Chapter 23 ZAGHAN
ZAGHAN
If only she wasn’t meant to die.
Beth Fraser was a dangerous woman, I could tell.
In just a few weeks, she managed to put confusion in my brother’s head. Made him think of eliminating me for good.
That was the thing about variables. They had a way of ruining everything. Problems like her wouldn’t fade on time. They needed to be carved out from the root. I needed to remove her immediately, carefully, and very intimately.
But first, I needed to know her. Just for a moment. Find out what made Callan so crazy about her. Because I was greedy like that.
I would taste her. Then I would end her, clean and final.
“I told you no running is allowed, didn’t I?” My fingers locked around her throat from behind, dragging her back from the door she had ran towards.
“Let go,” she forced out, wiggling helplessly, but so fucking trapped. “Please. I need to go. Just stop, please…stop.”
“Not a chance.”
Her face darkened, tinged with purple as she thrashed against my grip, the artery in her neck pounding beneath the press of my thumb. I could feel the frantic rhythm of her heart, the desperate fight for oxygen. But I wouldn’t let her die, of course. Not yet.
“Please,” she whimpered again. But there was nothing I could do other than hold her tighter when her sound was a desperate cry for mercy.
I was sure she wanted me. Fuck her silly resistance, the defiance in her tone.
It was all about the eyes. Her mouth said no, but her eyes held conviction, to surrender or to fight a bit more? Reach for my mercy?
But little did she know, that my definition of mercy was captivity. And if she wanted mercy, I was generous today.
My fingers, firm and knowing, mapped out the curve of her body, slipping over silk and skin with a confidence that made her breath hitch.
God, she was so easy and Callan was so pathetically blind. He saw her as something delicate, untouchable. A saint in a world of sinners. But I knew better. Girls like her were usually the darkest. Inside her, I was sure something unholy festered. If I searched deeper, I would find it.
“I just want to go,” she choked out, her body shuddering in my hold, pulse erratic beneath my fingers.
I didn’t answer, wasn’t wavered by the tears brimming in her pretty eyes.
I didn’t have to. Instead, I bent in close, the heat of my breath caressing her skin before my teeth sank into the tender curve of her neck, hard and sharp, a vicious claiming bite that had her crying out, her body jerking against mine.
“I told you,” I murmured, my lips grazing against the bloodied indent I had made. “no running. No escape. Only ruin.”
“Plea–” Her word was cut shut when I flipped her around, her world titling as she crashed onto the bed. The impact had her bouncing once, twice, her lilac skirt riding up, a careless thing bunched around her waist.
A scrap of lace was what remained between me and her, black and soaked through, betraying the hunger she wanted to protect.
I inhaled deeply, a slow predatory grin curling at my lips.
“I can smell your arousal,” I murmured, heat wrapping around my voice. “You’re wet, Elizabeth.”
My accusation slithered into her ears, thick with satisfaction, with hunger. And her eyes widened, streaked with shame, yet bleeding with lust.
Whether she accepted it or not, fought me until the very end, her body was already mine, even if it was just for the moment, until her last breath shuddered, until her vein fluttered in a final attempt at a pulse.
I climbed onto the bed after her, and she instinctively scrambled backward, retreating inch by inch as if there was anywhere in this house she could run to.
A slow, devious smile stretched across my lips as I reached for her. One sharp tug, and she was yanked forward, dragged beneath me with a startled gasp. My weight pressed her into the bed, my presence swallowing the space between us, until all she could see and feel was me.
“Running?” I murmured, brushing a finger down the side of her face with a deceptive softness. “Cute.”
A gasp broke out of her lips when my free hand pushed her thighs apart, wandering deeper until it was hovering just over her throbbing pussy.
“Don’t touch me,” she uttered, tears rolling down her cheeks, her chest heaving.
“But you’re aching for it.” My voice was low and taunting, curling around her like smoke.
Two fingers slipped between her thighs, sliding over the slick evidence of her betrayal, and a sharp breath shuddered from her lips. She didn’t want this. But truly, she did.
A whimper escaped her lips as I pushed in, fingers curling, dragging out a moan that she fought but failed to bite back.
“For someone so desperate to run from me, from this,” I murmured, watching her face twist in defiance. “You’re making a mess all over my fingers already.”
A hand flew to catch my wrist, to stop me, a futile attempt to regain a sliver of control. But her resistance sparked something sharp in my chest. I was in control. She didn’t get to stop me.
