Scarlett #2
“It certainly does,” he says, his grip tightening.
He slides his hand down to the collar of my robe, his knuckles brushing the place where my pulse is thrumming like a goddamn siren.
“It gets under the skin. It makes people do things they wouldn’t normally do.
It makes them forget who they belong to. ”
He jerks me closer, his face inches from mine.
“Did you forget, Scarlett? While you were in there behind a locked door? Did you forget whose name is on the contract?”
I shake my head, a small, pathetic movement. “No. I didn’t forget.”
“Good.” He leans down, his mouth hovering over mine, and I have to fight the urge to gag. Every instinct I have is screaming that this is wrong, that this man is a stranger, and the only person who has the right to be this close is currently watching us from the trees.
He kisses me—a hard, possessive claim that tastes like scotch and desperation. I stay still, a statue of silk and secrets, waiting for him to finish.
When he pulls back, his eyes are dark with a frustrated, ugly hunger. He looks down at my neck, his gaze lingering on the spot where Kai bit me, now hidden by the shadow of my hair.
“You’re flushed,” he mutters, his hand sliding down to my waist, pulling me into his hip. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you looked like you’d just been fucked.”
The word is a slap. I flinch, and his eyes flare with a sudden, sharp realisation.
“Noah, stop,” I choke out.
“Why?” He laughs, a jagged, mean sound. “We’re getting married in five days. I can do whatever the fuck I want with you.”
He starts to pull the tie of my robe, his movements frantic and clumsy compared to the lethal grace I just survived. He wants to mark me. He wants to erase the feeling he can’t quite name but knows is there.
And then, the light in the room flickers.
Just once. A quick, sharp dip into darkness before the power hums back to life.
Noah freezes, his head snapping toward the balcony.
The door that was closed is open again. Just a crack. A sliver of the night is bleeding into the room, and the curtains are dancing in a wind that wasn’t there a second ago.
“I closed that,” Noah says, his voice dropping an octave, the jealousy replaced by a sudden, sharp edge of fear.
I look at the door, and for a heartbeat, I see it—a shadow taller than the rest, a silhouette that doesn’t belong to the furniture.
He’s right there. He’s watching Noah touch me. He’s watching the man he hates put hands on the woman he owns.
I feel a strange, sick thrill of terror and triumph.
“Maybe it was the wind,” I whisper, though I know it’s a lie.
Noah lets go of me, stepping toward the balcony, his hand reaching for the heavy glass handle. “Stay here.”
He steps out into the dark, his white shirt a target against the blackness of the jungle. I stand in the middle of the room, my robe hanging open, my heart hammering against my ribs, waiting for the sound of a struggle. Waiting for the scream.
But there is only silence.
And then, the feeling of a cold, wet hand sliding over my mouth from behind.
“Don’t make a sound, little sister,” a voice rasps in my ear, hot and ruined and familiar. “Or I’ll let him see what I’m about to do to you.”
The velvet of the curtain is a heavy, airless tomb, smelling of dust and the sharp, metallic scent of the man crushing me into the shadows.
Behind me, Kai is a wall of vibrating, lethal heat; in front of me, through the sliver of the fabric, Noah is a predator who doesn’t even realise he’s the prey.
He drags me deeper into the corner, the shadows swallowing us until even the moonlight feels like a distant memory. His hand is still crushed against my mouth, tasting of salt and the jungle, and I can hear Noah’s boots clicking on the stone of the terrace just feet away.
“You thought you could trade up, Scarlett?” Kai breathes, the words a jagged edge against my skin. “You thought you could put on a white dress and wash the taste of me out of your mouth?”
He spins me around, pinning my wrists above my head with one hand, his grip like iron manacles.
With his other hand, he reaches into the pocket of his damp cargo pants.
I hear the click of metal—the snap of the folding knife Noah bought at the market.
Kai must have taken it from the car. He must have stolen the very weapon my fiancé intended to use as a warning.
The blade catches a stray sliver of light, looking wicked and hungry.
“No,” I gasp against his palm, my eyes wide, my heart hammering a frantic, suicidal rhythm.
“Shh,” he hisses, his eyes burning with a cold, homicidal light.
“You want to tell me we were wrong? You want to tell me we’re just ‘step-siblings’ like that makes the way you scream my name any less of a sin?
You sent me to a cage, Scarlett. You lied on that stand and watched them drag me away. You owe me blood for that.”
I find my spine, the rage boiling up to meet his. “I sent you away to survive you! You were a black hole, Kai! You were pulling me in until there was nothing left of me but a shadow! I didn’t lie—you are a monster!”
“And you’re the monster’s favourite toy,” he snaps back.
He doesn’t hesitate. He moves the blade down, the cool metal ghosting over the curve of my collarbone, right over the spot where Noah’s blood had stained my dress earlier.
“He marked you with a handprint,” Kai whispers, his voice dropping to a terrifying, intimate crawl. “Pathetic. Temporary. I’m going to give you something that doesn’t wash off. Something that tells every man who looks at you that you’ve already been claimed by the devil.”
He presses the tip of the blade into my skin. I flinch, a sharp sob catching in my throat, but he doesn’t stop. He’s slow. He’s meticulous. I feel the skin part, a thin, stinging line of heat that immediately turns wet.
“Kai, please,” I sob, my legs shaking.
“Don’t beg. You never used to beg when we were in that house together,” he growls, his face inches from mine, watching the first drop of red escape the cut and trail down my breast. “You used to tell me to take whatever I wanted. Well, I’m taking my name back.”
He carves a jagged ‘K’ into the soft skin just above my heart. It’s small, but the pain is white-hot, a searing brand that makes my vision swim. Blood wells up, dark and heavy in the dim light, staining the silk of my robe a permanent, ruined crimson.
