“Fuck,” he growls quietly. “Fuck.”
He sighs heavily above me as I blink back the tears and bring a hand up to wipe my eyes. I stay on the ground as I slowly lift my gaze to him.
“This was a mistake, babygirl.”
I flinch at the words, both physically and emotionally. His head tilts to the side again.
“I warned you, princess,” he growls. “I fucking warned you that you were way out past your fucking depth.”
He exhales again, the neon X’s piercing into me.
“Let’s call that getting off easy,” he mutters. “Now: run home, princess. Go find a nice prince to play grownup with. You don’t want me. And this kink you think you have is not for you.”
Without another word, he turns and walks into the flickering candlelight of the church, then deeper into the shadows before he finally disappears behind the pulpit.
Then I’m alone.
Slowly, painfully, I get to my feet. There’s no sign of my panties, as if I could even wear them anyway. Sucking in slow, steadying breaths of air, I cling to the carved stone wall behind me, leaning against it, looking up at the haunted spires and leering gargoyles.
He was right.
He did warn me. And I was out past my depth.
But he was also wrong.
This wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t too much. And it didn’t break me, despite his best efforts.
I’m pretty sure it just freed me. Because I don’t want to run scared. I don’t want to go home, tail between my legs. And I certainly don’t want to go “find a nice prince to play grownup with.”
What I do want, though, is more of what just happened.
Because I’ve never felt more alive in my life.
8
KRATOS
The beast inside of me is a fickle one. He’s unpredictable at times, and his tastes are…ambiguous. Despite knowing him intimately all my life, there are still times where I’m not quite sure if the desires roaring inside me are clamoring for violence or sex.
Sometimes I worry that it’s both. Others, it’s precisely the promise of both that gives me a rushing high no drug on Earth can mimic.
It makes my reaction to Bianca Sartorre the other night even more curious.
My jaw sets as the gilded elevator slowly rises forty floors above Central Park South.
I’m still trying to figure out my monster’s motive for tracking her to that bar, snatching her, and bringing her to my secret sanctuary. Was it to find out why Vito Barone’s adopted daughter was running around with bricks of cocaine in back alleys?
Was it a need for violence? A desire to snip off any loose threads, considering what she saw me do in that alley? Maybe it was fueled by a far baser instinct.
Maybe I was curious why the good little princess has been looking for primal play on the website of a fetish club she shouldn’t even be a member of. The one she goes on using a fake name.
Like me.
Honestly, that would be the easiest explanation. It’s difficult for me to find someone with whom to explore my very specific tastes. Women who say they’re into “rough sex” or primal play typically have no fucking clue what I mean when I say it.
I don’t mean fucking pink fuzzy handcuffs, or a safe word that gets used the second my fingers curl around a throat.
I’m looking to be savage. To fuck like it’s an extreme sport, or a battle. What I want with sex is a hunt.
A blood-soaked war.
Most women—most people in general, actually—would never guess this side of me. I keep it locked up tight in a safe buried under the fucking floorboards. Very few women get past the facade to see the real me.
And all of them, without exception, run screaming once they do.
Bianca didn’t.
I fully expected her to, which is why I came at her with both barrels blazing: barging in on her, masked, in that club bathroom. Binding and blindfolding her before kidnapping her.
The knife.
The chase.
Showing her the true nature of my beast.
I kept waiting for her to break down and scream the safe word, to show me the terrified little mob princess way out of her depth that I knew she was. To prove to both of us that she does not belong in the shadows.
Except it never happened, until I forced the issue. Until I pushed her a mile past her comfort zone, pinned her to the ground, and savaged that climax from her shuddering body.
