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“How strange it must feel to like such a punishment,” I murmur.
Her voice is strangely absent as I slide my fingers back and forth through her wetness, toying with her clit with torturous slowness. After a few passes, she begins to melt onto the table, her body going slack as her eyes shut. She is no longer arching to pull away but arching into my touch instead. I press my body against her, playing with her pussy as I drag my fingertips through her hair, gathering a fistful and tugging until her head bows back. My lips hover over the skin of her neck, inhaling her. A shiver moves through her and my teeth graze down over the length of her shoulder before I bite into her skin, marking her. She whimpers as I press my hardness against the soft flesh of her ass and dip a finger inside her.
“Never forget who this belongs to,” I growl into her ear.
She moans as I tease her so slowly it must feel as agonizing for her as it does for me.
“Say the words.” I tighten my grip on her hair, disregarding the unrecognizable roughness in my voice.
“Santiago,” she pants. “Santiago De La Rosa.”
I groan into the sweetness of her skin, my fingers working without mercy as I bring her to the edge of sanity. It would not take much to make her come. Already, she is biting her lip, trying to contain the strangled noises in her throat. I bring her so close she can taste it. Every muscle in her body is tensing. A few more strokes and she could be free.
Right before she falls, I stop and pull away, leaving her aching and swollen for me. Agony is the only gift she deserves. When she opens her eyes and glances over her shoulder, she looks confused and frustrated by her own response. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t too.
I drag the fabric back over her hips and cover her. Slowly, she brings her body upright, and I pull her toward me. My fingers come to rest on her jaw, our breaths only an inch apart.
“Close your eyes.”
She does as I request, and I tilt my head down to meet hers. She does not recoil as I’d expect when my lips graze hers. It is only a second and nothing more, but it’s enough to feel what it’s like before she truly learns to hate me. She opens her eyes and peers up at me, studying me too intently for my liking.
“Now, thank me for being so lenient,” I tell her.
“Thank you,” she answers bitterly.
The torment in her eyes unsettles me, and I’m not sure why it compels me to stroke her cheek, showing her a softness she doesn’t deserve, at least for a moment.
“Prepare yourself,” I order. “The time has come for you to bear my mark.”
14
Ivy
“The time has come for you to bear my mark.”
I step on the ruined veil as Santiago closes his hand around my arm and walks me to the chapel door.
I watch his back as I stumble along behind him. I smell him still, his cologne of wood and leather and money. I will forever associate this scent with him. It will forever make my stomach feel like the bottom has dropped out.
He had been there, sitting silent in the confessional as if he were my confessor. And if he didn’t hate me before, he surely does after hearing what I asked.
Don’t let him be a monster.
I hadn’t meant physically, but how do I explain that to him?
Santiago chooses that moment to glance back at me, and I shudder. Maybe I’m a hypocrite after all. It’s the skull side of his face. The tattoo that makes my breath catch, that makes me unable to look away. It’s grotesque and captivating at once.
I see the scars beneath if I look closely. I wish I could take my time and study them, but he doesn’t allow for that. They’re on the other side of his face too, the beautiful side, but not nearly as bad as what I see hints of beneath that ink.
Did he do it to hide them? The scars?
Why a skull? It’s like he’s already dead.
Or did he do it out of shame?
We reach the door, and he grins as he reaches for the doorknob, and I think no, not out of shame. It’s a dare. A challenge. Look at me if you can stand it.
Or a big fuck you to anyone who would otherwise stare at the damage.
The oddest thing is that although I know it’s meant to terrify, that he means to terrify me, I don’t feel that. Not only that, at least. Because I know if I wake in the middle of the night to be greeted by the inked side of his face, he will succeed. I will be terrified.
