I considered giving Cole a couple of days to cool off.
I could avoid him reasonably well—sleeping over at a friend’s house. Not coming into the studio to work.
But the effort would be pointless.
Cole ain’t ever cooling off. I’m not stupid enough to think that a couple of days apart is going to ease his fury at what I did. Not after I literally hung a reminder on his wall.
Besides, I want to work. I don’t want to take a week off from painting, or even a single day.
Which is why I find myself back at the studio a little before midnight, praying that Cole might possibly be asleep and not angry enough to haul himself out of bed to mete out what’s coming to me.
Janice isn’t at her desk. The building has a roaming security guard at night, but I suspect he spends most of his time walking as slowly as possible so he only has to make a few rounds before his shift ends.
The odd silence of the usually bustling space puts me on edge as I climb the stairs to the fourth floor.
I didn’t used to be a jumpy person.
Getting snatched by a monster straight out of a nightmare changed that forever.
I’ll never forget that dark figure hurtling toward me. Somehow that was the worst part: realizing that the things you fear are very much real. And they’re coming for you.
Cole asked me why I kept the piercings. I told myself that I was doing it for me—an act of defiance.
But Cole is right.
I like the reminder. I need it.
So I never get too comfortable again.
Sometimes I think it was Cole who kidnapped me. Sometimes I feel sure it wasn’t.
Nothing about that night makes sense to me. It feels like one of those perspective paintings, where if you look from the wrong angle, it’s just a jumble of shapes and lines. But if you move to the right point in the room, the shapes align and you can see the image clear as day. I could see exactly what happened . . . if I just knew where to stand.
For now, I know one thing for certain: Cole is dangerous.
I should run far away from him.
I know this, rationally.
Yet I want the exact opposite.
I’m fascinated by him. Drawn to him in every possible way: physically, mentally, emotionally.
I’ve been reading Dracula. It’s a cautionary tale. A warning to young women not to give in to the seduction of a man who wants to devour you.
And yet . . . not all of us were drawn to Prince Charming. Some little girls ate up the stories of ball gowns and castles and knights who slayed the dragon . . .
While some little girls read the stories of a dark pathway into the woods . . . a twisted mansion with black windows and fog covering the grounds . . . That’s where we wanted to go. No matter what we might find inside . . .
I’ve started my second painting.
It will be just as large as the first—life-sized. The primary figure is part human, part animal, with a ram’s horns and bat-like wings outstretched on either side. Four arms and two sets of hands. One pair of hands are slim, pale, elegant. The other hands are thick, coarse, brutish.
I put on my music, as loud as I want because there’s no one else in the adjacent studios.
The canvas seems to expand until it appears as large as the room. It fills my whole field of view, it becomes the whole universe. Each tiny detail unspools from my brush, bursting into life.
I forget about Cole.
I forget about everything outside of the painting.
Time flows by while I stand still.
I don’t even realize someone has walked through the door until Cole says, “First a saint, now a demon.”
He’s standing right behind me. I don’t know how long he’s been in the room.
I whirl around, brush upraised.
Cole looks down at me, our faces only inches apart. He’s paler than usual, dark circles under his eyes. He definitely wasn’t asleep. He might not have slept last night either.
It must be raining outside. His clothes are damp. Droplets glint in his thick, black hair, the tips wet like my brush.
The rain amplifies his scent. He smells cold and clean, like a windswept street. His eyes are black as asphalt.
“I was looking for you,” he says.
“I was hiding,” I reply.
“I know that. I know you were hiding. I also knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away for long.”
His voice is as cold as his clothes. It makes me shiver.
He knows me too well.
“It’s not a demon,” I say. “It’s the devil.”
“What’s the difference?”
“There’s only one devil.”
He smiles. Cole’s real smile is very different from the one he gives to everyone else. It’s slower. It doesn’t crinkle up his eyes. And it ends with him biting down on the edge of his lip. Hard.
“You left a gift in my office.”
The chill runs from the base of my skull, all the way down my spine. I try not to flinch. I try not to let him see how hard my heart is pounding.
