Page 4 of Until Retribution Burns (Beauty in Lies 3)

“Come out and play with me,mi reina,” he murmured, touching the fingers of his free hand to the top of my pussy. He used them to spread me wide, leaning forward and licking me from entrance to clit in a slow glide that set my nerve endings on fire. I shoved it away, forcing my breathing to stay slow.

Something hard touched my clit, pressing gently and circling it slowly. Maddeningly. I swallowed back the feeling, refusing to let the warmth rising in my belly touch me in my mind.

Reminding myself that my body wasn’t me, I didn’t attempt to stop the sensation from building. Only working to separate myself from it.

It was just sex, not a melding of my soul with the man that I loved, because the man I loved was a nightmare—a phantom come to torment me in my waking hours.

The rounded edge of the object rubbed over me, sliding to the ridges along the edge of what I knew had to be the hilt of his knife. He slid it lower, moving through my sensitive and overheated flesh until he pressed that rounded end against my entrance. It was hard and unforgiving as he worked it inside me, stretching me open slowly.

I swallowed back my nerves, the knowledge of the knife so close to my body making it harder and harder to escape into the prison of my mind. To the only place I’d found freedom in a life that had seemed ever more confining.

Until him.

He moved it in and out of me, slowly and carefully tormenting me with the knife. Finally leaving it as deep as it could go, he leaned forward and wrapped his lips around my clit. One of his hands came down on the inside of my thigh, sliding along my flesh with that same thick fluid that had covered the knife.

Finally, unable to suppress the need coursing through me, I opened my eyes and peeked down at the red staining my bare thigh. At the blood as he rubbed it into my skin, as if it could mark me in ways he hadn’t already achieved.

His eyes met mine, triumph shining in them as he smirked into my clit and gave it a final swipe of his tongue before he leaned back on his knees. My gaze dropped from his face to angry, bleeding wounds on his chest.

To my name carved into his heart all over again, covering the fading marks from the first time. These went deeper, the wounds jagged slashes that made my throat clench tight. The others had been temporary.

These would scar in a way that never faded.

Raw. Jagged.Angry.

They were the perfect summary of our relationship, of the tumultuous emotions and the harsh circumstances that brought us together. They showed the toxic obsession that we felt with one another, even knowing it would lead us straight into the flames of hell and be our destruction by the time it was all over.

The blood on my thigh seemed to warm, a tingling spreading through me with the confirmation that it was his and his alone. Not the consequence of the murder we’d committed only hours before.

He leaned over me, the blood on his chest touching the front of my dress. The contact with his wounds must have been agonizing, but he didn’t seem to care as he pulled the knife free from my body and raised it.

A scream caught in my throat, the sound erupting into the night air as that blade came down to my shoulder suddenly. All my thoughts and assurances that Rafael wouldn’t kill me fled my head in the face of that weapon coming for me, of the brutal determination etched into the lines of his face.

He severed the straps on my dress, being careful to only nick my skin with the tip of the blade as he cut them away. Pulling his body away long enough to tug the dress down and free my breasts, he touched his bare skin to mine.

That blade moved to my neck, touching the side of it hesitantly. As if even Rafael questioned the depths of what he would do next. Fear made my bottom lip tremble, the haze of my mind forgotten in the face of the nightmare staring down at me. Covered in his own blood with madness dancing in his eyes, he reminded me of a monster who’d been locked in a cage for years then had suddenly been freed from his confines.

“You think you can run from me?” he growled, pressing the blade deeper. The warmth of my blood surrounded the puncture, mixing with his as I felt the slow trickle along my skin. With that knife touching my throat, he reached his free hand down between our bodies and guided himself inside me with a harsh thrust.

Pinned by the knife at my throat and his cock invading my body, I couldn’t move to fight his domination of me. I couldn’t retreat into the void with the threat of death so overwhelming.

“Rafe,” I whimpered, suddenly so filled with him that I couldn’t breathe. One wrong move and it would all be over. My body accepted him inside me, even as I screamed inside my head.

He took me slowly, and if it hadn’t been for the knife at my throat I might have thought he made love to me. With his dangerous eyes intent on mine, he grabbed a fistful of my hair and turned my head to the side. I lost the contact of his gaze, feeling his knife drag a shallow cut over the side of my throat until it touched the sensitive nook between my neck and shoulder.

“It is unfortunate for you,” he said, punctuating the words with a sharp thrust of his hips as he twisted the knife in his hand. The tip pressed into my skin, the flesh parting around the blade as pain burned through me. “That my name is much longer than yours.”

“Stop,” I said, his grip on my hair holding me still. He ignored the plea, focusing on my neck where he moved the knife and carved through my skin. I cried out, thrashing my legs around his hips as he continued.

“You will never be free of me.” The blade left my skin as he finished the R, sinking in next to it as he continued on with his name. He didn’t worry about my legs kicking, not with the way he held me pinned down with his body weight.

I’d been so content to give him my body and hide in the fortress of my mind, I’d let myself forget that my husband was a monster.

That he would stop at nothing to consume all of me.

“Rafael!” I screamed, not daring to move my arms to fight him off. Even with the pain pulling me apart, I knew that it would be nothing compared to what could come if he slipped. If he lost control of me and cut deeper than he wanted.

“You think you can hide from me?” he asked, continuing to cut through my flesh as he carved his name into my skin whereeveryonewould see. There’d be no hiding it, no disguising it as anything other than a primal marking from a man who would slaughter anyone who touched me. I wouldn’t be able to explain it away as an artistic representation of our love if I ever saw my family again.

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