He watched as she moved around the kitchen, immensely enjoying the way his t-shirt fell over her petite frame, almost drowning her to her knees. She had begun to make this space her own, and he liked that.
For weeks, they had stayed here. For weeks, almost two months since the night he drove inside her, tasting the sweetness of her cries on his tongue and seeing the burst of sparks across his vision, he had become addicted. Her sounds had different flavors of sweetness too—and nothing had been more delicious than every time he took her to the stars and back.
“Do you think you can handle going back to the city?” he asked, testing her, waiting to see her reaction.
She stiffened with her back to him, her arms freezing on the door of the refrigerator. “Do I have to?” Her voice had a tremor in it. Sweet but oddly sour too. He didn’t like when she spoke in pain or fear.
“Come here.”
Without hesitation, she turned and came to him, sitting down on his lap. He was pleased. For two months, she had learned to trust him, learned to let go, and she had received only pleasure for it. He’d made it his life’s mission to replace her horrors with happiness, the demons in her past with the devil in her present. He wanted her to remain happy. When she was, his world was different. Her eyes sparkled, her hair was shinier, her voice tasted sweeter, the sounds she made hit him in the chest. He wasn’t just addicted to her now; he was addicted to her when she was happy, her laughter a new sound to add to the list of his obsessions. It was such an odd sound, not one he was very familiar with and not one he’d particularly thought would come from her, but once it had, he wanted more. Her breathy sighs, her soft moans, her shattering screams—he wanted them all. The way she said his name, the way she tested his boundaries, the way she looked at him—he was a man crazed for those little things.
He looked down at her face, her beautiful face that glowed with health and life, her hair slightly longer and going back to its original waviness of a flame, her bright green eyes so expressive he still wondered how one person could hold so much emotion inside them.
They were perfect, she and him— her soul full of emotion and light and his of void and dark. And somehow, even with his void and his dark, she didn’t lose her innate ability to emote, to shine, to warm. She felt like the fire he had needed in the midst of winter on the streets, when he’d been freezing and there had been nothing to warm him. That’s what his life had been like, endless winter with no warmth in sight, and somehow he had accepted the frost into himself. And she, that night he had been about to deliver a death, had instead delivered life in his hands, trusting him with her most precious possession.
Nobody had ever trusted him, never with anything precious, and the feeling had become heady. Trust was power, the power to make or break someone. And in that moment, having never tasted that kind of emotional power before, he had been stunned.
He liked her trust, he wanted her trust. He wanted to break her and rebuild her, and he wanted her trust to let him do all those things. She didn’t know this, but she had been his purpose for six years, all his plans, all his actions, everything centered around her.
She was the sun in the endless dark abyss of the universe, a ball of fire so bright she made everything revolve around herself without even trying, and anything that didn’t was lost to float away and die. And he? He was the endless, dark abyss they died in, the one that surrounded her, the one that let her blaze.
He watched as wriggled a little in his lap, sending blood rushing to his cock. The fucker was addicted to her pussy too. Fucking her the first time had been like fucking for the first time. He hadn’t expected the sensations of her tight pussy gripping him to feel so heightened when he’d gotten the piercings. Even now, it took him a moment to fully seat himself inside her and he had been consistently taking her for weeks.
“Stop,” he held her hip still, knowing she was trying to distract him.
She didn’t stop.
Without a word, he stood and pushed her over the counter, giving her ass a loud smack. Another thing he’d learned about her? She loved being spanked. The first time he’d spanked her had been a throwaway gesture as he’d passed her in the closet. He hadn’t been thinking about doing it, but her ass had looked good in her jeans and he’d just impulsively done it.
She’d yelped and turned around, and the expression on her face had said everything.
So, he’d done it again.
She had bitten her lush lower lip, her eyes hungry.
So, right there in the closet, he had turned her over his knee and spanked her until she’d been a writhing mess, crying and begging him to take her, and take her he had, right in front of the mirror, holding her up with his arms, her legs up over his forearms locking her open, making her see how small she had looked with his huge, pierced cock hammering into her. She had come so many times that time she had ultimately passed out.
Now, she looked over her shoulder at him, giving him the look he’d come to understand very well. If he was addicted to her, she was addicted to him too. And that’s how he knew she was ready.
“I asked you a question,” he reminded her, and she wriggled her hips back into him, rubbing against the tent in his pants, and fuck if he didn’t want to rip into her.
“I don’t want to leave home,” she told him, and something tightened in his chest.
Home.
She’d begun to think of this as home. He was very, very pleased.
“You can’t hide forever, flamma.”
“Watch me.”
The defiance in her tone amused him. He gave her delectable ass another smack, watching it ripple under his palm, the red print darkening on her skin.
“If we don’t go back, how will you see the bald man?”
She stilled, drawing a sharp breath in. He watched as she turned her neck, her expressive eyes locking with his. Though she had been coping, her sessions with Dr. Manson doing her a world of good, he knew she pushed a lot of what she had gone through under the rug, pretending to start anew, and while he had no problem with her healing however she had to, he did have a problem with the breakdowns that sneaked up on her unannounced.
In the last two months, he had seen her collapse over tea, over seeing a naked woman with him, over not being able to go into the village because she was scared of going out of the house, over her fear of not being talkative enough to hold a conversation. Little things, so many things, that went through her mind and made her feel lesser, all coming from a place of low self-worth and fear of never being enough. With the life she’d had, no one could blame her but fuck if he didn’t want her to realize and accept just how truly powerful she was, had always been. In a war, the one who had the most effective weapons was the mightier, and she, even without knowing, had some of the most powerful weapons in the world willing to go to any lengths for her. He was just on the top of that list, so if it meant killing the main monster responsible for recent traumas, then so be it.
Hector, once Alpha Villanova’s right-hand man, now a Syndicate lapdog, was the lowest of lowlives. While Dainn didn’t have any room to judge as a killer himself, Hector was a breed of his own. He had fucked children, raped and strangled innocent women, and murdered one of Lyla’s old friend, one who had escaped and become Alpha’s sister-in-law. Dainn, as psychotic as he was, drew the line at kids, not because of morality bur because they were helpless, powerless, and it made those who preyed on them cowards who couldn’t face a grown adult.
Dainn had been tracking Hector since the day he’d taken Lyla, terrorizing him until the other man peed his pants and ran away to hide like the spineless coward that he was. He had resurfaced, and this time, the Shadow Man would pay him a visit.
“You know where he is?” she asked, rage bleaching into her words.
“Better, flamma,” he palmed her ass softly. “I have him strung up in a very good place. He’s bleeding out, one drop at a time as I play with your pussy.” She spread her legs for his fingers, wet for him already as she always was.
“Is he hurting?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“More than you ever hurt,” he promised and saw her spine relax. Good.
“I want to see that,” she said softly to the counter. “I want to see him bleed. When do we go?”
Dainn heard her vengeful words, and slowly rubbed her back in a gesture he knew soothed her. Yeah, she was ready, at least for the first step.
