Chapter 10
ANNIE
The main room’s doors closed with a thud as the last of the civilians filed out.
“Cipher,” I breathed. The air in the room had already changed, growing thicker “What did you mean by the actual fun begins?”
“Watch,” he murmured against my temple. “The cameras are off, Annie. The monsters are coming out to play.”
For the first time all evening, real fear coiled within me. This wasn’t the sanitized danger of the Alliance. There were no referees here. No timeouts.
“Your pulse is racing,” Cipher noted.
“This isn’t what I expected,” I whispered. Across the room, a Villain flicked his hand and a blade popped out of his gauntlet.
“It will settle a bit once first blood is drawn,” Cipher said.
“For now, the social complexities will continue to form. Alliances, potential targets, it’s all being decided in these moments.
But violence is the only language we speak fluently after midnight.
We’re just deciding who gets to talk first.”
My eyes darted around the room, looking for the exits and potential threats. The Keeper training kicked in automatically, but it felt woefully inadequate for a room full of monsters who didn’t have any rules.
Cipher gripped my chin and forced my head up to him. “Calm yourself.”
“I’m just checking the exits—”
“Stop looking for the exits. You don’t need one. You have me.” His thumb stroked the curve of my jaw. “You are safe in this room for exactly one reason. Because you belong to me. Do not let a single person here forget it.”
I took a deep breath and swallowed down the urge to argue with him. He was right, he was the only thing standing between me and the rest of the League.
We left the main hall and entered a corridor. The air there was different. The ventilation seemed to die, replaced by a cloying atmosphere. It smelled of expensive bourbon and the unmistakable musk of sex.
“The Middle Passages,” Cipher said. “Where the business happens.”
The corridor widened into a series of dim chambers. In a darkened corner, just a few feet away, a woman was on her knees. Her head bobbed in a rhythmic motion between a League member’s spread legs.
The Villain looked up and his eyes locked onto mine. He smiled, a flash of white teeth in the gloom. His hands tangled ruthlessly in the kneeling woman’s hair as he thrust his hips forward, forcing his cock down her throat.
Cipher’s hand tightened on my hip, yanking me forward.
“Don’t look at him,” he growled in my ear. “He wants an audience. Don’t give him the satisfaction.”
“Is this what ‘Lights Out’ means?” I swallowed hard.
“Part of it.”
He steered me past another shadow. A man had a woman pinned against the wall. Her head was thrown back, her dress bunched at her waist. Her bare thighs were slick and shining in the dim light while the man between them grunted with every thrust.
“The public performance ends,” Cipher murmured. “The hunger begins.”
Soon we reached a larger circular chamber. Cipher moved toward a deep booth with a low table against the back wall. He nodded to several League members as we passed.
When we reached the booth, Cipher sank onto the leather. Without asking, he pulled me onto his lap, positioning me with my back against his chest. He hooked his arm around my waist, locking me in place, while his other hand went directly to the slit in my dress and shoved it open.
“What are you doing?” I whispered, my voice trembling.
“Marking territory,” he murmured against my ear. “Everyone’s watching.”
His hand slid across my thigh until his thumb rested dangerously close to the edge of my underwear.
“Relax,” he ordered. “You’re too tense.”
“No shit,” I hissed. “You’re touching me. In public.”
“I need to use your body to sell your cover.” His arm around my waist shifted and his hand slid upward, over my ribs until he was squeezing my breast. His thumb found the peak of my nipple and circled it.
“Cipher,” I gasped, arching into his touch without thinking.
“Don’t fight it. Let them see.”
He rubbed his thumb over me again and heat flooded my veins. My nipple hardened and he pinched it through the fabric of my dress. A jolt of pleasure shot through me. I bit my lip to stifle a moan.
“You’re just taking advantage of the situation,” I gasped.
“I’m trying to help you keep your cover,” he countered. He pressed a kiss below my ear. “You’re too stiff. Too perfect. A Villain’s woman isn’t perfect, Annie. She’s ruined.”
“I’m not your woman.”
“Tonight you are.”
I tried to shift my leg, to close myself off from his touch but he forced my legs wider apart.
“Don’t,” he warned. “Open for me.”
I forced my knees apart.
“Are you going to be the perfect little plaything for me?” Cipher asked. “Are you going to play your role?”
I glared at him. “Yes.”
He smiled and the hand resting at the edge of my panties slid higher and settled directly over my pussy.
“In that case,” he murmured, his breath ghosting over my collarbone, “I require you to come for me.”
