Page 1 of Beauty & Corruption

Chapter 1

Mordy

“Mordy, I’m serious! Stone will be back any minute,”Éansaid slowly, taking a step backward as each word fell from her beautiful mouth. Her hands flew up in front of her as her bottom lip moved with the smallest quiver. Most people would have never noticed. I’m not most. The thing about being among those considered to be insane was while everyone was too busy ridiculing your actions, you saw them more clearly than they saw you. As people ran away from me, I watched them. I liked to people-watch; interacting with them, though…not so much.Éan,however, was a different fecking story altogether. I didn’t want to only watch her; I wanted to devour her soul and consume her entirely until nothing remained within. One second, I was hyper-focused on the perfection of her destruction, and the next, I bathed in her existence. What I felt for her was on a whole different level than simply a crush or animosity. To me, she was my abhorrent infatuation. Maybe those words weren’t correct, either. Honestly, I was curious about how she made me feel anything, especially feelings that almost resembled remorse.

Regret was, without question, something I hadn’t experienced in a very long time. I swore I would not let that hideous emotion back into my body ever again, and yet, every time my eyes roamed over her angelic face, I almost mourned the moment Bloodlust pierced her. The faint scar on her shoulder left behind from my blade was a blemish at best whenever I squinted and examined the area peeking out of Stone’s oversized shirt as it dropped off her small frame. Telling my fecking stupid mind to shut up, I reminded myself thatÉanwas marked by me, and a smug smile settled onto my face before I spoke again.

“Ha! Little Bird, I’m not sure what you think of us Crazed Kings, but I assure you, none of us can or will be your saving grace. The very least of all me.” A small chuckle escaped my mouth. “Thinking like that, you’ll be dead in less than a second in my world.” Another laugh came out of my lips. “I guess that world now includes you, too. Doesn’t it?” It didn’t matter that I didn’t believe her when she said she didn’t know her true last name on the night our paths crossed or the fact that her father was a high-up of the Russian bratva. She wasn’t to be trusted, but most of all, I didn’t trust myself with her.

In the beginning, touching her was a game. The more I touched her, the more repulsed she acted, which was not exceptionally different from anyone else. I expected her to react that way. It was predictable. Boring, in fact. Acting disgusted by my touch was exactly like every other pitiful excuse for a human being. So why was I enamored with her? I had spent countless nights wondering about that as I watched her sleep in my brother’s arms. She was a gorgeous beauty who whispered her hatred for me while she spied on me and plotted her next move.

There were too many things going on that put our club at risk, so keeping a clear head was of the utmost importance. Any distractions for any of us brothers might result in death. We haddouble-crossed the Falbos by keeping her alive when they had hired us to kill her. We hadn’t been told about the true motive for the ordered hit on her back then, but their motive became clear once her father’s true identity came to light. I blamed Stone for starting this whole debacle. He wasn’t the direct cause, but by proxy, he caused it because he saved her the night someone tried to shoot her. Regardless, he was my brother, and I had his back. Guilty or not.

My body bubbling with irritation, I growled beneath my breath. This was all because of her. I needed to think straight, and that simply wasn’t possible while close to her. Heh. In reality, my mind rarely lingered on a singular subject, though. My thoughts racing from one thing to the next was typical, but I still placed the blame of my muddled thoughts on her. All issues, from the tiniest of nuisances to the hugest problem on thisshiteplanet began with this lass.

“Angeloff’s daughter,” I scoffed as my eyes roamed her features. A sadistic laugh passed through my lips, and then I shook my head at the irony. She was the missing link that wound our crime families tighter together than every wretched deal any of us ever fecking made. She was an Angeloff whether she wanted to be or not. After the truth about her came out—as well as why she seemed so important not only to the Angeloffs but to the Falbos as well—I could see it in her delicate bone structure, and despite the fact she was the offspring of her father, she carried her mother’s name. They’d hidden her from the world. The question was, why?

My hands reached for hers, and she swiftly pulled them away from me, closer to her body. Touching her wasn’t a conscious thought anymore; when our skin touched, there was a feeling of almost peace that washed over me. I wasn’t sure if it was something I liked or not, so I experimented from time to time.I had developed a sickening need for her and hadn’t found a cureor a way of eradicating her from my brain. I was still trying to figure out ways in which to do so. My usual answer was to preoccupy my mind by reading or torturing someone, but with her underneath the same roof, no book held my attention, and our President, Viking, had given all of us brothers strict orders to keep her alive. Putting our club’s livelihood on her shoulders didn’t settle well with me at all, but Viking seemed to think her life held value. My opinion on the subject continued to change daily.

I wasn’t blind to the fact that fecking with her had become my favorite and most confusing way to spend our downtime. She was my plaything, but, in a way, I was hers, too, even if I didn’t want to be. None of it made sense to me, but she was the only person who had ever declared war on me and still had the ability to breathe—for someone like me, it meant a lot more than I wanted it to.

I didn’t have much of a restraint, but with her, I had been able to spare her life. Did my girl, Bloodlust, pierce her soft flesh and make her bleed? Yes, in ways I’d wished I could. So much yes. Heh. I liked games, andÉandid as well. She was too afraid to admit it out loud, though, but that was fine. I didn’t have to hear the words to understand her. The strange and depraved recognized one of its own kind, and her arse fell into those categories whether she wanted it to or not. The biggest thing that set us apart was her beauty. Even if it was the last thing I did, I would wreck every last inch of her. She might be the beauty, but I would make sure I was her corruption. Viking hadn’t said shite about keeping her sane. She would be lucky to have any lucidity to cling to when I finished with her. I didn’t claim to be a good person. As a matter of fact, if my parents were asked, it never described me, not even when I was a lad. My earliest memories were of them beating me to within an inch of my life as they toldme how much of a shite person I was and would always be. If only they were able to see me living up to their expectations now.

