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“I understand Top Boy’s obsession with his cousin now.” He strokes my face with his fingers, softly, like I’m a piece of porcelain. “That's why I can’t stand any man getting close to you. I can’t risk someone taking you away from me the way I took her from him. Not that any man who did that would live to tell the tale.”
I let loose a trembling sigh as those words wash through me like a tumultuous river. This is unhealthy, toxic, and I shouldn’t feel this way about a man who did me as dirty as him. Longing for his abuse because he made me feel so fucking special. At least one mystery is lifted–why Zayne Thorngren is a master of abuse. He was tormented like a martyr in his childhood. He never knew a mother’s love and hated his father.
“Let me kiss you, wild flame. It might be the last time I get to do it with your consent.” The content of what he just said isn’t lost on me, but it fades in the face of that dark whisper, of his scent, of the warmth of his mouth now so close to mine.
I shut my eyes, letting his mouth close over mine almost lovingly. He moans against my lips, taking my face in his large hands. He drinks from me slowly, pulling deep and thirstily from my sap. Longingly. Then our lips part, and he looks into my eyes like he knows he’ll lose me.
“Then I had all the other guys sodomized.”
I blink, unable to disentangle his words at first.
“What?” I whisper, and a shadow falls over his expression. Spite, but only to mask something else that I can’t identify. My brain is too scrambled.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” I breathe, desperately trying to see it. Everything else he said, Sister Garlic, Top Boy, they were evil people, and even though I know it’s not right, deep down I feel like they got what they deserved. But those other boys? They puked on the floor at the torture that was inflicted on Zayne.
“But they repented,” I manage to bring over my lips.
He nods slowly, those incredible eyes not even blinking. “They repented, yes. Later. Maybe they felt sorry for me while it happened, too. But they didn’t stop it. And even though I resent the saying, sometimes silence is violence.”
“How many?” At this point, I sound like a ghost.
“Eight. Top Boy was the ninth. And before you say he got away with less hell than his chums, don’t think I was done with him after the business with his cousin-slash-fiancée.” His grin widens with deranged satisfaction. “I went after his mother next. Sent him and his father footage of her cuffed to a hook on the door while I impaled her with my cock. Made sure they could hear loud and clear how I slapped her face while I drove my dick inside her, and how she moaned and begged for more, pleading with me to remove my condom so she could feel the real me.”
Bile rises up in my throat, but I force myself to swallow it back down, keeping my eyes on him.
“But I kept the condom on, of course. I wouldn’t have touched that bitch without it. I never fucked a woman without a condom before. Until you.” A short pause, as if he’s trying to understand why at the same time I do.
“Turns out she was the one her son got it from. The meanness. The taste for others’ suffering. She used to sleep with her girlfriends’ husbands only to feel that she was better than them. I made sure they all found out.” He clicks his tongue. “Top Boy, the bastard, though. He realized I wasn’t going to let up. That I was going to spend my life making him pay, making him suffer. Humiliating him, hurting him, destroying his soul, and I was going to make fine art of it, too. So he used his father’s money and influence to fade into the background. He did it smoothly, I have to give him that. He took up a new name, and it took me many years to find him again.”
“But you found him again?”
“Of course I did. And your still-husband, Joseph, helped me do it. That’s how he and I initially became, well, almost friends. We never really liked each other. He was more like Top Boy than he gave himself credit for.” His lip curls in disgust over his teeth. “Just as entitled, and fascinated with exploring his own dark side. Never his own pain, but the pain of others. Controlling people just because he could, subjecting them to his whims.”
Oh, don’t I know? And Zayne reads it in my eyes, I can see it.
“And the other boys?” Honestly, I don’t know if I can take the answer, but I push through it anyway. This isn’t about me needing to know anymore. It’s about him needing to get it off his chest, because everything in him, from his tone to his poisoned aura, tells me he’s never talked about it before, not like this.
“I didn’t have men force themselves on them if it eases your worries. But the first time they went with an escort–and they all did, the sorry asses–I made sure the girls toyed with their sexuality. Made sure there were polaroids of them with dildos and even cucumbers up their asses. Some of them could be persuaded to let a guy join, so there was some evidence of them taking dick, too. I decided not to make the receipts public, but to use them to make the wimps do my bidding. It’s one of the tactics that helped me climb the ladder to the top of this world. Using filthy bastards like them, well-positioned, rich, proved especially lucrative. Add that to the Hell’s Angels network, and you have the perfect storm.”
“A perfect storm that you created.”
“Oh, and I created much more.” The more devilish his stare, the more handsome his features, indeed like a demon coming for my soul, seducing me into surrendering it. As if on cue, he says, “Lucifer sure did a good job recruiting me for his army.”
“You’re not evil,” I whisper.
He bursts into laughter, the sound thundering from his broad, scar-streaked chest.
“You’d choose to believe that, even after everything I did to you?” He looks down at me as if he’s not sure whether I’m good-natured or just plain stupid.
Hooking my fingers into his belt again, I pull myself forward and press a kiss to one of his scars.
“Your body,” I whisper, my breath hovering over his next scar before I kiss it, “is telling me everything that your words aren’t.” Then, before my lips close over a different spot, “The tone of your voice, your words, they’re echoes from your soul. I can hear the wind howling over barren rocks.” My hands travel up his abs, the pads of my fingers gently tracing the blemishes on his skin. “I can feel a starless night closing around me, sucking me in. Tall grass sways in a harsh, wintry breeze that whips my cheeks, but I am not alone. There’s someone here with me.”
My eyes close as my tongue flicks out to taste him. “I’m not even sure it’s someone, but maybe...just a part of a person. They’ve been here so long, they can’t feel the cold anymore. They’re not shivering. They’re not blinking. Just watching. They’re aware, but they’re not afraid. They’re...” I dive deeper, my eyes rolling back behind my closed lids. “They’re not feeling anything.”
The starless night tugs at me, and I allow my mind to dissolve into his, feeling my way up his body to his chest. Through our bodies touching, our souls connect.
“Feeling is something this tiny part of a person lost a long time ago. But the closest thing they can remember is resentment. The first hint of emotion, causing a small rip through the howling wind and whipping grass.” With that bit of resentment, the part of the person becomes clearer. A little boy, watching me with unblinking eyes as I crawl closer. His unwavering gaze is carnivorous, and I stop. Any closer, and he’ll sink sharp stubs of blackened teeth into me. I sigh with my eyes closed, sensing his intention. The images and the sounds, they’re not actually there, they’re a feeling, and the boy, he’s a body of emotion taking shape from the barren wilderness of the farthest recesses of Zayne’s life. A wraith, buried inside the foundation of the man standing in front of me.