My entire body went rigid. “No.”
Cipher bit down of my neck and I bucked against the sharp, sudden pressure.
“Yes,” he commanded against my pulse point.
I grabbed his wrist to shove him away. But if I fought him, I blew the cover. The terrifying truth settled over me, drowning out my rationalizations. I didn’t want to fight him. I craved the weight of his hand.
His fingers pressed down, catching my clit through the lace of my panties. He began rubbing slow circles.
I gasped, my back arching off his chest.
“Quiet,” he ordered. His other hand kneaded my breast, his thumb rolling over my hardened nipple in time with the hand between my legs.
Every rotation over my pussy dragged a whimper from my throat. My thighs trembled, falling wider apart to give him better access.
I hated how easily I’d given him control.
The pressure coiled tight and fast. I dug my nails into his forearm, bracing for the drop.
“That’s it,” Cipher whispered. “Give it to me.”
I shattered. The orgasm ripped through me, intense and blinding. My internal muscles clamped down hard, spasming around an aching emptiness. I bit my tongue to keep from screaming, burying my face in the crook of his neck as I bucked against his hand.
I dragged oxygen into my burning lungs and total disbelief washed over the fading pleasure. I had slept with plenty of men before. I had spent hours in bedrooms with perfectly nice partners who fumbled and failed to make me come.
No one had ever been able to give me an orgasm and Cipher had just made me come in a room full of criminals in under two minutes. And the arrogant bastard did it over my clothes.
Cipher’s fingers slid away, abandoning the heat between my thighs.
“Was that...” I swallowed hard, forcing my voice past the tightness in my throat. “Was that actually necessary?”
Cipher shifted his weight, his arm going around my waist again.
“Yes, it was. Their curiosity is satisfied.”
I glanced around the chamber. He was right.
Of course he was right. The oppressive weight of a dozen predatory stares had vanished.
The League members in the adjacent booths had turned back to their own business.
A man two tables over was biting into his companion’s shoulder, drawing actual blood, disinterested in us now that Cipher had staked his claim.
A messy, tangled knot of emotions curled within me.
I wanted to be angry, I needed to be angry.
But the rage fractured into confusing, contradictory pieces.
I couldn’t decide which part I hated most. Was I furious that I had responded to him so easily?
Was I enraged that he had used my climax as a public spectacle for a room full of League members?
Or was I angry because he had stopped?
The mortification of that last thought made my cheeks burn. My thighs still ached with a hollow, throbbing pressure and I actually wanted his hand back on me.
I huffed out a shaky breath. Compartmentalize. That was the only way to survive this. I was Cipher’s plaything right now. I was a possession draped over his lap to sell a cover story to the most dangerous people on the planet.
Over the next hour, Cipher held court.
Villains approached in a steady stream. Territory disputes. Alliance proposals. Veiled threats disguised as pleasantries. They came to kiss the ring, and Cipher sat there like a king on a dark throne, bored and lethal.
I tried to do my actual job. I tried to extend my senses, to feel the power signatures pulsing around us now that the mass of bodies had spread out through the middle passages. Cipher made it impossible with his wandering hands.
While he discussed the territory boundaries with a Villain who had skin like cracked granite, Cipher’s hand moved from my ribs to capture my breast again. He didn’t care who saw. In fact, when the Granite Villain’s eyes flicked to my chest, Cipher squeezed my breast harder.
I gasped and the Villain paused.
“Continue,” Cipher said, his voice flat. He rolled my nipple between his thumb and forefinger, pinching the sensitive peak until I was trembling against him.
I bit my lip, trying to contain my whimper as the two finished their business.
Once the Villain left, I turned my face into his neck, trying to hide my burning cheeks. “Stop,” I whispered against his skin. “I can’t focus.”
“I don’t want you to focus,” he murmured. “I want you to feel.”
He didn’t wait for me to agree. His hands clamped onto my waist and he spun me around. He threw the skirt of my dress open at the slit so he could settle me over his lap, straddling him.
“Cipher—”
He took me by the throat. “Forget the mission for now,” he ordered.
He bucked his hips upward, grinding against me.
The mental map of power signatures I’d been building disintegrated. I couldn’t track the threats in the room anymore. I couldn’t even remember the rules I lived by. There was only the pressure on my throat and the friction between my legs.
I slumped against him, defeated. I was ready to beg. I opened my mouth to tell him he won, to tell him I would do anything he wanted—
His body went rigid beneath me.