“There,” he rasps, leaning down to lick the stray drop of blood from my skin, his tongue rough and warm. “Now, even when he has you, he’ll have to look at my mark. He’ll have to see that I was there first, and I’ll be there last.”
Outside, the balcony door slides open. Noah is back.
“Scarlett? Why is it so quiet in here?”
Kai doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t pull away. He slides the bloody knife along the line of my jaw, leaving a thin trail of my own red on my face.
“Answer him, little sister,” Kai whispers, his hand sliding down to grip my waist, his thumb intentionally pressing into the fresh wound. “Tell him you’re just admiring the view.”
I’m lightheaded, the smell of my own blood mixing with the scent of him, and for a second, I want to scream for Noah. I want to be saved. But then Kai leans in and bites my earlobe, hard enough to draw more blood, and the jolt of pain-pleasure sends a wave of traitorous heat through me.
“I’m… I’m here, Noah,” I choke out, my voice sounding like it’s coming from the bottom of a well. “I just… I tripped. I’m fine.”
“You tripped?” Noah’s voice is closer. He’s walking toward the curtains. “Are you hurt? You sound… strange.”
Kai’s grin is the last thing I see before he pulls me flush against him, the wet blood on my chest smearing onto his shirt, binding us together in a gory, obsessive knot.
“I’m fine,” I repeat, a hysterical laugh bubbling in my throat. “I just… I think I’ve finally realised what I’m worth.”
The shadows in the corner of the suite aren’t just dark; they’re a goddamn abyss.
Kai doesn’t pull the blade away once the ‘K’ is etched into my skin.
He keeps the point of that stolen knife pressed into the tail of the letter, right where the blood is weeping the heaviest, his eyes locked on mine with a terrifying, hollowed-out hunger.
He’s breathing me in, drinking the sight of my skin splitting for him like it’s the only thing that’s kept him alive in that cell.
“You’re shaking, Scarlett,” he mocks, his voice a low-frequency vibration that makes the marrow in my bones ache. “Is it the cold? Or are you finally remembering what it feels like to be owned by someone who doesn’t need a marriage license to take what he wants?”
“I’m shaking because I’m wondering how long it’ll take for the guards to find your bloated corpse in the surf,” I spit, my wit the only shield I have left while my blood ruins the silk robe Noah bought me.
“You think this makes me yours? A scar? You’re a fucking child playing with matches, Kai.
You’re nothing but a ghost with a grudge. ”
His reaction is instant and violent. He slams me harder against the glass, the back of my head thumping against the windowpane. He grabs my jaw, his fingers digging into the bone until I’m forced to look at the monster I created.
“A ghost?” he hisses, the blade sliding up from my chest to the hollow of my throat.
“A ghost doesn’t bleed. A ghost doesn’t remember the way you used to taste when you were begging me to ruin you in our parents house.
I took the fall for you, Scarlett. I sat in that cage while you were out here playing princess, and you think a little bit of red is too much for me to ask? ”
He tilts the knife, the edge catching the moonlight.
“Noah’s blood was a stain,” Kai whispers, leaning down until his lips are brushed against the fresh, stinging ‘K’ on my chest. He licks the wound, his tongue hot and abrasive, dragging the metallic tang of me across his teeth.
“My mark is a promise. Every time he looks at you, he’s going to see the way I carved my way back into your life. ”
Outside, the heavy thud of Noah’s boots on the marble floor gets louder. He’s not calling out anymore. He’s hunting.
“Scarlett? I can hear you breathing. Open these goddamn curtains.”
Noah’s hand reaches for the velvet. The rings on the rod hiss as he begins to pull.
Kai doesn’t move. He doesn’t bolt for the balcony.
Instead, he drops the knife and grabs the front of my robe, ripping it wider, exposing the gore and the ruin of my chest to the air.
He hooks his hand around my waist and hauls me flush against his soaked, filthy body, his cock a hard, demanding threat against my hip.
“Look at the door, little sister,” Kai growls, his voice a lethal command. “Watch him find out that he’s been sleeping in a bed I already broke.”
The curtain jerks. A sliver of light from the bedroom spills into our dark sanctuary, hitting the floor first, then rising.
“Noah, don’t—” I start, but the words are choked off as Kai’s hand snaps back to my throat, squeezing just enough to make my vision blur at the edges.
“Let him see,” Kai breathes, his eyes fixed on the gap in the velvet. “Let him see what happens when you try to replace a god with a man in a suit.”
The curtain rips open.
Noah stands there, his face a mask of confusion that rapidly twists into a sickening, distorted horror. He’s staring at me—at the blood dripping down my ribs, at the jagged letter carved into my skin, and at the man holding me like a trophy.
But Kai is gone.
In the heartbeat it took Noah to blink, the space behind me is empty. The balcony door is wide open, the sheer white curtains billowing like a shroud in the wind. I’m standing there alone, my robe open, my chest a roadmap of violence, shaking so violently I can hear my teeth chattering.
Noah’s glass hits the floor. Shatters. Just like the silence.
“Scarlett?” he whispers, his voice trembling as he looks at the blood on my face, the blood on my hands. “What the fuck… who was in here? Who did this to you?”
I look at the dark jungle outside, at the place where the wolf is waiting for me. I can still feel the ghost of Kai’s tongue on my wound. I can still feel the weight of his name in my skin.
“Nobody, Noah,” I say, a cold, empty smile spreading across my face as I look my fiancé in the eye. “I told you. The island doesn’t let go of what it claims.”
I step toward him, the blood trailing behind me on the white marble like a red carpet.
“Now, are you going to help me clean this up, or are you just going to watch me bleed?”