With one swift movement, I wrenched both her delicate wrists above her head, pinning them hard against the mattress.
“I could tie you up, you know,” I murmured. “Chain your ankles and wrists to the bed, keep you exactly where I fucking want you.” My fingers paused inside her. “Do you want that? To be tied up like a fucking offering?”
I saw it then; a look that flashed across her eyes at first, then settled there, unmoving.
It wasn’t resistance. It wasn’t conviction either. And it wasn’t fear. It was…acceptance, that point where one stopped fighting, either out of sheer foolishness or recognition of something inevitable.
She seemed to have sensed it too. Something buried deep inside her.
I pulled my fingers out and began to stroke her heat; teasing, relentless. Her back arched, lips trembling, but the words didn’t come out.
A strangled whisper broke from her lips as I pressed deeper, my fingers plunging into her tight, desperate cunt. Her thighs quivered, muscles tensing, betraying the pleasure winding through her body, the war in her mind long conquered.
“You don’t have to pretend with me, Elizabeth.
Darkness recognises darkness. And darkness doesn’t judge.
” I watched her body surrender, helpless against my touch, while my pace remained unrelenting.
“Fear turns you on, doesn’t it?” I asked, a dark chuckle rumbling in my chest as she shuddered, her nails digging into her palm, struggling against the pleasure clawing up her spine. “It’s okay. Your fear turns me on too.”
“Oh–god.”
And just like that, she was breathless, ruined, her body arching helplessly into my touch.
I watched, enthralled by the way she was taking my fingers. Then I pumped harder inside her, while her pretty little moans dissolved into desperate cries for more.
My fingers curled against that perfect spot inside her, and she broke with a sharp cry, her entire body shuddering, thighs trembling as she drenched my fingers.
I grinned, slowly pulling out my fingers and raising them to her lips, smearing the evidence across her mouth.
But I wanted more, more of her cries, her moans, the tears she was readily offering. I wanted her ruined, dirtied and broken.
My hand hovered over the neckline of her top, my fingers hooking around the first button. And with a commanding and unyielding tone, I uttered, “Take it off. All of them.”
Then I lifted my weight off her, stepping away from the bed.
She didn’t answer to my request. Didn’t even flinch.
My jaw tightened. “I said, take them off.” My voice came out low, controlled, but prompting.
She finally sat up on shaky limbs, before slowly dragging the top over her head, pulling off her skirt, and then her lacy underwear. Her motion was slow and distant, like she was obeying something she didn’t fully understand.
She bundled the materials in her hands, putting them aside gently, but still, she didn’t look away from me. Like most would do when in this situation, she didn’t look for an exit, didn’t search for mercy, for anything but me.
She just…watched.
Her breathing was uneven, her hands trembling where they rested at her side now. Yet her gaze remained fixed on mine as I worked on my shirt’s buttons. It almost looked as though, she was trying to solve something, something she couldn’t fully understand.
Peeling my shirt off my body, my hand went for my belt, loosening it, the small sound cutting through the silence. Her focus on me never broke. Yet I could see it in her eyes; fear. It was in the tensing of her shoulders, in the rapid pulse at her throat.
Yet it wasn’t the kind of fear I was used to.
She wasn’t shrinking from me.
Instead, she was waiting. Interesting.
Pulling off my pants and then my boxers, I moved closer to the bed. She instinctively shifted back. No, not scrambling away, not pleading…just making room for what was coming, confronting it.
“You should be screaming now.” I tilted my head, observing her. “You should be trying to run away again, Elizabeth.”
I heard her breath catch, chest rising sharply, but she remained where she was.
I climbed onto the bed, a creak of wood piercing through the room as my weight settled on it.
I hovered over her and she pushed her legs from under her knees, lowering on her back, being so fucking obedient, no longer fighting.
My finger brushed her jaw softly as I leaned over her. “You’re not fighting,” I stated, almost disappointed.
Her body quivered under my touch, lips trembling, but she didn’t flinch away. She looked at me the way you looked at a memory you couldn’t understand.
And in that moment, I truly knew.
There was something inside Elizabeth. Something that was drawn to my darkness, my rot, like a magnet.
“You can feel it, can’t you?” I whispered, studying her face, my finger stroking her cheek. “Maybe you don’t fully understand it. But I know that you can feel it.”
My hand trailed down, settling over the rapid rhythm of her heart.