Page 11 of Ruthless Desire

My cock throbs in earnest now, weeping with the need to brand her, claim her, make her innocence and agony, my burnt offering on the altar of my dominion.

Alonzo shifts again, clearly ill at ease with my lascivious musings. I take some pity on him, reigning back the rabid beast of my desire with an effort that borders on Herculean.

"And the playroom?" I ask, my tone deceptively mild. "Were you able to procure all the...specialized equipment I requested?"

He blanches, his swarthy complexion going sallow under the halogen lights. "About that, boss. Some of those items are pretty, uh, esoteric. Even for our usual channels. You sure you want to break out the heavy artillery right from the jump?"

It takes every ounce of my formidable will not to roll my eyes. This is what comes from relying on the poor imaginations of hired goons. For all his brutish efficiency, Alonzo has never been able to appreciate the poetic potential of a little...unconventional play.

I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose in a bid for serenity. "Alonzo. Dear, loyal, lamentably linear Alonzo. Natalie is no blushing schoolgirl, trembling on the cusp of her deflowering. She's a creature of darkness, just like me. Cradled in the same shadows, forged in the sin of unquenchable fires. She'll crave the kiss of my lash just as sweetly as the thrust of my cock - perhaps even more so."

I grip his shoulder, my fingers digging into the layers of cheap polyester like talons into a hunter's hide. "And it's my sworn duty, as both her master and her devoted servant, to indulge those cravings. To push her to the very precipice of ruin and ecstasy, until she forgets where pain ends and pleasure begins. Only then can I truly own her, body and timorous soul."

Alonzo grimaces but nods, knowing better than to question the gospel of my desires. I've broken bigger men than him. Snapped their minds like chicken bones and feasted on the gristly marrow of sanity.

Abandoning him to do my darkest bidding, I return to my altar of indulgence. The screens flicker and hum, a technopagan chorus exalting my beloved's beauty.

I let my gaze roam over her patchwork of scars and bruises, the violent watercolors splashed across her ivory skin. Each one is a promise, a whispered vow of the greater agonies I'll paint her with.

Reds and purples, indigos and greens.

The whole debauched spectrum of torment and rapture, applied with the artisan's devotion and the sadist's flair. She'll be my magnum opus and my lust's Sabbath sacrifice. Every mark I sear into her flesh will cry out her ownership, declare her the prized concubine of my eternal black mass.

Outside, the sun has dipped below the smoggy horizon, crowning the skyscrapers with oily flames. The sight tears a jagged grin from my lips. An apt omen for tonight's events. Hell's black tides are rising, ready to drag another lost lamb into its insatiable gullet.

And I am the crux of the maelstrom, the high priest of an unholy reckoning. The entire world will bear witness as I unveil my obsession, my dark mirror and destined mate. Together, we'll drench the earth in the sanguine shades of our union, seize Avici's brass rings for our own decadent bacchanal.

"Like Persephone, I will drag her into the underworld," I vow, pressing my fingers to Natalie's pixelated lips in a perversion of a kiss. "Smother her in gore-glutted pomegranate seeds and the asphalt waters of Styx. And there, in the obsidian gardens of Hades, she will reign. Terrible and lovely as a mushroom cloud blooming at point-blank range, radiant as an Orthodox icon soaked in the lusts of heretics."

I shudder, triumphant purpose sizzling across every synapse. The game is almost over before it's begun. Checkmate is inevitable, the ebony queen already poised for her slaughter on the board of my desire.

Natalie Quinn, my raven-winged muse. My nightmare made glorious flesh. Only a few hours separate us from our gloriously sordid fates. I curse each span of seconds; each beat of my blackheart counts down to the moment of our shared ruination.

"I'm coming for you," I rasp, the blistered words scraping raw over my glutted tongue. "Ready or not, treasure of my labyrinthine heart, here I come to collect my due."

Let the city's bright façades and tarnished underbellies witness my dark ascension, my obsession's final ravaging. Let them quake and crumble as a new power rises, as a new dynasty is forged in the crucibles of cum and Cruor.

For Dante Corleone has found his bride. His Beatrice to exalt and defile in iambs of the flesh and odes of madness.

And tonight, our wedding court begins.

Chapter 5 Natalie

The gallery's marble floors feel like they’re shifting beneath my feet, like I'm on a boat in a storm. Each step is a lurch between possible success and the risk of total failure. Tonight is make-or-break for my art career. One wrong move, one misstep, and any credibility I've built will drown.

The weight of so many judgmental eyes feels like a physical burden, carving lines across my spine. I can feel every sneer, hear every whispered insult as the elite circle my blood-soaked canvases. They don't get it. These polished, bored people with their layers of fake sophistication. They can’t—or won’t—understand the raw pain and vulnerability it takes to create these works.

To them, I’m just a novelty. A pretty face with a wild streak, given just enough rope to maybe hang herself on the highest rung of the art world. Something to poke at and patronize before discarding.

"Well, well. If it isn’t the painter of penises and destruction."

The familiar drawl makes me tense before I even turn. Sienna Price, social queen and fake friend, stands there with one hip cocked, lazily waving at my work.

"Some perspective there, Natalie," she says, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Someone might almost think your outbursts are intentional art instead of the cries of a deeply disturbed soul."

A spike of defensiveness stabs through me, but I push it down, refusing to let her provoke me. Instead, I smile, a mix of defiance and pity for her stunted emotions.

"Why, Sienna," I say, tilting my head to take in her Botoxed sneer. "You look particularly malnourished tonight. Ongo-Bongo the cabana boy stop feeding you grapes between polishing the gold bidets?"

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