Crying was the worst.
I woke up wrapped in Calix’s arms. His silver eyes gleamed down at me, filled with a gentleness that made my heart ache. Undiluted hatred for him was far easier than acknowledging the something else that thrummed between us. He’d been my savior.
He’d evidently almost died trying to live up to that, and while the bitter part of me wanted to question it, and cling to the possibility that it was nothing more than a poetic lie, the heartbroken dreamer inside of me wanted it to be true. More than anything, I wanted the boy I’d loved as my protector to have been there through it all.
Clinging to that childish dream felt like slow dancing with a grenade, or trying to hug a porcupine and expecting not to get hurt in the end. But I hadn’t pushed him away when he’d curled me tighter to his chest, settling himself against my back until I woke up. We’d spent nearly an hour like that, curled up in a bed I didn’t belong in but couldn’t seem to force myself to leave.
It was only hunger that had finally driven me up, forcing us to go down to the kitchen so that Calix could feed me until I felt like I might burst. When I finally retreated to the library for some privacy, he’d admitted that there was some business he needed to tend to out of the house, but he didn’t want to leave me when I needed him.
I didn’t want to tell him that I would always need him, or that I’d needed him at my side for the years that had separated us, but somehow survived without him. I’d told him to go, instead, burying my face in the pages of a new book and trying to get lost in it.
Christian kept me company as I curled up in the chaise lounge, watching over me as I failed to distract myself. My mind was a mess, a complete disaster as I read the same sentence over and over again. His frustrated sigh made me glance up as he stood from the armchair he sat in, moving toward the shelves of books I hadn’t read. He grabbed an older-looking book, running his fingers over the surface gently, almost reverently. If it hadn’t been for my desire not to be alone, I might have been angry that Christian watched over me like a child. But I’d spent far too many years of my life locked away in my bedroom alone.
Even just the presence of another person felt like a blessing.
Stepping up beside me, he held it out until I reached out to accept it from him. “What is this?” I asked, looking over the surface. There was no title on the cover or the spine, just a simple, leather binding that was entirely unembellished.
“I found it in your father’s office after I killed everyone in the house, the day of your wedding,” Christian admitted, his words coming without any inflection, as if killing a household of people was a casual affair, without leaving a stain on his soul. “From what I can tell, it belonged to your mother.”
“My mother?” I asked, opening the book to the first page with delicate motions. It had been so long since I’d seen her perfect script on a page that tears stung my eyes. All my memories of her were tainted by the feeling of blood splashing against my legs when my father had swung the axe down and severed her head from her body.
My throat closed as I stared at a name and Pennsylvania address I didn’t recognize written on the inside of the front cover. “I stopped reading as soon as I realized what it was. Her secrets were hers to keep, but I have to imagine she would’ve wanted to share them with you when you were old enough. Now she can,” Christian said, backing away and going to the chair he’d occupied before. He sat down, thumbing through the book he’d been reading and pretending to pay attention to the pages as he watched me turn to the first full page of my mother’s handwriting.
She was as much a stranger to me as Calix was, but maybe now I could get to know both the people they’d stolen from me.
The front door opening snapped me out of my reading, forcing me to close my mother’s journal. I’d spent the afternoon buried within the pages, reading about the life she’d had before her marriage to my father.
If I’d hoped to find a glimmer of positivity, a few years of joy before the abusive, loveless marriage she’d shared with my father, that quickly vanished. Her childhood had been far too similar to mine, as if women within the families were trapped in a time loop without change. I tucked the journal back into the shelf where Christian had found it, hoping he wouldn’t mention it to Calix if he hadn’t yet.
The journal felt like something to be shared solely between my mother and me. As her last surviving child, I had to hope she would have wanted to share her deepest thoughts and confessions with me, but they shouldn’t have to be shared with a man she didn’t know, and Calix wouldn’t hesitate to read in the way Christian had.
Nothing was private from my husband.
Calix’s form strode straight past the library on his way to the bedroom, and I peeked my head out of the open door to watch as he disappeared with swift, economical steps. His urgency drove me forward, my curiosity getting the best of me.
I’d have thought he’d check on me immediately after returning from his business, with how hesitant he’d been to leave me in the first place. But he’d ignored me entirely in favor of something held within that bedroom.