“How did you like it?” I say, tilting up my chin.
Cole steps closer, slipping his right hand under my hair, gripping the back of my skull. With his thumb, he forces my chin up even further.
“I didn’t like it at all. In fact, it made me jealous.”
My skin goes from chilled to burning hot, all in an instant. My nipples stiffen under the thin material of my top. The rings stay cold like ice.
He’s jealous. He’s admitting that he’s jealous.
Cole runs his thumb across my lower lip. My sweat is gasoline. Every place he touches ignites on fire.
I hear a sharp click and the cold clasp of a manacle closing around my wrist.
Before I can move, before I can even glance down at my own wrist, Cole takes three swift steps, dragging me toward the wall. He yanks my arms over my head and handcuffs me in place, the chain wrapped around an exposed pipe.
“What the fuck!?” I shriek.
I yank on the cuffs, the metal biting into my wrists.
“This will go a lot smoother if you hold still,” Cole says.
He plucks the paintbrush out of my hand, setting it aside.
“What will go smoother? What the fuck are you doing?” I cry.
I’m starting to hyperventilate. The wrist ties are bringing back horrible memories, all in a rush.
Cole doesn’t answer me.
Instead, he pulls over a stool and sets down the bag he was carrying—a black leather bag that opens at the top like an old-fashioned doctor’s satchel.
He unclips the straps of my overalls, letting the bib fall down to my waist. Then he grabs the front of my tank top with both hands, ripping it apart. My breasts fall free, nipples rock hard, chest bared to his view.
We both look down, staring at my tits. At the silver rings with a single bead in the center, glinting like the rain in Cole’s hair.
His gaze crawls down my body. To the tattoo on my ribs.
“Logan did that to you,” Cole says softly.
It’s not a question.
“How do you know that?” I demand.
Cole rests his hand against the wall, leaning close, his lips almost touching the rim of my ear. Almost, but not quite.
“I know everything about you, Mara. Everything,” he murmurs. “I know you fucked him to defy me. To show me that I can’t control you. And maybe I can’t control you—not all the time. But you were given to me.”
I was given to him?
What the fuck does that mean?
“I own you now, Mara. You belong to me, whether you like it or not.”
He trails his fingers lightly down the side of my chest, along the curve where the breast meets the ribs. My nipples are harder than diamonds. They could cut his face if he leaned too close.
He traces the serpent’s body with his fingertips.
“I can’t have another man’s mark on you.”
“I designed that tattoo,” I hiss.
“I designed a better one.”
He reaches inside the doctor’s bag. Pulling out a tattoo gun.
“Are you insane?” I shriek.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ve been practicing the last few hours.”
“On who?!”
He just smiles.
“Steady now. I’m still perfecting my technique.”
Cole cleans my skin with green soap, also taken from the bag. He really has everything he needs in there.
“DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE—”
He fires up the gun with that high buzzing sound that’s all too familiar to me.
I shriek, trying to twist away from him.
“If you don’t hold still, you won’t like the result,” he says.
He presses the tip of the gun against my ribs, turning my shriek into a piercing scream.
I feel the prick of the needle as it pierces my skin, depositing the ink deep down where it can never be removed.
Instinctively, I freeze.
I can’t stop Cole. And I really don’t want a fucking mess all over my ribs.
The gun moves slowly, surely. Though I know a tattoo gun operates much like a sewing machine, plunging the needle down under the skin at regular intervals, what it actually feels like is someone drawing on you with a sharp pen.
I look down, trying to figure out what he’s drawing.
It’s impossible to tell from this angle, upside down.
Cole’s hands move over me, strong and capable. Warmer than I would have guessed. In fact, his bare hands on my flesh feel surprisingly pleasurable, in contrast to the bite of the needle.
Every time he exhales, his breath slides across my waist. It runs along the line where my denim overalls meet my bare skin.
Cole is left-handed. I never noticed that before.
His left hand operates the gun with smooth, sure motion, while his right rests against my hip. Gripping me tight. Holding me in place.
