Page 73 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

“You’re my queen,” he says. The drunken haze is gone from his eyes now, but it’s been replaced by oceans of lust. He said he wanted to feel alive again, and as each thrust sends the sound of flesh meeting flesh echoing around the high ceiling, I know that’s exactly what he’s feeling.

I reach my free hand up to wrap around his throat and apply pressure there in addition to the knife. His face starts to turn red. Veins stand out on his forehead and at the base of his throat. And still all the while, I keep riding him. The carpet is wearing rug burns into my knees, but I don’t give a shit. I’ve never felt so unrestrained. I’m a predator, a lioness consuming her catch. It’s bloody, it’s messy, it’s violent, and it feels so fucking good that I am either going to come or die—there is no other alternative.

“Don’t … stop …” he gasps past my hand choking him and the blade that is now dripping with a small trickle of his blood from where our motion has cut him open.

He knows damn well I won’t stop. I’m right on the edge. He starts to grind up into me from below, and then I can’t multitask anymore, so I let the knife fall onto the carpet next to Dante’s head and I sit up so I can squeeze my breasts as I look up into the ceiling and cry out at the top of my lungs. It’s a long, wordless cry, a moaning orgasm that starts at my toes and gathers speed as it rips through all of me and tears me up like wildfire.

Dante comes moments later, adding his rasped roar to my own noises. He fills me with one, two, three spurts of his seed, and it doesn’t even occur to me what we’ve done. I just know that, right now, that’s the only possible outcome. I let it happen because I need it to happen.

Only when I’ve fallen to my side, face buried in the carpet, and the aftershocks of the orgasm have finally stopped rippling through me, do I notice the sensation of his warm seed leaking out between my thighs and realize with horror what I’ve done.

If submitting to Leo was betrayal, this was fucking mutiny. I just had sex with the Bianci brother who most wants me dead, all while holding a goddamn knife against his throat.

What am I becoming?

I feel like I was possessed and the ghost has let me go now, leaving me terrified and trembling in its wake. I look over to see that Dante hasn’t moved. His cock, still half hard, is wet with my juices. His eyes are staring straight up into the upper reaches of the ceiling.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” I say.

He doesn’t look at me or say anything for a long time. The knife is right next to him. Even if I lunged for it, I don’t think I’d get it, though I’m also not sure whether or not he’d stop me. All the rules have gone out the window now. What am I? What is he? What are we to each other? Answers that were once clear-cut are now so tangled up that I can’t make head or tail of them. He’s not just my enemy anymore. When I look at him, I see more than just the man who wanted to bleed me dry.

I see a little boy, face lit by the dancing shadows from a burning violin.

I see a mourning brother.

I see a savage beast suffering from an invisible wound that’s awfully close to killing him.

And when I look in the mirror, what will I see? Who the fuck knows? I’m terrified of that too.

“What happens next?” I say again. He looks at me this time. I expect to be punished. After all, I lulled him into a drunken ramble, then damn near killed him with his own knife in an aborted escape attempt. He should throw me back in the cell at the very least, right? Or kill me before I get the chance to kill him again?

But he doesn’t do either of those things. He clambers slowly to his feet, tucks himself away back in his jeans, then bends down and picks up the knife. To my surprise, he turns and sets it down on the vanity.

“This is yours now,” he says.

Then he leaves without another word.

20

Dante

I committed a sin.

Now, payment is due.

I walk out of the girl’s room under control. But as soon as the door shuts behind me, I start to run. My feet beat into the stone floors as I race down the corridor, into the common room, then down my own hallway. I find the staircase at the far end and climb until I get to the top of my private tower.

A barren room awaits me there. I waste no time in slamming the wooden door shut behind me and throwing the deadbolt. Turning back, I drop to my knees and strip off my shirt in one motion. There is a mirror to my right. I rotate around so I can look at my back.

It’s mottled with thick scars and a massive tattoo that stretches all the way from top to bottom, side to side.

The ink depicts a massive demon, wings spread, blood dripping from the claws on its hands and feet. The whole thing is rendered in vividly real black-and-white.

But the scars tell the true tale. Skin that has been torn apart and healed and torn again.

I am about to add another chapter to that story.

My rope awaits me. It is fraying and old, though clotted blood crusted along its length keeps it from crumbling completely. Fat knots are tied at regular intervals along it.

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