49. Leandra
The air changes before I even hear his footsteps, as if the very world melds around this man. I’m sitting at the vanity, brushing my out-of-control hair with slow, mechanical strokes when the door slams open hard enough to crack the plaster.
Lazarus fills the doorway, his face a mask of barely leashed fury. His eyes are wild, pupils blown so wide they’ve nearly swallowed all the colour. His chest heaves. His hands are clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides, and I can see the tendons in his neck standing out like cords.
I set the brush down. My heart kicks against my ribs, but I keep my voice steady. “What’s wrong?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He stalks into the room, like a predator trying very hard not to tear the furniture apart and stops in front of the fireplace. I watch the way his shoulders bunch, the way his jaw works, grinding words into dust before he can spit them out.
“Lazarus.” I rise from the stool, my silk robe whispering around my ankles. “Tell me, please.”
He turns then, and the full force of his rage hits me. “Konstantine,” he says, “He’s looking for you.”
The bottom drops out of my stomach. He’s, he’s looking for me? Oh god.
I can’t go back. I can’t.
My skin goes cold, then hot, a sick flush of fear that prickles at the nape of my neck. I take an involuntary step back, and my hip bumps the vanity, rattling the little crystal bottles.
“He, he…”| My voice is smaller than I want it to be.
“He doesn’t know where you are.” Lazarus crosses the space between us in three long strides and grips my upper arms, his fingers biting into my flesh with a desperate, bruising pressure.
“He’s sniffing around, that’s all, but he doesn’t know.
He will never know. You are safe. Do you hear me? You are safe. Ezra is safe.”
I nod, but the fear doesn’t recede. It coils in my belly, a serpent made of old memories. Ezra is Konstantine’s son, isn’t he? Why would he not be safe?
His grip gentles just a fraction, his thumbs stroking over the delicate skin of my inner arms. “I’m doubling the guards. No one will get near the boy. No one will get near you. I swear it.”
I believe him. I believe the ferocity in his voice, the absolute, terrifying certainty. But I can also feel the tremor running through him, the way his control is fraying at the edges like a rope under too much strain.
He’s not just angry. He’s unmoored.
The thought of Konstantine hunting me has cracked something open inside him, and whatever lives in that crack is hungry, dark, and wants to consume.
I know that hunger. I’ve felt it myself, every time I think about the life I left behind, every time I remember the things Ezekiel and Isaac did to me, the things Konstantine did too. And I know there’s only one way to feed a beast like that without letting it destroy everything in its path.
I lift my hands and place them flat against his chest. His heart is pounding in a wild, erratic drumbeat beneath my palms. “Lazarus,” I say, and I let my voice drop, let it become something low and molten. “Look at me.”
He does. I can see the war in his brown eyes; the urge to hunt, to kill, to burn the world down, fighting against the iron will that keeps him tethered to this room, to me. He’s on the verge of losing control completely, and the sight of it sends a dark, answering thrill through my own blood.
I slide my hands up his chest and curl my fingers into the fabric. “You came back to me,” I murmur. “You’re here. I’m here. He can’t touch us.”
A sound rumbles in his chest, something between a growl and a groan. His hands tighten on my arms again, and this time the pain is sharp, exquisite.
“Leandra.”
My name is a warning. Only, I don’t heed it.
I lean in and press my mouth to the hollow of his throat, right over the pulse that hammers there. I taste salt, fury and something darker, something dangerous, something that screams to the monster inside me.
“Leandra.” He growls again. “I am too angry, I am too…”
“Then take it out on me,” I whisper against his skin. “All of it. I can take it.”
There’s a fraction of a second pause. Like he weighs those words, and then the leash snaps.
His hand fists in my hair and yanks my head back, baring my throat. The pain is bright and immediate, and I gasp, my lips parting. He stares down at me, and his face is no longer a mask. It’s a portrait of raw, ravenous need, all sharp angles and bared teeth.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“Yes, I do.” I say, letting him see the matching hunger in my own eyes. “I’m asking for you. All of you. That part of you that wants to break things matches a part of me too. Give it to me. Give me all of you. Your pain, your anger, your hate. I can take it, I can handle it. I want it.”
He kisses me then, and it’s not a kiss, it’s an invasion.
His mouth crushes mine, his tongue forcing past my lips, and I taste copper as his teeth catch my lower lip and bite down. I moan into his mouth and bite back, sinking my teeth into his bottom lip until I feel the skin give, until the taste of his blood floods my tongue.