I’ve never had the chance to look at him so close.
His hair is incredibly thick, like animal fur. As he tilts his head, it brushes against my skin, soft and slightly damp.
Though I know he’s older than me, his skin is remarkably smooth. Maybe because he only forms expressions when someone is watching.
Almost all the animation in his face comes from those straight, dark brows. They remind me of shodo on pale white paper. In Japanese calligraphy, no two brush strokes are ever the same. So it is on Cole’s face—those brows are the ink strokes that give meaning to his bottomless black eyes.
He’s utterly focused on me, gaze lasered in, jaw tight. My breathing slows, matching pace with his. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.
His beauty is mesmerizing. I’m watching him, not the tattoo gun. Feeling his touch, not the touch of steel.
He can feel me relax. He looks up into my face.
“I don’t know why you always want to fight me,” he says. “It’s so much more pleasurable to give me what I want . . .”
“More pleasurable for who?” I gasp.
“For both of us.”
He slips his hand down the front of my overalls.
I’m not wearing any underwear. I never did get around to washing my laundry.
His touch is gentler than I expected. I thought it would be as brutal as his kiss. Instead, it’s almost soothing . . .
His fingers slide over my pussy, searching, exploring. Testing . . .
He touches me here, there, waiting for a reaction. Seeing how I respond. When I lean against him, when my lips part, when I moan . . . he knows he found the right spot. He soaks his fingers inside me, then rubs me every place that feels the best . . .
The tattoo gun buzzes angrily against my ribs. It nips and bites, over and over, up and down, across the bone.
I hardly notice the pain. I’m leaned up against the wall, head tilted back, thighs parted. Letting Cole touch me wherever he wants.
He strokes my pussy like his own personal pet. He runs his fingers up and down my slit, sometimes plunging inside of me, sometimes rubbing circles around my clit.
All the while he’s drawing on my ribs, his left hand working separately from his right.
The pain enhances the pleasure, and the pleasure enhances the pain.
My skin is sweating, waves of sensation rolling over me.
I rock my hips against his hand.
I’m moaning. I don’t know how long I’ve been making that sound.
He’s found the spot right under my clit, the most sensitive bundle of nerves on my whole body. He’s stroking it with the ball of his thumb, over and over.
“Oh my god . . .” I moan. “Don’t stop . . .”
“Tell me you’re mine . . .” he hisses. “Tell me I can do whatever I want to you . . .”
I press my lips together, refusing to say it.
He bears down hard on the tattoo gun, biting into my flesh.
“Say it.”
I shake my head, eyes closed, mouth clamped shut.
He presses harder with the tattoo gun, and with his fingers under my clit. He strokes me hard, while drawing god knows what on my flesh.
“Say it, Mara. Tell me you belong to me . . .”
I want to say it.
I want to give in.
His hand is stroking, rubbing, exactly the way I like. Better than a man has ever managed before. Better than I can do it myself . . .
The pleasure is a need, a demand. An itch that HAS to be scratched . . .
“SAY IT,” he snarls.
“No fucking way,” I hiss back at him.
He finishes the tattoo with a vicious slash down the bone.
I shriek. Every muscle of my body tenses, including my thighs clamping hard together. That’s what makes me cum, as much as Cole’s fingers pressed against my clit. The orgasm is a blazing shock that rips through me from chest to groin, in one continuous loop.
I turn my head, biting hard on my own shoulder. Leaving a wreath of teeth marks.
My weight hangs from the cuffs, my body limp and wrung out.
I’m still twitching as the aftershocks spark through me.
Cole wipes the excess ink off my skin with the same green soap. The soap Logan uses.
“You didn’t hurt him, did you?” I demand.
“He’s not your concern,” Cole says, seizing my face once more. Forcing me to look at him. “You need to worry about what I think. What I want.”
I look into his eyes.
“What happens if I don’t?”
“Then next time I won’t be so forgiving.”
I laugh out loud, standing up straight now, rattling the cuffs.
“This is you being nice?”
Cole looks at me steadily.