I wanted to know what was so fucking important, and it bothered me that I’d so quickly come to expect his gentle care and attention. I didn’t like being ignored, as if it hadn’t been the norm for most of my life.
If he wanted to claim he loved me, then I had damn well better be the center of his entire universe. I wouldn’t be a favored toy to play with when it was convenient and cast aside when a better prospect came along.
I wouldn’t be my mother.
The bedroom was empty as I stepped inside, but the sound of running water came from the adjacent bathroom. Steam had already started to form, fogging the mirror as I glanced into the room and moved toward it against my own will. My feet led me there, my heart as heavy as lead in my chest.
What had he been doing that he needed to wash away?
If his business had involved another woman and he needed to clean himself of the evidence, I would survive. I would keep my distance and accept that this marriage was just as fake as the one I might have shared with Damianos. I would accept that Calix’s pretty words had been nothing but poetry meant to lure me into his bed.
They had almost worked.
I stepped into the bathroom, my bare feet moving across the marble tile floor carefully so I didn’t make a sound. The shower doors were fogged with steam, disguising some of my view as Calix tipped his head back and let the water from the showerhead cascade down over his face. He swept his hands over his features, thrusting out an arm suddenly. His palm cracked against the shower wall as he hung his head forward, letting the water drip down the back of his neck once again.
The muscles of his shoulders twitched, his abs clenching as he pulled his hand back from the shower wall. He grabbed his bottle of body wash off the shelf, squirting some into his palm and lathering it quickly before he ran the soap over his body. He started at the tops of his shoulders, the water turning gray as it leaked off his skin.
I took another step closer, drawn to that odd gray tone that seemed too dark to be water but too thin to be mud. Spots dotted his skin, patches of darkness on his cheeks and neck as he ran his hands over the flesh and washed them away.
There was no shape to them, no rhyme or reason to the pattern work of the darkness upon the canvas of his flesh. It was like the splatter of paint…
Oh.
Realization struck me at the same moment that Calix twisted his body suddenly. His open palm slapped against the glass of the shower door, his fingers splaying as he leaned into his hand. His eyes gleamed from behind the fogged glass, his head tilting to the side as he studied me. My heart pounded in my chest, fear of the man who enjoyed killing coursing through my veins. My adrenaline froze me in place, leaving me with nothing to do but stare back at him. “Are you enjoying the show, Little One?” he asked, using those splayed fingers to grip the glass. He pushed it to the side, opening the shower door and revealing the nudity the steam had hidden before.
“I just wanted to know what you were so anxious to wash away,” I said, my voice quiet in the bathroom. It was a miracle he heard it over the sound of running water and the adrenaline surging through me, paralyzing me entirely. I couldn’t seem to move away; couldn’t seem to tear my eyes off the rippling muscles of his abdomen. I swallowed as my gaze trailed lower, following the definition of his abs to the deep lines that led me straight to temptation.
His cock twitched as my gaze settled on it, as if it could feel the weight of my stare. Even without looking at Calix’s face, I could practically feel his arrogance as he wrapped his fingers around the base of his shaft and stroked slowly toward the tip. He was already hard, his cock swollen and curving up slightly, stretching toward his belly button as he continued to stroke it.
“Were you worried that I left you here to go seek the company of another woman?” he asked, drawing my eyes back to his face. His lips were twisted into a cruel smirk, but he said nothing of my outright staring at his cock. The muscles in his arm shifted as he stroked it again, but I refused to look down to watch his palm pump up and down over himself. “I haven’t washed my cock yet if you’d like to see if you can smell another woman’s pussy on me, my jealous little flower. I promise you I have nothing to hide.”
“I hate you,” I seethed, turning to exit the bathroom in my humiliation. He still hadn’t answered my question, choosing to mock me instead.
Our marriage wasn’t a love match where I knew what to expect from him, but neither was it the typical arranged marriage where I knew my place was to keep quiet and spread my legs. Could he really blame me for trying to understand the rules in such an uncertain situation?
“I didn’t say you could leave,” Calix said, the command dropping his voice low. My feet stopped moving, even though I knew I should keep walking. I knew I should put as much distance between us as possible. “I’m washing blood spatter from my skin if you must know. Look at my suit if you question it.”
