Chapter 14
Alina
My heart thundered as heavy footsteps echoed outside the brothel door. Thirty nights I’d waited—each one lonelier, hungrier than the last. Balthazar had finally come.
I slid onto the lap of the man I’d been toying with for the past hour—Eoin, or something like that. His hands were warm on my hips, but it wasn’t his touch I craved.
The tavern door slammed open.
Balthazar filled the doorway like a storm given flesh. His coat billowed behind him, and his eyes twin embers of fury and heat. Every muscle in his body was strung tight, like a predator ready to kill. The air thickened as he stepped inside, and I could barely breathe.
My skin flushed. My thighs clenched. Eoin’s hand skimmed along my waist, and I leaned in to kiss him—not because I wanted him, but because I needed Balthazar to see it. To burn.
Our mouths met, but all I could see was Balthazar. All I wanted was Balthazar.
And then he moved.
He stormed toward me like an unchained beast, his jaw clenched, and his nostrils flared. Before I could blink, his hand wrapped around my throat—not too tight, just enough to claim. His touch sent a pulse of heat straight between my legs.
“You think you can fuck with me like this?” he growled, voice low and lethal. His cock strained against his trousers, thick and ready.
I smiled through the choke of desire. I had him. Finally.
“I’ve let no man inside me but you,” I whispered, dragging my lips across his knuckles. “No one has touched what’s yours.”
His grip tightened, his other hand fisting in my hair. “You dare to tease me with this pitiful little wretch?”
Then, with a shove that sent me sprawling to the floor, before I could scramble to my feet, he turned, seized Eoin by the collar, and yanked him upright like a rag doll.
Eoin whimpered beneath Balthazar’s grip, tears streaking his pale cheeks. “Please… I didn’t know—please don’t hurt me. I didn’t know she was taken.”
Taken.
Balthazar let out a snarl that sounded more beast than man. In a flash, his dagger gleamed in the dim light—then sank deep into Eoin’s throat. Blood sprayed like wine, warm and vivid, painting the floor in a tribute. Eoin gurgled once, then collapsed in a crumpled, twitching heap.
Screams erupted. Prostitutes scattered. Patrons fled in chaos.
But I stood still—heart racing, breath catching—not in fear, but euphoria. My monster had come for me. My beautiful, violent love had found me. And now, with blood on the floor and rage in his eyes, we were equals.
Balthazar stood in the center of the room like a god dethroned—his composure shattered, his fury laid bare. His chest heaved. His hands trembled. His eyes—usually so sharp and calculating—were wild, haunted, and beautiful.
I moved toward him, barefoot and brazen. Emboldened. Hungry.
“I’m not scared of you,” I said as I closed the distance between us.
“I know what you are. I know you could end me with a whisper. And I’d still crawl to you.
” I ran my fingers down his blood-slick arm, feeling the tremble in his body.
“You’re my monster, Balthazar. And I love every ruined, savage piece of you. ”
He stared at me like I’d just split the world open.
Then, with a guttural sound torn from his throat, he grabbed me, fierce and desperate, and pulled me against him. His forehead slammed into mine, and for a moment, we just breathed, the world crumbling around us. His scent—iron, leather, fury—wrapped around me like a drug.
“You shouldn’t love me,” he rasped, voice ragged. “You should run.”
“I don’t want safe,” I whispered. “I want you.”
He kissed me then, not gently, not sweetly, but like he needed to devour me to survive. His hands tangled in my hair, tugging hard, his lips punishing and possessive. I moaned into his mouth, reveling in the chaos. Blood still dripped from his dagger. My thighs clenched.
When he finally pulled back, his fingers trailed along my cheek, almost reverently. Something in his touch felt worshipful, broken, and mine.
“Thank you,” he whispered, the words barely audible.
I smiled, leaned in, and dragged my tongue along the sharp line of his jaw, tasting blood and salt and the chaos of him.
The tension that once sparked like a live wire between us had softened into something deeper.
Something magnetic. We were no longer separate souls.
We were pieces of a shared hunger, colliding like stars, bound in a dance that could only end in ruin—or eternity.
But peace was never ours to keep.
A tremor rippled through the air, thick with dread.
Balthazar’s hand clamped around my jaw, yanking me forward.
His mouth crashed onto mine with punishing force, his kiss all teeth and fury, his breath scorching against my lips.