“Yes, Mara,” he says quietly. “This is me being kind. Being merciful. You need to understand that—because if you try to crack me open, you won’t like what crawls out.”
He unlocks the cuffs. I rub my wrists, trying to bring sensation back into my hands. Then, slowly, I walk over to the full-length mirror hanging on the wall. I stand before it, turning slightly so I can see the tattoo that runs from just under my right breast all the way down to my hip bone.
He branded me. Put his mark on me forever.
And it’s beautiful. Truly fucking beautiful.
Cole is an artist in every sense of the word. The composition, the smooth flow of the lines, the way the flowers and leaves follow the curves of my breast, my ribs, my hip bone. Perfectly formed to my shape, undulating with every twist or bend of my body. As I move, the tattoo comes alive.
A wild garden. A riot of ferns, foliage, and flowers, between which my little snake peeks out.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathe. “You really are talented.”
Cole stands directly behind me.
He’s taller than me, and broader. I fit entirely inside his silhouette, so he forms a dark halo all around me. As if he’s already swallowed me whole, and I’m inside of him.
“Your turn,” he says.
I lock eyes with him in the mirror. “What do you mean?”
He holds up the tattoo gun silently.
“Are you serious?”
In response, he puts the gun in my hand and reaches over his own shoulder, grabbing a handful of his shirt and shucking it off over his head. He stands upright, throwing the shirt aside.
I stare at his naked torso.
In all my years of figure drawing, I’ve never seen a body like his.
The closest comparison would be a gymnast or a dancer—that level of lean, tight, fluid muscle. A coiled spring, ready for release.
Even gymnasts aren’t this aesthetic. The slabs of muscle across his chest, the perfect V of his waist, the way the ripples of muscle seem designed to draw the eye down, down, to button of his trousers . . .
His flesh is pale next to the loose, dark waves of hair that fall almost to his shoulders. There’s no hair anywhere on his body. No ink, either. His skin is smooth and unmarked.
“You want me to tattoo you?” I say.
He nods.
“Do you have other tattoos?”
“This will be the first.”
I swallow hard.
Cole’s beauty is way past intimidating—it’s fucking flawless.
I’ve never given a tattoo in my life. If I fuck this up, I’ll feel worse than if I scrawled a mustache across the Mona Lisa.
“I don’t think I should.”
Cole’s brows drop low across his eyes, narrowing them to slits.
“I don’t give a fuck what you think.”
My fingers tighten on the gun.
Now I want to write FUCK YOU in six-inch letters across his back.
“I hope you have enough ink,” I say.
“I have exactly what I need,” he replies.
I bet he does.
I grab the stool and drag it over in front of the mirror.
“Sit down,” I say.
Cole sits, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. Without discussing it, we’ve both intuited that his back is the best canvas—smooth and relatively flat. Actually, it’s as muscular as the rest of him. As soon as I hover the needle over his skin, I can see that I’ll have to navigate the scapula, the ribs, and the long sheets of muscle that radiate out from the spine—the lats, the traps, and the obliques.
“You want me to . . . sketch it out first?” I say weakly.
Cole doesn’t move. He doesn’t even turn his head.
“I trust you,” he says.
I’m a hot mess. Nobody has ever trusted me, especially not with something as irreversible as this.
But I don’t argue. Taking a deep breath, I fire up the gun.
By the time I’m finished, the first morning light is streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. It illuminates Cole’s skin, turning marble to gold.
I’ve fallen so deeply into the design that all I can see is those flowing black lines, running like a river down the right side of his back. With a little practice, I’ve even figured out the shading.
He’s bleeding in a couple of spots. He never flinched. Never asked me to stop. He hardly seemed to feel it at all.
I clean his back with the green soap, just as he did to me.
Then I say, “It’s finished.”
Cole stands with his back to the mirror. He looks over his shoulder to see the design.
Two snakes: one white, one black. Twisted and entwined with one another—their alternating coils tightly wrapped, but their mouths open to show their snarling fangs.
I branded him just as he did to me.
