Chapter 30 #2
“I wanted to tell you exactly what I was going to do to him,” he continued, his voice dropping to a terrifying, hollow whisper.
“I wanted to describe how I was going to break his bones, one by one. How I was going to listen to him scream the way he made you scream. I wanted to tell you how good it was going to feel to tear his head from his shoulders. I was going to send a message to anyone who thought they could ever touch you again. I wanted to burn the world down, and I knew if I started talking, I would have terrified you.”
He looked at me then, really looked at me, with that intense, agonizing gaze. “I didn’t want to scare you. I didn’t want to look into your eyes and see you looking at me the way you looked at him. I didn’t want you to be afraid of me.”
I moved, ignoring the blood, ignoring the death that clung to him like a shroud. I reached out and took his face in my palms. His skin was feverish, slick with sweat.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I whispered, fierce and broken. “I saw what you did. I know what you are. I am not afraid.”
“You should be.” His eyes searched mine, desperate. “You don’t get it, Annie. This isn’t just about possession. It isn’t just about winning.” He leaned down, his forehead resting against mine. “I’m going to kill anyone who touches you, not because you’re mine, but because they deserve to die.”
I surged up on my toes, gripping the back of his sweat-damp neck to pull him down to me and kissed him.
His body went rigid against mine. For a split second, I thought he might push me away, that he truly believed he was too tainted to touch.
Then he broke. A growl tore from his throat, and his hands, slick with the life he’d just stolen, clamped onto my waist, dragging me flush against him.
The monster he’d been so desperate to hide slammed into me, demanding, taking, possessing. I didn’t pull away. I opened to him, drinking down his darkness, letting the blood on his hands stain my skin because it meant I was alive. It meant I was his.
He pulled back just enough to speak, his breath hot against my lips. “Tell me to stop. Tell me to get the fuck away from you.”
My fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him back to me. “No.”
I crushed my mouth to his again. I tasted copper. It didn’t matter whose blood it was. I swallowed it down.
Cipher moved us until my back was against the wall, his body pinning me in place. His hands gripped my hips, lifting me. The only sound that mattered was our ragged breathing, the only sensation his touch burning my skin as I wrapped my legs around his waist.
“You shouldn’t want this,” Cipher growled against my neck, even as his hands worked frantically at his armor. “You can’t want this.”
“I do,” I whispered, my voice sounding unfamiliar. “I want you. I need you.”
Metal clasps clicked open, fabric rustled, and then he was pushing into me.
“Fuck,” I gasped, the sensation overwhelming, too much and not enough all at once. The stretch burned, my body struggling to accommodate him.
Cipher’s forehead pressed against mine. “Is this what you want?” His voice was rough, desperate. “A monster who just killed a man?”
He pulled back and thrust again, harder this time.
“Yes,” I panted, my head falling back against the wall with a dull thud. “Don’t stop.”
Each thrust drove me harder against the wall. My mask shifted with each impact, the edge digging into my cheek.
“You can’t want this,” he repeated, his words punctuated by the sound of skin against skin. “Can’t want me.”
“I want you to consume me,” I whispered, the confession torn from somewhere deep inside.
His fingers dug harder into my thighs, and he buried his face against my neck. The thundering of my pulse drowned out everything but the sound of his ragged breathing and the slick slide of our bodies coming together.
I didn’t know where the violence ended and the pleasure began. I just knew I needed him to break me so I could feel whole again.
Cipher’s teeth caught my lower lip and the sharp sting made me gasp against his mouth. Blood smeared along my thighs where he gripped me, sticky. Baron Ash’s blood, painting my skin. I arched into the touch, desperate to be marked by him.
When I came, my body seized, wringing everything out of me, both the fear and the relief. I choked on a sob, my nails scratching uselessly against the armor of his suit as the pleasure tore through me.
Cipher pulled out of me with a groan as he came, his release spilling hot against my thigh. His eyes squeezed shut as his body shuddered.
Eventually, he set me down carefully, my legs shaking as they took my weight.
He looked down at me and his gaze snagged on the red smears across my thighs, his handprint.
His eyes widened, just a fraction, before the shutter slammed down.
The heat vanished from his face, replaced by a terrifying, blank mask before he clenched his eyes shut.
“Look at me,” I whispered.
He turned his head away.
