Page 30 of The Queen's Serpent

“Take him to the yard, tie him to the tree, and start carving body parts off of him until he squeals like the pig he is. Make sure Raphael keeps him alive. We don’t want him to die quickly.”

“You will die, Diego Cabano! The devil is waiting for your black soul!” The man shouts.

My men nod, and each of them grabs onto one of the fucker’s arms and drags him limply out of the open doorway that leads to the courtyard. My glare returns to Issy, who is looking paler by the second, my bloody fingerprints on her chin a harsh contrast against her porcelain skin. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, as she struggles to get enough air into her lungs.

“The rest of you get the fuck out,” I shout with malice and aggravation. “I’m not in the mood for one of your hysterical tantrums, Issy,” I warn her.

“Tantrums?“ The word leaves her lips with fury, and in the next moment, she’s launching herself at me, sliding across the streaks of blood on the floor and slapping me with her arms, hands, and knees, everywhere she can land a blow as she attempts to hurt me.

“You psychotic fuckingasshole!I’ll show you a fucking tantrum! You kidnapped me from my home and treat me like a fuckingwhore!“ Her screams are so loud that they threaten to burst my eardrums. One of her hands manages to land a hit to my nose, which has tears stinging in my eyes.FUCK THAT HURT!

I try to restrain her, but it’s like holding on to grains of sand. She keeps squirming and hitting me with everything she has,and I can’t get a good grip on her without physically hurting her. After last night, I swore I would try not to do that anymore, but she’s making it almost impossible with her banshee behavior.

“ISSY, FUCKING STOP! Stop before I hurt you!” I demand as I manage to restrain one of her wrists behind her back, but the little bitch headbutts me in my chin for my effort.

“HURT ME! ALL YOU DO IS HURT ME!” Her ragged scream fills the air and has my heart thumping painfully in my chest.

I grab a fistful of her hair at the back of her head and yank, causing tears to slide down her pretty face, and her movements to halt momentarily. FUCK, I don’t want to hurt her anymore. “Issy, please, baby, calm down.”

Tears continue to slide down her face, a river of diamonds making their way to her chin before disappearing. She goes limp in my restraining grip, falling to her knees before me in the pools of blood, and I release my hold. I drag both my hands down my face in an attempt to keep them from reaching for her, from wrapping around that slim column of her neck.

Fuck, yes,I much prefer her on her knees than trying to claw my eyes out. Her luscious, submissive mouth calls to me, begging me to plunder it and take what I want from her. To pull my hardening cock out and slam into the back of her throat, stopping her from breathing until I allow it.MINE. The thought slides across the possessive, animalistic part of my brain that wants to claim his mate.

The problem is that once I start, I can never seem to stop with Issy. One moment is never enough, and my body craves her like the very drugs that she was addicted to. She is my drug and my weakness, and my fear is that others are starting to realize that, too.

My show of force yesterday, to get her to realize her predicament, didn’t seem to curb her need to scream and act like a little spoiled shit. This threat that happened on the samefucking night might be a coincidence, or maybe one of my men sent a message that I was weak. Do I have a traitor in my midst? How did this fucker get so close before one of my men spotted him?

“Diego, you have to let me go. If you ever cared for me, let me return to my family before it’s too late.”

Chapter seventeen

Issy

“She knew she shouldn’t feel that way about a monster,but right then, she wanted nothing more than a monster of her very own.”

Holly Black, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

“Diego, you have to let me go. If you ever cared for me, let me return to my family before it’s too late.” Tears continue to slide down my face with my words. Words that feel like rough pieces of sandpaper scraping against the inside of my throat, threatening to choke me of my very breath, and leaving me bloody in their wake.

Why did I even bother to speak them? Just staring up at his stoic face, covered in another man’s blood, I know that he will never let me go. It’s not a matter of if he cared for me; he’s unhinged, and there is no way that he could care about anyone. Everyone in his world is a tool to get what he wants, and I am no different.

His stunning green eyes narrow on mine, as if they can see right into my mind and know of my plans to leave him, one way or another. He will try to stop me, no matter which route I decide to take. He leans forward, his hot breath on my skin, and he drags his nose along the side of my neck, breathing me in, scenting me like animals do to each other. It’s both a terrifying and exhilarating sensation, and my core tightens with need.

“No, Issy. The answer will always be no, and if you try to leave me, I will make what I did to that man, and you yesterday, seemlike a walk in the fucking park or a Sunday dinner. Don’t ever utter those words to me again.”

Fear and rage combine inside of me, tightening my muscles as they wash over me. One urges me to try to run away from the madman in front of me, while the other dares me to fight him and let him end our lives. I have nothing left to lose either way, because I’m already dead inside.

I do neither, keeping my face as neutral as possible while drinking in his features. The face of a man I honestly believed at one point would be my future. One I could have loved, and spent the rest of my life with, if only things hadn’t turned out the way that they have.

That’s the crushing thing about fate; it never quite works out the way you planned, and sometimes it leads you down a dark, winding path to your own destruction.

He drags me up to my feet and out the door that leads to the courtyard, the very one that his men dragged the bleeding man through, and the minute we step outside, I see the tree. The one that just the night before bore witness to, and aided in, my own punishment.

“No, fuck, no.” Panic starts deep within me.

I try to drag my feet and pull away from his relentless hold, but it’s useless; his grip is too tight, and he’s determined to get me there. What Diego wants, he seems to always get, regardless of the wishes of others.

“Release me, Diego.” My voice sounds full of terror to my own ears, and my heart rate has skyrocketed in my chest.

---