Chapter One #2
“And now?” Victor crossed his arms. “How do you feel?”
For a moment, Henri didn’t answer. He studied whatever Victor had given him before his imaginary, drug-given wings flared with a dry rustle of skin and bone.
And when he spoke, I felt it in the core of me.
“For the first time in my life, I’m not nauseous.”
“Nauseous?” Victor raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to have to explain that one because I don’t follow.”
With a heavy sigh, Henri blinked as if he finally saw the truth.
A truth that he could be honest about things he’d hidden from all his life.
A different sort of confession to the ones he’d given me.
A real confession.
Wiping his mouth and schooling his tongue not to give in to drunken slurs, Henri muttered, “All my life, I’ve felt sick if I ever contemplated taking what I needed.
I gagged on the poison inside me. I begged to throw up this curse before it killed me.
But now...” His chin tipped up. His eyes locked on mine.
“That sickness is gone. I feel so fucking strong. Like I’m invincible. Untouchable...”
My mind blended fact and fiction as Henri prowled toward me and pressed the knife against my cheek. “I’m really, truly free.”
I sucked in a breath.
He forgot about Victor.
He spared no thought for Peter.
It was just him and me.
Bad and good.
Alive and dead.
“Do you know what I wanted to do when I first saw you at the bar, Ily?” He dragged the sharp, sharp knife down my chin, along my throat, and over my flimsy white negligée. “I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to bend you over right there and fuck you hard enough to make you scream.”
I couldn’t catch a proper breath as he swirled the dagger around my nipple.
Gone was our pantomime.
Our script in cinders all over the floor.
“I told myself those thoughts were wrong. I pretended that the moment I noticed you, something didn’t crack inside me.” He laughed under his breath. “I lied.”
His eyes never released mine as he placed the item Victor had given him on the table beside us. His gaze no longer shimmered with righteous silver but turned a flat sterling of corruption.
Rocking back on his heels, he tested the hooks holding my golden collar and cuffs before nudging my ankles with his bare toes, ensuring the buckles he’d bound me with held.
Only once he was satisfied I was well and truly at his mercy did he drop the final pretence and give in. With steady hands, he grabbed the neckline of my negligée, then sliced it with his knife. Fisting the shredded lace, he yanked.
Hard.
The rip of it tearing in half matched the ripping in my heart.
Fresh tears stung.
Zebras brayed.
Wolves barked.
Every inch of me trembled as Henri shoved aside the scraps of my ruined lingerie, baring my nakedness to a thousand dead eyes, one slave, and a monstrous ringleader.
But none of them mattered as Henri dropped his stare to my breasts and devoured me by sight alone.
“Fuck, you’re stunning.” He palmed me, fisting delicate flesh ever so cruelly. “Ripe and young, pure and brave.”
Tears welled hotter, wetter.
I didn’t let them fall.
Not for him.
Not for death whispering in my ears or terror fisting my crazy-winged heart.
“You’ll sob for me before the night is through,” Henri breathed as he pressed the tip of his knife against my neck. “You’ll bleed for me every night. And fuck, that turns me on.”
“Die now...before it’s too late,” a swan crooned.
“Choose to drift away where he can’t hurt you,” a sparrow chirped.
“Use the pipette dropper I gave you, mon ami,” Victor said as he settled back into his peacock chair for the show. “Count each droplet you draw from her. One hundred and two, don’t forget. That’s about five millilitres, give or take.”
Five mil?
Practically nothing.
Barely anything.
Yet...it’s everything.
My blood.
My lifeforce.
Mine.
Not his.
My mind suddenly swarmed with gushing crimson.
Litres and litres, buckets and buckets.
My throat sliced and gaping.
My skin turning white as red spilled all over the floor.
Ignoring Victor, Henri shifted closer. His thigh wedged between my spread and naked legs. The softness of his slacks against my pussy added another element of insanity. Softness equalled kindness. Softness equalled our pact, our deal, our vow.
But everything was broken now.
“Please...” I whispered.
My first word in so long.
My first plea of many.
“Don’t. Don’t do this, Henri.”
He shuddered and closed his eyes.
And I hoped...just like I’d hoped in the library when he told me he was a cop.
I hoped he’d choose me.
Choose us.
Only this time, when he opened them again, there was no promise to save me, no oath to protect Peter, no admission that he was good.
This time...only a monster stared back.
“You don’t have permission to call me that. I’m your lord and Master. Address me as such.” With a flick of his wrist, he cut me.
I cried out as his knife punctured and pierced.
He groaned as hot blood seeped free.
A different kind of haze corrupted his shadow-stained eyes. Not alcohol. Not nausea.
Peace.
The longer he stared at the rich blood rolling its way down my throat, the more savage his stare became.
Sharp with fatal diamonds.
Twinkling with lust and glimmering with sick need.
It was true, then.
Eyes truly were the windows to people’s souls, and I couldn’t look away as Henri—the man who’d caused feelings and unwanted desire—vanished beneath Henri, the ruthless Master.
And I couldn’t help it.
The drugs in my system drowned me again.
I lost myself as Henri bent forward, grabbed the glass-blown pipette, and pressed the tip to the blood he’d drawn. With fierce attention, he sucked it up, trapping red in the dropper.
The room erupted with a cacophony of noise.
Bird song, cheetah snarls, elephant trumpets.
“Die.”
“Stop breathing before he steals your breath.”
“Stop bleeding before he steals your life.”
“Die!”
My ears rang.
My heart thundered.
Blackness coated my vision as Henri placed his knife down and held out his hand. With drunk-defying precision, he opened his palm and squeezed the blood-engorged pipette.
Almost in slow motion, ruby droplets rained.
“One,” he murmured.
“Two.” He shuddered.
“Three.” He licked his lips.
“Four.” He pressed his red-spotted hand to his throat.
Not looking away from me, he smeared my blood along the same area of his body where he’d drawn it from mine. “Four droplets. Ninety-eight to go.” He shivered as my blood baptised him just like he’d christened me in his cum on the maypole.
A different sort of ritual.
A perverse little ceremony where he truly became the devil.
Manifestations of my insanity revealed onyx gates of hell swinging wide behind him. Gargoyles flew out of the fog swirling thicker and higher around his legs. Scorpions and salamanders, hell beasts and death hounds...they all stalked and prowled toward me.
I struggled in my binds as one smoke-curled hound sniffed right between my bare legs.
Tears I’d forbidden from falling threatened to rain faster than my blood.
I choked on salt.
I gagged on sorrow.
Victor chuckled as I spiralled down, down, down.
Far worse than before.
More deluded than before.
Instinct overrode everything.
The urge to fight and war and run.
I fought my binds. I yanked my arms and kicked my legs. The clink of my collar on the hook behind me rang out like a church bell.
Peter balled his hands and never looked away, his eyes blazing messages to calm, to accept, to drift.
But it was too late.
I’d fought it for as long as I could.
I’d clung to flashes of sanity.
I’d done my best to salvage the script Henri and I had written.
But as Henri dropped his red-smeared hand and fisted his erection, falling on me for more, it was over.
His gut-wrenching groan tore me open.
He shimmered in a mirage of delusion as bat wings flared wide and fangs elongated to pierce his bottom lip.
Everything vanished.
The room.
The animals.
Peter.
Victor.
Hell.
All that remained was him as he held up his knife and searched for a new place on my body to slice...