Page 87 of The Ecstasy of Sin
I nod, unapologetic. “I’m doing us both a favour and holding back. For now.”
She blushes, and the shy look on her face has me wanting to take her home right fucking now. I want to memorize every sound she makes while she falls apart for me.
But first, I have blood to spill.
I step back and take her hand, and lead her down the hall toward Ryker’s office. I don’t bother knocking before I twist the handle and step into the dimly lit space.
Everything inside gleams—black leather, silver chrome, and polished blood-red accents.
Ryker is reclined in his chair, his gaze locked on Ghost, who’s perched on the edge of the massive onyx desk, his heavily tattooed arms crossed over his broad chest.
Torin is standing in silence near the floor-to-ceiling wall of one-way bulletproof glass, nursing a glass of whiskey as he watches the crowd below. His narrowed gaze is fixed on something out of view.
“Well, if it isn’t my new favourite sister,” Ryker says in greeting as I close the door behind me.
I scowl at him. “Fuck off,” I snap. “Or it’ll be you in the cage with me tonight.”
Ryker just smirks. I’m going to need to address this new hobby of his; the one that has him constantly pushing my buttons where Wren is concerned.
“Hi,” Wren says with a small wave.
Ghost steps away from the desk and over to us, clapping me on the shoulder in greeting.
He offers Wren a friendly smile. “Good to see you again, Wren,” he says with a nod, before stepping away to join Torin.
Ryker rises from his chair and walks around his desk until he’s standing in front of me, leaning against the edge. “You ready for tonight, brother?”
“Ready to start a war,” I answer, already aching to feel someone’s thick, hot blood all over me.
When I glance down at Wren, she’s watching me curiously. Tonight won’t be the first time she has watched me kill a man, but it will change things for her. If she’s still clinging to some illusion about who I am, tonight will be the night that fantasy dies.
And if she sees the monster inside of me and tries to run?
I’ll hunt her down and drag her back to me.
***
The roar of the crowd is a cacophony of violent hunger, rising to a ravenous crescendo the second I step through the door and onto the matte black floor of the thirty-foot steel death trap.
The moment the crowd recognizes me, their bodies surge forward until they’re swarming the guard rail surrounding the base of the cage, slamming against it like animals desperate to get closer to the very sustenance that feeds their vile souls.
Ryker gave me the code name Reaper when I first started fighting on his roster, and the nickname stuck. With an undefeated record, and the highest kill count in Blood Siphon history, the crowd is infected with my bloodlust whenever I step into this hellish cage.
They don’t know it, but I don’t fight for money, fame, and glory. I fight to feed the sickness in my soul; my insatiable addiction to godhood.
I don’t acknowledge them, but I feel their need. Their rabid excitement, their trust that I’ll deliver what they came for—blood, carnage, and death. They worship me, like the Greeks worshipped the Gods on Olympus.
My eyes narrow as I hone in on Maksim Volkov, standing at the other end of the cage, playing to the crowd like they know who he is, and this isn’t his first time here for a fight.
He’s a big motherfucker, but that won’t help him here. Being the biggest man in the cage doesn’t mean shit when skill and functional strength are sharpened by speed and bloodlust.
Maksim is the Bratva’s Sovietnik, and he has more than enough blood on his hands, but I’m the incarnate of death, and I’ve been honed by life for this, a blade to cut down what lays in my path.
The only thing I do better than killing is fucking, and I’ll take my time with both.
When he finally turns, and our eyes meet, the grin that spreads across my face is unmasked and maniacal. I let him see me, the real me, and all of the rot, the rage, and the death-drunk madness rising just for him.
Understanding flashes in his eyes, and he flinches like he’s been hit. He sees the truth radiating off of me in unmistakable waves: he hasn’t walked into a fight, he's come to his own execution.