My fingers laced with hers, and she tried to jerk them out of my grasp. My grip tightened while I smiled at her chest rising and falling erratically.

“Mordicus,” she threatened in a soft tone. My eyes closed, and I took in a deep breath, enjoying how her voice sounded, memorizing the fear and excitement in her warning. “Stone?—”

“Is not here, lass,” I spoke softly on purpose, interrupting her even though there was no need for either of us to whisper. We were alone. I didn’t want to hear about my brother or anyone else right now. This was our time. Hers and mine. No one else was around to spoil this moment for us; we would do that all on our own. When I was done with her, she would live in the spoils of the world with me…or without. Honestly, I did not care much about where she was physically; knowing she would be ruined was enough for me right now. Tomorrow, I might meet my breaking point and slit her throat. The idea of not only witnessing but being the cause of a crimson sea flooding out from her arteries enticed me more than it should. I was a natural-born killer. I didn’t know her life expectancy any more than she did. The only factor I was certain of was that when she begged to keep her life, it would be my eyes she stared into.

She knew this was coming as much as I did. I lifted our hands above her head, pinning her against the light blue wall with my body. “I always get even, especially when someone touches what’s mine without permission,” I reminded her about the mess she left my weapons in. It took nearly two hours for me to unwind all of the tape and another hour and a half to remove the sticky residue from them. I’m not even sure I did the latter successfully. The entire ride up to our safe house, I thought of the ways I would torture her and make her bleed for me despite Viking’s orders. Yet as soon as I saw her resting peacefully in mybrother’s arms, I decided to let her live, at least for the night, silently promising payback would come. I laid awake in my bed, dreaming of the ways I would watch the life drain from her, and yet, the first time we were alone, my need to touch her was more than my lust to kill her, and it has remained more or less the same for the duration of two weeks. Every time we touched, my self-control slipped a little more.

My nose trailed her bare neckline, inhaling her exhilarating scent into my body. I pulled air between my teeth and bit my lip to keep from sinking them into her skin.

“He will be here soon, and he won’t be happy when I tell him what you did.”

“Aye. You are right about that. Keeping everyone happy was never mentioned. I’m here to keep us safe. More specifically, to keep you alive. Even if I’m not sure if that’s what I want to do.” I lifted my head for a moment as I spoke, gauging her reaction. She gazed at me from beneath hooded eyelids, and her lips were barely parted as they usually were when she was turned on.

“Are you going to kill me tonight?” she whispered, closing her eyes as she sucked a swift breath into her mouth when the tip of my nose continued its journey and traced the edge of her shoulder where I’d cut her the night we met. She asked this of me often, and yet, my answer hadn’t changed.

“I haven’t decided, lass,” I responded honestly. There was no point in lying when we both knew my answer before I spoke. When I laid my ear on her carotid, the rhythm instantly lulled me and teased me with every other beat—as if her heart was begging for me to end its erratic cadence and put it out of its misery.

Lup. Dup. Lup Dup.

Feeling the beat wasn’t enough. I wanted more. Pure carnal urgency took over; I needed more.

“Why are you doing this?” she pleaded in a weak voice but didn’t fight me or try to move. I let go of her hands, and my greedy fingertips clutched her shirt, ripping it open with ease. Buttons flew around my face, and she moaned as I laid my ear on her exposed chest and listened to her heart race for me.

Lup. Dup. Lup Dup. Lup. Dup. Lup Dup.

The rate increased its fluttering as if a butterfly were bound within her chest and struggling for its very fragile life. The sound hypnotized me, but the mere fact she was allowing me to do this drove me fecking mad. She could ask anything of me right now, and I would be compelled to do her bidding. Perhaps one of us would die sooner rather than later. Only, I hadn’t decided which one of us that would be. Either she would die beneath Bloodlust, or perhaps, another blade from my Bag ‘O Tricks, or maybe I would die by her hand. The only uncertainty that I had a confident answer to was that both of us would not make it out of this mess alive. One of us was destined to die.

Telling myself I didn’t care about her had been well out of the question, starting the moment she spat in my face. Since then, the two of us had been in an endless back-and-forth battle. Every score that was sought out to be settled between us was another step toward destruction. She thought she needed my brother, but I would make her see he wasn’t the only one her heart beat for.

Chapter 2

Reggy

This was wrong. This was so fucking wrong. He should stop. I shouldn’t let him keep touching me; I should want to torch every inch of my body he has touched instead of enjoying it. I should. I should. I should. All of the shoulds haunted me, but I never listened to a single one of them. My thoughts were the same every time he came near me. None of this is okay.I’m Stone’s girl…or I was well on the way to becoming his girl. Things were going just fine until Andy came back into my life, and my past and future collided in one fast-paced shit-swirl sundae as Stone put a gun to my head for the second time. The cherry on top was that things weren’t actually fine, but I had let myself get caught up in the rush of being with Stone. The allure of the illusion that we weren’t from completely different worlds had such an intoxicating pull, and I’d let it convince me I had a choice in being here. I’d allowed myself to believe Stone and I didn’t have a gigantic anvil of ugly truth teetering over our heads, waiting for the exact moment when it would plummet down on us. We did, and sooner rather than later, we would both be crushed by the fact we didn’t belong together—despite how much I thought I cared for him.The pragmatism of life had to rear its ugly fifteen-eyed self eventually, though. Everyone had a breaking point, and mine was when Maryanne was moved to another safe house shortly after Stone and I had arrived here. My breaking point should have been when Stone put a gun to my head for the first time or when Mordy drove his knife into my shoulder, but somehow, my idiotic brain dropped those into an inconsequential file, ignoring the red flags the size of a doublewide trailer.

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