Page 54 of Cardinal House

“Yes,” I breathe, heat building between my thighs, my heart racing in my chest.

Anticipation.

He told me to use him.

‘Use me, muzzle me, unleash me like a hound of hell and I’ll tear out the throats of all of your demons.’

Wolf was right.

He is a monster.

My monster.

But… so am I.

“I want his head,” I breathe, my entire body trembling, hands shaking, chest quivering.

Wolf’s hand tightens in mine, strong fingers flexing until his fingertips dig painfully into my broken knuckles and I want to cry out at the pain. But I am silent, we are still, and then he brings my hand to his mouth, laving his hot tongue over the shattered bone like he knows he hurt me.

“Anything for my Little Moon,” he breathes across my wet skin, placing my hand gently in my lap.

Then he gets out of the car.

An unholy terror released into the night.

Chapter 24

Wolf

It’s easy enough.

Slipping into the shadows, a copse of trees on either side of the house, like separators for property lines. The houses down this street are huge. The mini mansions of Oakwood line the quiet road like chunks of old money. People feel safe here, it’s quiet, undisturbed, nobody overlooks anyone else’s gardens, all of the building secluded in their own ways.

That’s why it’s fairly easy.

On his third circle of the house, my hand slaps over his mouth, his second cigarette falling to the dewy grass as I drag him kicking and flailing back into the overgrown bushes.

I don’t waste any time with interrogation. Instead, I kick the man’s legs out from under him, slam him into the hard packed earth and drive a knife into his chest. My hand remains over his mouth until his final breath rushes over the back of my hand, and his eyes roll back, the glare of the moon turning the whites of his eyes an eerie blue.

‘Bring me his head.’

My cock is so fucking solid in my slacks right now, I don’t know how the fuck I manged to climb my way out of the car. I wanted to lick her from head to toe, bite every inch of her skin, and then fuck her until neither one of us could walk.

But this first.

Like a courting gift, I must bring my queen a head. If I had time, I’d find a box, a big, over the top, velvet thing with bows and glitter, to present it in. As it stands, I don’t have that luxury.

Sawing through a neck, especially when it’s as thick as this one, takes monumental effort. It’s not like slicing through a piece of meat, there are tendons and bone, sinew, tissue, veins, arteries. That’s not easy dicing shit. Especially when I don’t know how much time I have before someone comes out looking.

Sweat runs down my temples, my neck, coating my chest and sticking my shirt to my back, but I saw and saw, and I think of Thorne. Watching him do this in the back of a car. I thought he was crazy, like, sectional. Beheading a threat to his girl and then sticking it on a spike in front of a safe house owned by one of the most important families in the Irish mafia.

But, I get it now.

When I finally, finally hack through the final bones with tools I always keep in the car. The spinal column severed, nerves and tissues hanging free, I card my fingers through the light hair and heft it up under my arm.

My back is fucking killing me, my knees aching from being in a crouch so long, the hard packed earth beneath my boots having done my joints no favours, I casually make my way back to the car. I’m not taking the body with me to discard it. I’m not actually bothered if the man who owns this house, Nolan Nicholas Beaumont, finds one of his men missing, and a headless corpse in his shrubs.

I’m making a statement.

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