I wrapped myself around him, grinding against his hard body, aching for more—for all of him.
Then half of his body began to change.
I gasped and stumbled back as his skin split open like overripe fruit, peeling in jagged lines down his arms and chest. Beneath, his form twisted—bone gleaming, sinew tightening over muscle, his transformation grotesque and divine.
Veins throbbed like pulsing rivers of blood.
His eyes, once dark, now burned with an infernal glow, and his grin revealed razor-sharp teeth, monstrous and erotic all at once.
Maggots slithered from the wounds in his flesh, like some ancient corruption was being born again beneath his skin. He let out a guttural cry—half agony, half godhood—that made the ground quake beneath my feet. And still, I wanted him.
Still, I loved him.
My heart thundered in my chest as I stared at him, bare and terrible and beautiful in his grotesque glory. I stepped forward, breathless, defiant.
“I love you, Lord Balthazar,” I cried, voice thick with lust and madness. “With all my wicked, ruined heart.”
His eyes flickered with something human—something lost. “How can you say that?” he roared, slamming his fists into his bloody chest. Gore splattered across the floorboards, staining the room with death and devotion. “Look at me!”
“I am looking,” I whispered, as the heat of his breath seared my skin. I arched backward, sweat dripping down my spine, my nipples peaking from the sudden flush of heat.
I shielded my face from the furnace of his breath, but I wouldn’t turn away.
“I wish the world were dark,” I murmured, quivering with desire and desperation. “Because we don’t have to pretend we’re not monsters in the dark. We could rule it all… together.”
The air between us pulsed—thick with want, with something electric and unholy. Our eyes locked in a devouring dance, tension that felt like lightning had taken root beneath my skin. There was no going back now. We would meet whatever awaited in the darkness ahead—pain, pleasure, ruin—together.
The tavern reeked of smoke, stale liquor, and sex. It clung to the worn wooden walls like sweat on skin. My stomach twisted from the scent, but I was ignited deeper. I felt his gaze burning into my back, tracing every curve of my body with dark possession. I didn’t turn. Not yet.
When I finally did, my eyes met his with blazing defiance.
“We like when people suffer,” I said, voice velveted with lust and truth. “And I like that we no longer have to pretend otherwise. I want a world shaped in our image—merciless and beautiful.”
Balthazar’s eyes glowed—one burning like a star, the other a portal to hell itself. “Where have you been all my life?” he murmured. “The others always wanted to tame me. To win my love. But you—” He stepped closer, reverent, dangerous. “You want to be with me. You want to rule with me.”
Heat flared through my chest, spreading lower. There was no fear left in me—only fire. I stepped forward, my gaze never wavering. He smiled. The sort of smile that promised ruin. The kind of smile that said I’d be worshipped and destroyed equally.
Then he spoke a silky hiss, “Come. I must claim you… as the darkness you are.”
The stairs creaked beneath our steps, every groan of the wood echoing with anticipation. The scent of musk and old sex thickened the air, stoking the flame building inside me. My pulse quickened. My thighs clenched.
At the top of the landing, he kicked open a bedroom door.
The room was dim and raw, the bed unmade, the sheets stained with past sins.
Before I could speak, Balthazar swept me into his arms like a god claiming his offering.
He tossed me onto the mattress, and I sank into its roughness, breathless and aching.
He stood at the edge of the bed, looming.
Half-human. Half-nightmare.
One side of him was all carved muscle and taut sinew—beautiful, lethal. The other was grotesque—flesh peeled away in places, revealing twitching veins and bone that pulsed with ancient power. One eye shimmered with icy hunger, the other glowed with something darker than death.
I should’ve been afraid.
Instead, I was drenched in want.
He looked down at me like a king surveying the altar of his worship. A wicked smirk played on his bloodstained lips.
“My wicked temptress,” he said, voice low and intimate, like a secret dragged across satin. “I want to make you scream until the gods look away.”
He crawled on top of me like a god forged from nightmares and desire—power incarnate, muscles coiled like a predator’s, every inch of him vibrating with unearthly energy.
His skin shimmered faintly, as if lit from within, glowing with a dark, seductive power that wrapped around me like a spell I could never break.
I felt myself drawn in, helpless to resist. His confidence radiated from every movement—deliberate, commanding, wicked. He didn’t just want me. He intended to consume me.