
Then, Tarasov bellows. Kate matches his howl with one of her own, a wordless roar like an ancient battle cry.
Tarasov’s hands scrabble beside his ankles, every muscle in his body straining against the spreader bar. Kate drops her scalpel by her side.
Tarasov starts to shudder—not the shivering he was doing before, but the full-on convulsions of an epileptic seizure. Kate gathers the ruined wedding dress, pulling it away from a spreading crimson lake.
Tarasov twitches, his fingers making feeble movements. Kate looks on, kneeling in a pool of blood.
Tarasov hisses, leaking air like a slashed tire. Kate sighs as the first thick rope of blood reaches the waiting drain.
Tarasov stills. Kate stares.
One minute. Two minutes. Three.
Kate sits back on her heels.
Her movement releases me. I go to the panel built into the wall, the one beside the light switches. It only takes a moment to bring up the controls. One swipe kills the audio on all four cameras. A second takes out the video.
I collect the top sheet from the bed, yards and yards of featureless black silk. Only when I come to stand beside Kate do I realize precisely what she did.
My Kate wasn’t satisfied with castrating Pyotr Tarasov. Her first two cuts must have taken his balls. But she severed his cock as well. And then she continued reaching between his legs, finding the front of his thigh and slashing all the way to bone as she severed his femoral artery.
I cast the sheet into the air, holding one side as it billows like a sail before settling over the two bratva corpses, over the scalpel, over the spool of black thread and a needle that never had a chance to save a life.
Once all of it is covered, I help Kate to her feet.
She stares at the sheet, her gaze fogged with an emotion I can’t read. Her empty hands dangle by her side, smeared with blood. A red streak paints her cheek. The end of her braid traces scarlet splotches on her top.
“I broke the rules,” she says, sounding stunned.
“He knew he was never getting out of here alive.”
“I’m only allowed one cut. That’s the rule. Just one cut.”
“Animals like Tarasov never follow the rules.”
“I’m not an animal.”
I fold my arms around her. “He’ll never hurt another little girl again.”
“All these years, I’ve dreamed about hurting him. Killing him. When I finally had the chance… I broke the rules.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say, tightening my grip. “He’d have done the same. Or worse.”
“And what he has on you… His obshchak… That document will be released!”
“I’ll deal with it. You aren’t responsible for what he did. You can’t blame yourself for any of this. For bringing him here. For keeping him here. For killing—”
“No!” she says, pushing away, her fingers curled into fists.
“I wanted him alive. I wanted to feed him to his own men, to show them who he really was! I wanted them to know he failed when he forced his way past your gate. He failed when he filmed me, before I gave him Viktor. He failed years ago, setting off the Dogfight when all he had to do was hand over Breagha and me, give us back, right as rain.”
She’s broken. She’s twisted. She carried her pain for decades, only to have it ratchet out of control when Tarasov forced her to do…whatever she did to get him to download my code.
“The bratva—” I start to comfort her.
“I was supposed to be the one in control!”
I’m the world’s expert on control. I know what it costs to maintain it. And I understand the terrifying risk of losing it. But I did lose control, for her, a month ago in this very room. That was the night I finally fucked my wife, when I allowed myself to come inside her.
I lost control. And I’m a better man for it.
“I know,” I say. “I understand.” And then I do the only thing I can think of, I offer her the only acceptance she might be able to grasp.
I kiss her bloody fists.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
She gestures with crimson hands. “I have to clean this up.”
“We’ll get to that tomorrow. We’re safe until then. This house is a fortress.”
“But Nilsson—”
“He’s always known where the bodies are buried.”
“Anna—”
“Learned a long time ago never to come down here.”
“The Apex guards. The men outside—”
“They aren’t allowed in the house.”
Her mouth opens. Closes. She still hasn’t agreed.
“Kate,” I say. “You’ve done the hard part. You won. Let me take care of the clean-up. Let me take care of you. Can you do that? Can you trust me to make everything right again?”
She looks around the room. I watch her take in the black sheet. The dull-eyed cameras. The hose against the wall.
But then she looks at the St. Andrew’s cross, in the far corner. The armoire. The bed. The hook in the ceiling, where Tarasov hung, yes, but where she hung first.
She learned to submit here. Her body and her mind and her heart—they all learned to let me take control.
Her smile is shaky, but she nods. “Yes,” she says. “I trust you.”
I slip into my Dom voice to keep her from hearing my relief. “First things first,” I say. “Get out of those clothes.”
“I can’t—” she starts to protest.
“One,” I say.
I don’t even know what I’m counting. I’ll come up with something later, some power exchange to bring both of us back into balance, my perfect little sub and me.
“I won’t fuck you here,” she warns. “Not tonight.”
“Two,” I say, even though that’s one thing I’d never ask her to do.
“You feckin’ arrogant arsehole,” she says.
“Three. And please. Let’s keep counting.”
She flushes, sparking my heart as her cheeks go ripe.
She pulls her blood-stained top over her head and drops it on the floor, near the sheet.
She toes off her shoes and socks, then shimmies out of her yoga pants.
