Peter #3
I slam her into the white rug, the spilled wine blooming like a fresh kill beneath her back.
I’m over her in a heartbeat, my weight pinning her into the floorboards, my hands snatching her wrists and pinning them above her head with a force that makes the brass rings on her fingers bite into her skin.
“You want to play games, Wendy?” I growl, my voice a guttural snarl an inch from her mouth. “You want to see what happens when the leash breaks?”
I don’t wait for her to answer. I don’t give her a second to breathe.
I bury my face in the crook of her neck, my teeth sinking into the soft, fragrant skin right over her pulse point.
I’m not being careful. I’m not being kind.
I’m marking her with a feral, frantic intensity that says mine in every language known to man.
“Fuck,” I hiss, the word vibrating through her bones as I rip the lace scrap of her panties aside with one hand, the fabric shredding with a satisfying, high-pitched rrip.
She’s gasping, her body arching off the floor, her thighs trembling as they try to wrap around me, but I shove them down. I want her open. I want her exposed. I want her to see the monster she spent the last hour teasing.
I fumble with my belt, my movements jagged and impatient, the metal clinking against the stone floor.
When I finally break free, I don’t ease in.
I don’t do slow. I grab her thighs, hauling them up until her knees are practically touching her ears, and I drive into her with one long, punishing stroke that sends a shockwave through both of our bodies.
She lets out a sharp, shattered scream that echoes up toward the stars, her nails digging into the backs of my hands.
“Peter!” she cries out, her voice a mix of terror and a dark, starving ecstasy.
“Shut up,” I command, my hips hitting hers with the force of a car crash. “You wanted the fire, Darling. Now you’re going to fucking burn.”
I’m moving like a man possessed, my pace relentless and dirty.
Every thrust is a claim, every grunt a confession of how much she’s ruined me.
The wine on the rug makes a slick, wet sound against our skin as I hammer into her, my eyes locked onto hers, watching the way her pupils are blown so wide there’s nothing left but the black.
I’m losing it. My control is a ghost. I’m biting her shoulder, my hands bruising her hips, my breath coming in raw, animalistic hitches. I want to be inside her bones. I want to fuck the memory of every other man she’s ever seen out of her mind until there is only me—the monster in the starlight.
“Say it,” I growl, my pace increasing until the world is nothing but friction and heat and the metallic scent of wine. “Tell me whose you are.”
“Yours!” she sobs, her head thrashing on the stained rug, her fingers fisting in the hair at my temples. “Yours, Peter! Fuck, please—don’t stop!”
I hit the wall and shatter. I let out a low, agonising roar, my body going rigid as I spill into her with a violence that leaves me hollowed out and shaking. I collapse on top of her, my face buried in her hair, our hearts slamming against each other in a frantic, dying rhythm.
The stars are still watching, cold and distant, but in here, on the floor of my sanctuary, everything is red.
I’m vibrating. My muscles are twitching with a post-adrenaline comedown that feels like a sickness. I stay buried in her for a long minute, my forehead pressed into the wine-soaked rug, my breath coming in jagged, ugly hitches that scrape my throat raw.
I pull back just enough to look at her, and the sight of her—ruined, her lips swollen and stained purple from the vintage, her skin mapped with the red marks of my fingers—makes my stomach turn with a fresh, viral wave of possession.
“You don’t know what you’ve fucking done, Wendy,” I rasp, my voice a dark, ruined ghost of its former self.
I’m not nice anymore. The light, laughing man from ten minutes ago has been swallowed by the void.
I look at her with a cruelty born of pure, unadulterated terror because she has the power to make me crawl.
I grab her face, my thumb dragging across her bottom lip so hard it pales. “You think this was a game? You think you can just turn me on and off like a light?”
“Peter—” she whispers, her eyes softening, her hand reaching up to touch the scar on my neck with a tenderness that makes me want to scream.
“No,” I growl, pinning her hand back down.
“Don’t you dare look at me like that. I don’t want your pity.
I need this. I need you. Not for tonight.
Not until I get bored. I need you for fucking forever.
I will weld your soul to mine if I have to.
I will be the last thing you see before the sun goes out. ”
She doesn’t flinch. She just looks at me, and that terrifying, sweet surrender returns to her gaze. She’s accepting the monster. She’s inviting the rot. And that is why I have to do it. Because I can’t trust her heart not to change when the smoke clears.
“I’m yours, Peter,” she breathes, her voice a fragile, beautiful lie. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know you aren’t,” I murmur, my tone shifting into something terrifyingly calm. Something clinical.
I reach into the pocket of my discarded trousers, my fingers finding the small, silver vial I’ve been carrying since the day I brought her here. I’ve been waiting for the moment the hunger outweighed the honour.
“I love you, Darling,” I whisper, and it’s the most honest thing I’ve ever said. “That’s why I can’t let you choose.”
I don’t give her time to scream. I don’t give her time to question the sudden, sharp scent of chemicals that cuts through the wine. I press a silk handkerchief, pre-soaked and heavy with a fast-acting sedative, over her nose and mouth.
Her eyes go wide—vast, panicked mirrors of the stars above. She struggles for a second, her hands clawing at my forearms, her muffled gasps hot against my palm.
“Shhh,” I croon, my heart breaking even as I hold her down. “Just sleep. When you wake up, the world will be gone, and there will only be us. No more fires. No more choices.”
I watch as the light in her eyes begins to flicker and dim. Her limbs go heavy, the tension draining out of her body like water from a broken glass. Her head lolls back against the stained rug, her long lashes fluttering one last time before settling against her cheeks.
She looks like a doll. She looks like a masterpiece. She looks like she’s finally, truly mine.
I pick up her limp, naked body, the obsidian gown left like a shed skin on the floor. I carry her toward the hidden elevator in the wall, my grip bruisingly tight. Outside, the first red flare of the North End’s assault lights up the sky, but I don’t even look.
The war can wait. I have a queen to bury in the dark.