“Cipher?”
He didn’t answer. His chest rose and fell with each harsh breath, as his hands moved mechanically, adjusting his suit. He looked angry.
“Look at me,” I repeated, my voice stronger this time despite the uncertainty I felt.
Finally, his eyes snapped to mine. The silver had gone cold and flat.
“You should get cleaned up,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion. He gestured toward a door on the far side of the room. “Bathroom’s there.”
I stared at him, trying to make sense of the sudden shift.
Moments ago, he’d been inside me, our bodies locked together in something that felt like more than just sex.
Now he wouldn’t even look at me properly.
My mind raced, replaying the last few minutes, searching for what I might have done wrong.
“Cipher?” I reached out to touch his arm.
“Don’t.” He stepped back, putting distance between us.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, hating how small my voice sounded.
His jaw tightened. “Go clean yourself up.” His eyes flicked down my body, his lip curling slightly. “You’ve got blood and cum all over you.”
I’d heard worse from him, enjoyed worse from him, but because of the dismissal behind the words, they hurt. Like I was something to be dealt with, not someone to be with.
I straightened, willing my face not to betray the hurt I felt. “Fine.”
I blinked against the fluorescent glare of the small bathroom, then caught sight of myself in the mirror and froze. Blood streaked across my cheek where his hand had touched me. More darkened the front of my dress. I looked like I’d been mauled.
“Oh God,” I whispered, horrified.
I scrubbed at my skin with paper towels, watching pink-tinged water swirl down the drain.
The woman who stared back at me from the mirror wasn’t someone I recognized anymore. She had my face, my eyes, but there was something different there, something darker, wilder. Something that had watched a man die and then let his killer fuck her.
I braced my hands against the sink, forcing my breathing to slow. Even with Baron Ash’s blood still smeared and drying on my thighs, I knew I’d welcome Cipher again. I’d open my body to him without hesitation. The realization settled into my bones with a strange certainty.
I straightened my dress and squared my shoulders. Whatever was happening between us, I wouldn’t cower from it.
When I stepped back into the recovery room, Cipher stood with his back to me, hands braced against the medical table. His shoulders formed a rigid line beneath his suit. He’d retrieved his mask and it lay on the table beside his white-knuckled grip.
He didn’t turn when the door clicked shut behind me.
“One of my men is coming to take you home,” he said, voice flat and cold. “Or to the Tower. Wherever you want to go.”
“You’re dismissing me?”
Cipher turned to face me, his expression carved from stone. “What did you expect? A fucking cuddle and sweet nothings? Our agreement is for sex, Bishop. Nothing more.”
I stood there, dress straightened but dignity in tatters, as the reality crashed over me. He was right, this was exactly what we’d agreed to. So why did it feel like betrayal?
“Right,” I managed, my voice sounding hollow.
I waited for him to say something else but the silence stretched, becoming its own presence in the room.
The blue light cast half his face in shadow, making him look like two different people merged into one, the man who’d held me with desperate need and this stranger who was dismissing me without batting an eye.
A knock at the door made me flinch.
Number Five stood in the doorway. “I’m ready to depart when you are, Miss.”
Had Cipher summoned him while I was in the bathroom? Had he been planning my dismissal while still inside me?
I stared at Cipher, searching his face for something but he didn’t even blink. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t show a single crack in his perfect, emotionless mask.
This was what we’d agreed to. This was what I’d signed up for when I’d said yes to his proposition. Bodies and pleasure and nothing more. I wasn’t supposed to be angry, there was no right to anger in an arrangement like ours.
But I was.
I was furious.
He was pushing me away now, when I’d accepted the darkest parts of him. When I hadn’t run screaming after watching him execute someone. When I’d stayed and touched him and wanted him despite, or maybe because of, what he was.
I’d seen the monster and reached for him. And this was my reward.
Dismissed like I was nothing.
Whatever connection I thought we’d shared existed only in my head. Whatever vulnerability he’d shown was just another performance.
“Miss?” Five prompted from the doorway, his voice uncomfortably gentle, as if he could sense the fragility of the moment.
One last chance. I gave Cipher one last moment to say something, anything, that might suggest I mattered beyond what my body could give him.
The moment passed.
I swallowed hard. “I’m coming.”
My voice didn’t break. I was proud of that, at least.