Daring me, staring straight into my eyes, she unhooks her bra and adds it to the pile. Her panties are last to come off.
I leave her there for a moment, ignoring her nipples, which are already hard in the chill of the room.
I cross to the armoire, where a white terry robe is folded in one of the drawers.
I shake it out before I drape it over her shoulders, helping her with her right arm first, then her left.
I knot the fabric tight around her waist.
I keep one hand on her elbow as I guide her across the room.
The dungeon floor is designed to protect against falls, but it’s well after midnight, and she must be exhausted.
I close the door firmly behind us, then lead the way to the second floor and the room we’ve shared since the day I put a ring on her finger.
I only turn on one light in the bathroom, the one on a dimmer, over the tub.
I keep the glow soft, barely enough to pick out the emerald color of Kate’s eyes.
Grateful for the circulating pump that makes hot water flow immediately, I turn the faucet for the rainfall shower head. The air immediately begins to steam.
I strip Kate out of the robe as easily as I put her in it.
She’s left bloodstains on the sleeves, and the tips of her hair have painted abstract crimson paintings over the back.
I dump the soiled terrycloth in the tub, covering it quickly with my shoes and my shirt, my trousers and my boxers and my socks.
All of it will end up back in the dungeon.
All of it will be destroyed, the same as the bodies we’ve left down there.
Despite the warm clouds rising from the shower, Kate is starting to shiver. I hold out one hand and help her to move beneath the spray. Stepping in beside her, I shield her body with mine as I add two of the jets built into the wall.
Her head tilts back as the hot water melts her frozen muscles.
I reach beyond her for the foaming bath gel I added when she moved here, the orange and bergamot that I love smelling on her skin.
Lathering the soap between my hands, I work it over her shoulders, down her arms, around her wrists and her palms and between each of her fingers.
I take the time to discover her nails, as if each one is a precious gemstone waiting for me to polish.
Her legs are next, more lather bubbling between my palms as I measure the jut of her hip bones and the slick planes of her thighs.
Kneeling before her, I feel a twinge in my gut, a remnant ache from the beating I took a week ago.
But my bruises are fading to green and gold; I’m on the mend.
So I’m able to pay close attention to her knees, knowing they were stained by that pool of blood.
I let her balance her weight on my shoulders as I measure her ankles, the arches of her feet, her toes.
I save her hair for last of all. I use my own shampoo, amber and sandalwood, because I want to claim her; I want her to smell like me. I work from her scalp to the tips of her hair, watching the muscles of her spine release all the way from her nape to the dimples above her ass.
I use the hand-held attachment to rinse her clean, chasing white ribbons of suds down her breasts, her belly, her thighs. Once the water runs clear, I work conditioner into her curls. My thumbs find pressure points in her temples and behind her ears. My fingers linger at the base of her skull.
As I rinse her hair, she melts against me. Her brittleness, her raw animal energy, her frantic despair at breaking rules no human could possibly keep, they all swirl down the drain.
I consider all the ways I could have her now.
I could trap her against my chest and get her off with the handheld, changing the gentle massage to punishing needles.
I could press her against the warm granite walls, folding my fingers around her wrists as I take her from behind.
I could put her on her knees and fuck her flushed lips, pulling her slick hair to make her comply.
But it’s late now, long past midnight. She’s ended the most devastating week of her adult life, measuring out everything she is today against a miserable creature who should have died decades ago.
She’s slaughtered demons and nightmares and a man she didn’t want to kill, although a part of me knows that was always her intention, her need, her right.
So I turn off the water. I collect one towel for her body and another for her hair, wrapping her like the precious thing she is. I walk her into the bedroom, and I seat her on the edge of the bed, and I dry every inch of her because I’m not a monster. I’m a man. I’m in absolute control.
But when I fold back the corner of the bedclothes, she looks at me, her eyes suddenly wild. “You promised,” she says.
“Promised what?” I plump her pillows.
“Downstairs,” she says. “You counted.”
“You’ll pay me back another time.” I turn on her nightstand lamp, the one she needs to sleep.
“Three,” she says. “You counted.” She repeats the word like it’s some legal obligation between us.
“Kate…” I say, because I counted in the dungeon, where I keep my tools, and neither of us is going down those stairs again, not tonight. Not for days, maybe even weeks. The type of mess we’ve left down there takes a long time to make right.
She raises her chin. “You owe me,” she says. And then, holding my gaze with perfect defiance, she adds, “Master.”
I wanted that word. I forced it on her by giving her an impossible choice—call me master or I wouldn’t take her downstairs.
But when I did that, I didn’t know she’d been forced to say it years ago. I didn’t know the word carried extra weight for her, a burden Tarasov settled on her when she was just a child.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Not Master.” I’m her Dom, and down the line, she can call me Sir. She can kneel and she can bow her head and she can submit in a thousand other ways. But I won’t ever have her call me Master again.
Before I can explain all that, she takes my hand. She slips my fingers into the perfect V between her thighs, shifting her weight just enough that I can feel the hot, ready slick of her need.
“Please,” she says.
So I give her what she’s begging for.