I glanced down at the white shirt of his suit near the shower door. Dark stains spotted the fabric randomly, the sheer amount of it making my breath catch. “It isn’t a secret you’re a killer. Why would you rush to wash it off?” I asked, swallowing as I turned back to face him.
“It appears to make you uncomfortable. I didn’t think you would want to see just how much I enjoyed sending a message today,” Calix explained, cocking his head as he lifted his free hand to run over the side of his neck. He arched into the touch, the corded muscles of his shoulder flexing as he turned to the side. He twisted around, dumping more body wash into that hand and giving me a perfect, unobstructed view of his ass without shame. His muscles shifted as he kept stroking himself as he rubbed soapy hands over his abs, making me secretly wish I could see it.
“Who were you sending a message to?” I asked, trying to consider why I cared. There was only one person outside this house who mattered to me, and I would gut him myself if he’d hurt her. He damn well knew she was his only leverage over me, and I highly doubted he would so easily expend it.
“A few of Damianos’s men who weren’t at the wedding were left behind to guard the house during the ceremony so they survived the carnage. I needed to remedy that,” Calix explained, continuing to rub the soap along his skin. Water sprayed on the bathroom floor with the door open, but he didn’t seem to care as he leisurely cleaned himself while on display. “I sent their dismembered bodies in a crate to Damianos’s brother, Tobias, to make sure he knows what I’ll do to any men he sends into the city without my permission. Is that what you wanted to hear, Little One?”
“How many bodies did you need to fill a crate?” I asked. Calix chuckled at the question, confirming my immediate thought that it was an odd sort of thing to fixate on.
Who the fuck cared about the shipping logistics?
“Only four today, λουλούδι μου,” he said, rinsing the soap from his hands. “But it wasn’t the volume that required such a large container. Bodies don’t take up much room once you chop them into pieces.”
“Then what took up so much room?” I asked, grimacing as I considered if I really wanted to know.
“Do you really want to know?’ he asked, studying me as I decided if my curiosity was morbid enough to hear the gory details of what he’d done. These men had almost been responsible for my pretty cage, but so was the man who stood in front of me. Damianos never would have spoken to me about such matters, and I couldn’t decide if I loved or hated that Calix didn’t treat me as if I was a sheltered princess in need of protection.
“Yes,” I said, watching as his head jerked back in surprise.
A morbid grin claimed his face as his eyes narrowed in challenge. “Then take off your clothes and come into the shower with me, my flower. I’ll tell you all about my latest artwork.”
He placed a hand on the wall beside him, leaning forward as he pushed me to do as he said with a smile that threatened to unravel me.
I was nothing but a flower beneath his feet that he could play with and torment until he stepped on me and crushed me into nothing.
Still, I reached up to ease the embroidered straps over my shoulders. The tag when I’d gotten dressed that morning had said it was a white dress, but the delicacy of the lace was far too appealing for me to avoid it.
The fabric fell to my feet in a small puddle, leaving me standing before Calix in nothing but a pair of pale, lacy underwear. Calix’s gaze fell to my breasts immediately, his silver stare turning molten as his jaw clenched.
I slid a finger beneath the strap on each side of my hip, shimmying them down my thighs until I was naked in front of him. He grinned as he held out a hand to help me over the wet floor. Once I was safely over the puddle, he stepped back from the shower door, moving farther in and giving me room to stand beneath the water without him touching me. The water poured down onto my chest, the warmth sinking into my breasts as it trickled down over the smooth expanse of my stomach. Calix’s gaze followed it, landing on the apex of my thighs as he sank his teeth into his bottom lip.
“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” he grunted. I wasn’t sure if he wanted to fuck me or eat me alive with the way he stared at me, and I was left with the distinct reminder that curiosity killed the cat.
“I’m in the shower, Calix. What took up so much room in the crate?” I asked, leaning my back into the wall opposite of him as I stepped out from beneath the spray.
He stalked closer, his cock hard and looking as much like a weapon as it did something that brought me a great deal of pleasure. I still remembered the way it had felt to have him tear me in two. The way his hand felt wrapped around my throat as he fucked me.
