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Chapter 1
Hannah
Soft. Surprisingly.
My eyes close under the feel of his lips, part of me trying to appreciate them. They’re not like Gray’s. They’re cold in comparison. Not that I felt Gray’s on my mouth, but his were warm on my forehead, as if they held more meaning than Malachi’s.
A long sigh breathes out of me into Malachi’s mouth and the tension in my arms from the buckles relaxes. I’m hanging. Held up as if on offer.
Curious.
The lips on mine start applying more pressure, punishing me for more. They’re starting to feel greedy, needy. I chuckle in the back of my throat, amused that someone like Malachi would be needy of anything, and I break the kiss to look at the man who had veins on his face a while ago. No veins anymore. Just handsome. In a slightly diabolical way given his sneer.
My fingers flex as I look at his sharply cut jaw, the chain grating under the feel of soft leather strapped tightly. “Why this?” I ask.
His head quirks, as if the question’s alien to him. It isn’t to me. Why string me up here? The screaming for Gray I understood. I could see the reason to taunt him into this to some degree when Malachi asked me to, but this strange contraption and the buckles seem odd.
“Because it hurts, Mrs Tanner.”
My face screws up, anger replacing the relaxed grace I was in, and I turn my face away from him. Not that name. “I’m not her.”
Not anymore.
And hurt? Hurt is my apartment and the thought of Rick and him fucking the world. I’m not doing hurt anymore. The slap didn’t hurt. The shove to the floor didn’t hurt. Being dragged here harshly didn’t hurt either. They felt like something. Anything. Painful maybe, but nothing compared to what happens in my head when I remember.
My gaze falls back to Gray, shoulders rolling to try and lesson the ache forming in my heart. He stares blandly, no emotion on show. He’s so still again. Quiet in this room and shadowed in a dark corner. Maybe he’s waiting for Malachi to begin whatever this will be. Or maybe he’s leaving. Backwards steps. He took those a moment ago. He let go of the woman who should have had cat ears and backed off, as if ready to walk away from me again.
“Leave,” murmurs out of me. “Or stay. Make up your mind, Gray.”
He frowns and continues staring at me, his eyes looking over my exposed skin. It must look pretty to him. Stretched out. On display. Taut. If this is what he likes. Is it? I assume so given his friendship with Malachi. Interesting friendship. One of my fingers starts tapping the wood, my mind trying to fathom what or who they are to each other. One in society, running his empire from his tower and barely leaving it, and the other here – hidden from the world and creating his own. Two peas in a pod. Maybe they’re fucking.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
No, Gray said he wasn’t gay.
I smile, falling into a rhythm and visualising that thought. A song.
I could make up my own song.
I twist my neck to look at Malachi as he approaches me slowly. He’s got something in his hands. Metal. Small. And a leather strap dangling from his fingers. I don’t know what they’re for. Maybe I should be fearful. I don’t feel fearful. I feel calm. Peaceful. Empty of care. It’s cold in here, though. Barren of heat.
I shiver from that sensation alone and watch him get closer, somehow more relaxed because of his slow steps. They’re full of menace, though. I can sense that under my calm.
He is.
Something lands on my skin, burning and making me twist and turn to get away from it. My eyes go wide, breath puffing from my mouth. Pain. It doesn’t register like it should, though. It sings its own song on me, creating waves of feeling to flow over me.
“Malachi.”
Gray’s voice sounds like a warning, a threat. I look at him, as the sway of my body comes to a stop, trying to see him clearly in the low gloom. He isn’t clear. He’s fragmented and distorted, as if it’s not really him anymore. Another bite of pain licks into me somewhere, hip maybe. I groan at it and falter, arms tugging at the chains keeping me held fast.
A laugh again. Malachi’s laugh.Veins in faces.
“Stop, Malachi,” Gray mutters.
“No. She’s not yours, is she?” Another lash onto me, and another, and another until I’m shouting and whimpering about something I don’t understand. “Or is she? Take her if you like.”
It hurts, all of it, and yet it doesn’t. It warms and batters as well, blends somehow into a yearning deep inside me. I feel like pleading for more, or less. Confusing. Strange. My eyelids lift slowly, body righting itself to wait for more to come. I should be scared, bellowing for escape, pleading for my life.
