Chapter 10 #3
A wave of heat rolled through my body. It started in my chest and ended between my thighs.
“My cock would be so deep down your throat you couldn’t breathe. You wouldn’t be arguing, sweetheart. You would be gagging.”
He brought his thumb up and pressed it against my windpipe. Just enough to restrict the air and mimic the sensation he described.
“Tears would be streaming down your face,” he murmured, watching my reaction. “Looking up at me with those big blue eyes. Begging for permission to swallow.”
“That’s not—“ I started.
“Not what?” he challenged. “Not what you’ve been thinking about since the moment you saw me? Not what you touch yourself to at night?”
“Let me go.”
“Why? So you can run back to your safe little world? Where you don’t have to face what you really are?”
“And what exactly am I?” I demanded. “Besides a pathetic little keeper you like to torture?”
“A fraud.”
He released my throat and trailed his hand down until it rested heavily over my heart.
“You play at being untouchable,” he said. “But you’re the one dripping on my hand while you insult me. You want to surrender, Annie. You hate the control as much as I do.”
“Shut up.”
His fingers dug into my ribs. “You’re terrified of how much you want me to break you.”
“Fuck you,” I spat. I was trembling. It had started in my hands but it had quickly spread throughout my entire body.
He released me as if I had suddenly become boring and turned away. He raised a hand to signal a server and when the woman approached, he ordered a bourbon without even looking at me.
I sat there on his lap, unacknowledged and invisible.
He turned his attention to a Villain who slid into the next booth. They started talking about weapons shipments. Cipher laughed at something the man said.
I sat there burning with humiliation as I realized I was only a prop in his performance.
I was still seething, trapped on his lap and ready to claw his eyes out, when a familiar figure approached.
Menace paused at the entrance of the booth. His gaze flicked between Cipher’s masked face and my obvious fury.
“Bad time?” he asked.
“Not at all,” Cipher replied. His voice was back to that bored drawl.
I didn’t bother hiding my anger. Who cared if Menace saw?
“I’ve been making the rounds,” Menace said, sliding into the seat across from us. “Eclipse is definitely making moves on the eastern territory. She’s got three new lieutenants.”
“Boring,” Cipher said. He took a sip of his drink. “Tell me something useful.”
Menace continued his report and Cipher nodded occasionally but his hands never strayed to my body. They simply rested on the table, holding his glass.
I’d been demoted from fake plaything to breathing mannequin.
I couldn’t even call him out on it without compromising our cover. So I sat there, a furious smile plastered on my face and imagining all the ways I would make him suffer for this.
There was a boom that rattled the glasses on our table. Then the screaming started. The high-pitched, terrified sound of someone who knew they were about to die.
“Ooo, who is it?” Menace asked excitedly, hopping up from his seat.
He started toward the hallway, but the show came to us instead. A body streaked through the doorway and slammed into the wall behind the bar with a sickening crunch, the sound of bones breaking, of a body becoming something less than human.
Glass shattered. Liquor bottles exploded in a cascade of amber and clear liquid that mixed with something darker and thicker.
My brain struggled to process the image. A Villain in an obnoxious yellow suit was suspended against the wall, his hands clutching at something protruding from his chest. Something dark and writhing.
Someone had speared him to the wall with shadows.
The wet sounds of his breathing filled the sudden silence. Gurgling. Desperate. Then Dread stepped into the room.
I recognized him immediately. How could I ever forget him? It was at his match that my fate had been sealed.
“Wait, didn’t those two have an alliance?” Menace asked, sounding delighted.
“Apparently, not anymore,” Cipher answered.
Dread raised his hand, shadows coalescing in his palm. He hefted them, testing their weight.
I turned in Cipher’s lap and buried my face against his shoulder. I didn’t want to see. Didn’t want to hear.
But Cipher’s hand tangled in my hair, gripping the roots hard.
“Watch,” he commanded.
“No,” I whispered into his chest.
He yanked my head back and forced my face toward the bar, his fingers tightening in my hair until my scalp stung.
“Open your eyes, Annie. Look at it.”
I gasped, my eyes flying open just as the wet thud echoed through the room.
The solidified shadow pierced flesh. The screaming cut off mid-breath with horrible finality.
The second shadow spike went straight through the Villain’s throat, pinning him like a grotesque butterfly specimen. Blood ran down the wall in thick rivulets, pooling on the floor behind the bar.
My stomach heaved, but Cipher held me in place. He wouldn’t let me look away as his other hand slid up my stomach until it was right over my racing heart.
“Feel that?” he murmured against my ear. “That isn’t fear, Bishop. That’s survival.”
“It’s horrible,” I choked out.
“It’s power.”
His thumb dug into my ribs, almost painful. “Dread decided who would be left breathing in this room. I decide who breathes in this booth. And you...” He dragged his nose along the sensitive cord of my neck, inhaling deeply. “You are alive because you belong to me.”
My breath hitched. The adrenaline flooding my system had nowhere to go, so it turned into heat. It settled aching between my thighs.
Cipher felt the change in my breathing. He knew.
“There it is,” he whispered, his lips brushing the pulse jumping in my throat. “Violence and sex. They bleed from the same vein, Annie.”
I wanted to push him away and run. But the hand in my hair held me fixed, and the hand on my ribs felt like it was holding my shattered pieces together.
“Damn, I wonder what he did,” Menace said, still staring at the cooling corpse.
I wanted to argue that nothing justified this level of brutality.
The other Villains in the room had barely paused their conversations. A few glanced at the corpse with mild interest, but most acted as if nothing had happened. As if brutal murder was just another Friday night entertainment.
“Welcome to the League, Annie,” Cipher said.