Stopping just in front of me, Calix placed a hand on the wall behind my head and stared down into my eyes as he reached the other hand lower. Grasping me around the back of my thigh, he lifted my leg until he could rest my foot on the angled bottom shelf meant for shaving.
He backed away slowly, staring at my spread legs and the way he’d put my pussy on display. “Are you wet?” he asked instead of answering my question. A predator toying with his meal before he devoured it whole.
“I am in the shower,” I pointed out with a roll of my eyes, holding my head high in spite of the way my cheeks heated with his pointed stare.
“Are. You. Wet?” He didn’t clarify, because he knew damn well he didn’t need to. “Will I find you slick when I drop to my knees and put my mouth on you?”
My hips shifted as I squirmed. “Yes,” I said, not bothering to deny it. The physical reactions of my body meant nothing. They weren’t acceptance of who he was and what he’d done.
It was all a biological reaction to the perfection of a sculpted Greek God standing in front of me. “Touch yourself,” he growled, standing far enough away that he’d have a perfect view of it. “You want something from me? This is my price.”
“You want me to play with my pussy so you can watch?” I asked, placing my palm against my stomach. I slid it lower, ghosting my fingertips over the flesh I’d explored so many times. When my nerves tried to take hold of me, I reminded myself that he’d seen it all before. He’d watched while I’d been entirely unaware.
At least this time I could control the narrative. I could determine what he saw or didn’t see.
“This better be one hell of a story,” I said, using two fingers to circle my clit as he watched.
“You can pretend all you want, but you’re wet while we talk of blood and death. I told you I dismembered four men, and you asked for details while your pretty little pussy wept for me. I may be a villain in this story,” he said, coming closer until he stopped in front of me. He slowly lowered himself to his knees, his face just above the place where I touched myself. His gaze stayed planted on my face as I teased my clit, my breath coming much more quickly with his proximity and the scent of him filling my lungs. He placed a hand on top of each of my thighs, drawing a deep breath in as he leaned closer to murmur softly between us. “But so are you, Little One.”
“I’ve never been a villain in anyone’s story,” I sighed deeply as my fingers worked faster. Calix raised a hand to grasp my wrist, stilling my motions as I squirmed for more touch.
“Of course you have,” he murmured, guiding my hand away so that he could stare at the swollen pink flesh between my legs. He leaned forward until his mouth was only a breath from my skin. “Even a villain has to be made before she can rise.”
He closed the distance, dragging his tongue through my flesh from entrance to clit. My back arched, straining toward him as I sought out more. He’d manipulated me right where he wanted me, but as he hoisted my leg higher and buried his face between my legs, I couldn’t find it in me to care.
“Calix,” I whimpered, dropping my hands to the dark hair on top of his head. The wet strands slid through my fingers as he fucked me with his tongue, sliding his other hand up and over my stomach. He gripped my breast, using the touch to force me back into the shower wall and pin me there. He devoured me like a man starved, abandoning my entrance to torment my clit with slow, firm circles that threatened to make me come undone. “Oh God.”
He shoved me into the wall, his mouth becoming more frenzied on my flesh as my legs trembled. The orgasm blinded me momentarily, flooding my world with white as it washed over me. I gasped, gripping the back of his head and holding him still as I rocked my hips against his face.
“That wasn’t exactly the plan when I got in the shower,” I said, my breathing ragged and my voice strained. I couldn’t quite seem to find the ability to function, and I stumbled when Calix lowered my leg to the shower floor and stood in front of me.
His face glistened with my arousal as he leaned forward, laying a kiss to the side of my neck. “Maybe not yours,” he murmured, a chuckle making his voice quake. He ran his lips over me, teasing me as I settled and remembered what it was to breathe. “I arranged their body parts into the shape of a flower, Little One. Let’s hope it serves as the proper incentive for them to stay away from you.”
λουλούδι μου.
His flower.
Oh my God.
The breath returned to my lungs in a rush, filling my chest as he touched his lips to mine. The meaning of his words lingered between us. The meaning of his message that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else.
It did mean something to me.
He slowly backed away, leaving me floundering as he stared at me. “This is the part where you go to bed if you don’t want me to fuck you into the shower wall, Thalia,” he said, giving me the distance to flee the bathroom if I chose.
I pursed my lips, dropping my gaze to the hardness of his cock.
“What if I don’t want to?”