He snarls, a feral, approving sound, and his free hand rips at the tie of my robe. The silk tears with a sound like a scream, and then the robe is pooling at my feet and I’m naked, pressed against the hard, clothed length of him.
I claw at his shirt, desperate to feel his skin.
Buttons scatter across the floorboards. I drag my nails down his chest, leaving four raised red lines from his collarbone to his navel and he shudders, his hips bucking against my belly.
He’s already hard, a thick, insistent pressure straining against his trousers.
The knowledge that I’ve done this to him, that my surrender has unleashed this storm makes me wet, aching, and utterly shameless.
He walks me backward until my spine hits the edge of the vanity.
Bottles topple and roll, and I hear something shatter, but I don’t care.
His mouth is on my throat, sucking hard enough to burst blood vessels, marking me in a way that will be visible for days.
I wrap one leg around his hip and grind against him, and the friction of his trousers against my bare pussy makes me cry out with desperation because it’s not enough. Not nearly enough.
“Mine,” he growls against my skin.
His hand leaves my hair and closes around my throat. Not squeezing, not yet, just holding me in a collar of flesh and bone.
“Say it.”
“Yours,” I gasp.
My own hands are busy, working at the fastenings of his trousers, shoving the fabric down until his cock springs free, hot and heavy against my thigh.
I wrap my fingers around him and squeeze, and his hips jerk, his grip on my throat tightens reflexively.
The edges of my vision go hazy, and I love it.
I love the way the world narrows to just him, just this.
Just the brutal, beautiful fact of his possession.
I stroke him once, twice, smearing the bead of moisture at the tip with my thumb, and then he’s had enough of my control.
He bats my hand away, grabs me by the hips, and spins me around.
I brace my hands on the vanity and in the mirror, I see us; me, flushed and wild-eyed, my lips swollen and smeared with blood, and him behind me, a dark, towering figure with a chest scored by my nails and his cock that looks almost too big, too aggressive, jutting toward me.
He doesn’t prepare me, he doesn’t ask.
He just notches himself at my entrance and drives in with one brutal, breathtaking thrust. I scream as he forces his way in, as he demands my body’s submission.
The sound echoes off the high ceiling, and its half pain, half ecstasy because I’m wet enough to take him but he’s so thick, so deep, filling me in a way that absolutely borders on violence.
He gives me one heartbeat to adjust, and then he starts to fuck me.
There’s no rhythm, no gentleness.
It’s a pounding, animalistic rut, his hips slamming against my ass with a force that rattles the vanity and sends a hairbrush clattering to the floor. I grip the edge of the wood and push back against him, meeting every thrust, and the obscene, wet sound of our joining fills the room.
He leans over me, his chest pressing against my back, and his hand snakes around to grip my throat again, pulling my head back until our eyes meet in the mirror.
“Look at yourself,” he commands, his voice a ragged rasp in my ear. “Look at what you do to me. Look at what you are.”
I look. I can’t help but look.
And I see a woman undone; a creature of pure, carnal, sinful need, her mouth open in a continuous moan, her breasts swaying with every brutal impact.
I see his hand around my throat, his fingers digging into the soft flesh, and I see the way my eyes roll back when he squeezes just a little harder, cutting off my air for a dizzying, euphoric moment.
I reach back and sink my nails into his flank, dragging them down hard enough to draw blood and he hisses, his thrusts becoming even more frenzied.
“You like that?” I manage to choke out, my voice a strangled thing. “You like it when I mark you too?”
“I like everything you do to me.” He growls back, right into my ear. “Every depraved thing.”
“I like it too.” I gasp. “I like the pain, I need it. Sometimes it’s the only way I know I’m actually still alive.”
As if those words are a catalyst, he releases my throat and grabs a handful of my hair instead, yanking my head to the side so he can bite the curve where my neck meets my shoulder. His teeth sink in, breaking the skin, tearing at it as if he were a beast and not human at all.
“Every scream, every scratch. Every drop of blood. It’s all mine.” He states.
Those words, that declaration, it’s too much.
Far too fucking much. I fall apart, I crescendo, I come suddenly and violently, my inner muscles clamping down on his cock like a fist. I wail, my body arching, my nails scrabbling at the wood and he fucks me through it relentlessly, drawing out every last spasm until I’m a quivering, sobbing mess.