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CHAPTER4
JAKUB
“Master, what can I do for you?” One asks me as I push open her door and step into her private quarters a few days later. She’s wearing a sheer red gown, her bare pussy and breasts on full display. Behind her the sun is setting through the window, dousing her in a fiery glow. Even her obsidian hair is stained with red. She looks like the Queen of the Damned, a fucking demon.
Perhaps she is.
We lock gazes and despite my cerise mask hiding every inch of my face, she reads me expertly. “How many lashes?”
“Until I bleed.”
She nods, taking the leather whip from me, her fingers brushing against mine as she does so. It’s an intentional move and I shiver from her touch, not because it turns me on but because it brings back memories I’d rather forget. Our past relationship is pitted with abuse and a struggle for dominance. By the time I walked away from her, I was the victor.
Coming back, however, gives her the upper hand.
What the fuck am I doing?
It’s a question I’ve asked myself over and over again as I’ve made my way towards her room, and each time I come up with the same answer. I need to take drastic measures because if I don’t, I may just lose my fucking mind.
It’s only been three days.
Three days since Nothing was strangled to death then brought back to life. Three days of losing my sanity over a woman who should mean… whodoesmean nothing to me. Yet here I am, seeking absolution from the one person I vowed never to go near again. A trip to the forest hasn’t helped. My back is raw and covered in welts and weeping scabs from self-flagellation, but even that has done nothing to ease my torment.
Nothing has worked.
Nothing…
I grit my teeth at the very thought of her. She infiltrates my every waking moment. She even steps into my dreams, taunting me with her scars, her fight, and the emotions she conjures within the dark, festering wound that serves as my heart. I’m in agony, unable to function on any kind of level, let alone how I’m used to. I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore.
The only thing I’m clinging onto is the fact that I want her gone. Right now, I’m using One to purge her from my system so that I can face Leon and remove her from our lives and this world permanently.
“Jakub?”
One reaches for me, pressing her fingers against my arm. My eyes snap to hers as I return to the room, thankful that the ability to read someone’s thoughts is make-believe just as much as seeing into someone’s future is. I don’t believe that Nessa had such a gift anymore than I believe that I’m not a fucking monster. There’s more to her letter, to this whole fucking mess than meets the eye, and I intend to find out what it is just as soon a I can get my fucking head back on straight.
“Where would you like me to do it?” One asks, her voice gentle even when her eyes are hungry,ravenous. We both know that she’s been waiting for this moment for years and here I am giving myself up to her on a fucking platter. I would’ve asked Konrad to do this if he wasn’t so fucking wrapped up in his own torment down in the dungeons. We’re each so caught up in our own turmoil that we haven’t considered how the other is fairing. I don’t even want to think about Leon. My own fucking brother choosingherover us. If I had a functioning heart, it would surely break.
“Jakub?”
“My chest.”
“Your chest?” she queries, her cheeks heating as she licks her lips.
“That’s what I said!” I snap back, shucking off my suit jacket and chucking it on the chaise lounge positioned at the end of her bed before removing my shirt swiftly. I wince as some of the newly formed scabs rip off with the material.
Her eyes lock onto my pale blue shirt and the blood staining it in patches. “You’ve been to the forest?”
“Yes,” I reply, striding over to the spot in her bedroom where two leather wrist straps are hooked onto the wall, arms length apart. I hear her suck in a breath as she views my shredded back.
“It didn’t work?” she asks me as I secure my left wrist and wait for her to do the same to my right.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Is it because of the legend? Are you troubled by what happened with The Weeping Tree?”
My head snaps up. “That has fuck all to do with you. Know your place, One.”
“I just…” She sighs, fingering the knotted leather handle of the whip as she considers what to say next. Another man might believe her act of contrition, the dip of her head, the blush to her cheeks, the sag of her shoulders, the way she makes herself smaller. I do not. One is calculated. She’s seeking information that she has no business in trying to obtain. Yes, The Weeping Tree might’ve wept ‘blood’ but no one but Thirteen, Five, Nala and my brothers know what actually happened in the Room of Fantasies, and that’s the way it’s going to stay.
