AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ve never seen a villain without a cause, even if that cause is pure hedonic experience. Some villains are intense in the pursuit of that.” I let my heart melt into the connection between us, drifting deep into the dark waters of his soul. I know it’s in the blackest, scariest depths that I’ll find the boy I long to bring back to life.
“You were intense in that pursuit as well,” I go on, following the pull of his essence. “What happened to you in this room all those years ago made certain mechanisms snap in your psyche. It’s what usually causes trauma. So it makes sense that you repeatedly tried to fix it by going after the type of boy who tortured you over and over again, and gave them the hell you believed they deserved.” I lick my lips, steeling myself. “You once offered to tell me how you chose them. Your victims. By what criteria. I wasn’t ready to hear it then. I’m ready to hear it now.”
I can see the hesitation in his eyes, but he doesn’t say a word.
“You already showed me the so-called monster, Zayne. But I’m still here. Haven’t I earned your trust?”
“It’s not you that I don’t trust,” he rasps. “I don’t trust that you’d still want me if you knew the full extent–”
“Zayne, until you persuade yourself that you are lovable, that your essence is good, no amount of shackles and security and surveillance is going to satisfy you. I have done some ugly things in my life too, and before you argue they can’t compare to yours, I’ll have you know they feel evil to me. It’s just our standards that differ, the bar we measure by is not the same. Deep down, I also fear that you’ll stop wanting me if you saw me exactly as I truly am.”
“There’s no version of this universe in which I don’t want you,” he whispers, his arms locking around me. I can feel his erection press against my lower belly.
“Then you must understand that I’ll love you no matter what. That you’re safe with me.”
“You don’t understand, wild flame. My past is branded into my soul the way these scars are etched into my flesh.” Then, lower, “Sometimes it feels like the devil himself marked me. Using me to do his dirty work in the world. It’s what he primed me for when those bastards had their fun with me. He groomed me into becoming an instrument of evil.”
“You took down bad guys, Zayne. I don’t know if you believe in God, but if you believe in the devil, I assume he must have a place in here, too.” I touch his heart. “What if he was the one who primed you for this?”
He takes a few seconds to just take in the look of love in my eyes as if it might be the last time he sees it. It’s heartbreaking.
“I chose them by the way they stared at the kids they proceeded to turn into victims. By the rapacious intent in their eyes. By their loud laughs, by the number of giggling girls that sighed every time they winked their way, only to be used and discarded in dark corners. I went for the physically strongest ones, too. The quarterbacks and the boxers.” His words are heavy as they fall from his mouth. “But the main criterion was that they had to be happy. To enjoy their lives. To take satisfaction from what they did. If I’m completely honest, it’s that happiness that whetted my appetite for skinning them alive. Deep down, I was just envious for their ability to enjoy life, while I’d been stripped of my fucking soul. I never went for the ones who seemed as miserable as me, no matter how awful their crimes.”
“If you’re telling me this to prove that you’re evil,” I say, pressing my breasts into his chest, “you missed your aim.”
His eyebrows dip, not sure he understands.
“It’s the ones who do harm happily that are the worst,” I say. “Those are the true villains. People with no real reason for causing suffering but pure pleasure.”
His cock becomes steel hard against my flesh, and it’s a hell of an effort not to grind myself into him. I want him so badly it hurts. I want us melting into a puddle of love together.
“There’s no argument you can bring that will make me believe you are truly evil,” I tell him, my hands traveling back down his chest and steel abs before they rest on the hem of his sweater. “But it’s you who needs to start seeing that. And I can think of no better place to start healing than where it all started.”
“Sirenna,” he whispers, a tremor running through him. He can see where I’m taking this.
“Let me give you pleasure here, where you’ve been given so much pain.”
He lets me pull his black sweater over his head, revealing that marvelous body. Seeing him half naked in this room where he’d been so savagely tortured knocks a ball of ache into my chest. I bite my lower lip, fighting to keep back tears. What he needs me to do is fuck him as ruthlessly as those boys tortured him, not whine about what happened and drag him into self-pity. I can feel in my core how he wants me to claim him, how desperately he needs it.
It’s why it drove him wild to watch me do it to another guy at The Rite. Why it turned him on beyond rhyme or reason when I came all over his face at the hotel.
My eyes drip down his body, my fingers tracing their way down his scars, resting them on his belt.
“Mia discovered you were experimenting with your drugs on children,” I say, my eyes down and my fingers idle despite the molten need in my lower belly. “Their investigation led to this place, but those children aren’t here.” I don’t need to ask the question for Zayne to understand what I want to know.
“When you’re a pharma mogul at the top of the world you expect people to investigate you. To come after you. And the stupidest thing you can do is to underestimate those people, especially since you’d be drawing the attention of guys like Declan Santori and Jax Vaughn. So I made the orphanage business look like something I was hiding to throw them off the real trail.”
“And what is the real trail? Where does it lead?”
The pause he lets hang between us before he responds feels like an eternity but I won’t rush him. “To the basement where I keep the Top Boys. I thought it would be selfish of me to just iron their skin off for my own fun. I decided to put them to good use, too.”
I shudder at the machiavellian tone of his voice. I take a deep breath, hoping that will keep my body from betraying it, but there’s no fooling Zayne.
“You’re not so sure anymore that my essence is good, are you, wild flame?” His voice drips with devilry. Unveiled and raw, as if wanting to challenge me to finish what I started.
My fingers start working on his belt and fly, which gives him pause. I go down to my knees as I pull his pants off his sculpted hips, hooking my fingers into his boxers too, and his erect cock springs free. I wrap my hand around him, watching the veins swell and the head turn purple, breathing in his scent of man and power.
Desire pools into my panties, and my head clouds with it.
