Page 747 of Coal Hearts

“No.”

“No what?”

I swallowed back all my hatred. “No, Sir V.”

That title.

That respect.

It burned my tongue.

It made me sick.

One day, I would kill him.

The day I couldn’t protect Ily anymore. The day she was free from this place...I would fucking slaughter him. Slowly. Mercilessly. Messily.

“You’re aware that I will eventually have to dispatch Ily to break the rest of you, yes?”

My eyes flashed to his. “Hurt her, and you’ll see just how much you need her to keep me in line.”

He laughed. “I’m well aware of that, but don’t you see, my dear Henri? While I enjoy your forced obedience, it’s nothing like true submission. That strength inside you? That violence? It turns me on...for now. I enjoy the hunt, and I enjoy the thrill, but there will come a time when your stubbornness will grow tiresome. I am not you, mon ami. I do not enjoy a jewel to withhold their true feelings or harbour hatred toward me. I don’t want a fight every time I want a fuck. I want to feel the shattering of your soul. So...consider this your first warning.”

Grabbing me around the nape, he pulled my face toward his crotch. “Kiss me under duress tonight, but soon, you will suck me because it pleases you to please me. You will moan as I fuck you because nothing else will exist in your mind apart from how best you can serve me.”

Letting me go, giving me back control where every cell begged to grab a fork and jab it as far as I could in his bowels, he spread his hands and winked at his tenting trousers. “I’m waiting.”

Rachel sucked in a gasp at the table.

Ily cried out on stage.

Even Peter grunted in misery.

There was no end to this.

No one coming.

No help on the horizon.

Eventually, I wouldn’t be able to keep behaving.

Eventually, Victor would kill Ily to break me.

Eventually, we would all die anyway.

But today, she was alive.

And I had no choice.

Forgive me, little nightmare.

Don’t watch.

I beg you...don’t watch.

With hands that didn’t shake and a soul that turned into snow and sleet, I unbuttoned the trousers of the man I hated most in the world. I unzipped the monster I would one day murder. And I pulled out the erection of a dead man.

Ily’s sob echoed in my ears as I bent over his lap—