Bound to Darkness (Doubeck Crime Family)

I want to yell at her, at Kai, force them to end this stupid agreement and see reason. But I can tell by the heat in her eyes when she looks at him that it won’t happen. She wants him in the same way I do. And that sort of need isn’t tame, isn’t reasoned with, isn’t something I can force her to ignore.

If she keeps touching him, though, I might try to kill her.

The guard shifts closer to me as if he can sense my resentment, the fury rising in my blood. “You can’t do this,” I try one more time.

She still doesn’t bother to look at me. Instead, she runs her nails up Kai’s shin. “I can do whatever I want. That’s what makes us different, Ms. Barone. You may have been born in this world, but you’ll never be a part of it.”

I take a step forward, about to yank her off the bed by her cheaply dyed hair. Of course, the guard gets to me first, wrapping an arm around my waist to hold me back. I stop struggling and glare up at him. “Any chance you can let me go, and then we pretend none of this ever happened. After I kill her, of course.”

He blinks as if I’ve surprised him. “No, no, we can’t. Besides, you couldn’t afford me.”

Somehow that statement sounds vaguely sexual. What the fuck is in the water around here?

31

KAI

I try to lift myself, bending, moving, sliding, anything to get off this bed and get to her. To remove that filthy guard’s hands from her skin. “Let her go!” I yell, but it comes out garbled and slurred.

Even with her under their control, I’m relieved she’s alive, safe, and looks unharmed, outside of the seriously pissed-off look in her eyes. If she finds out I did this to protect her, then she might not forgive me for it. But she’ll be alive, and in the end, when it’s all over, I’ll be dead regardless. At least if Adrian is the friend, I know him to be.

She can hate me and live.

But I’ll love her until the second I’m dead. Maybe even after.

I try to say her name, but all that comes out of my mouth is drool. I glare at the bitch near the end of the bed, and I want to scream. Is this sexy? Is this the kind of man she wants? I can’t even function properly.

Rose pleads with her and the guard to let us go, but that’s never going to happen. She’s wasting her breath.

“Rose,” I manage.

Her eyes lock to mine, and she struggles harder. “Don’t you dare give up, you bastard. You refused to let me do it, and I sure as hell won’t allow you to. Consider it payback for all the times you pushed me.”

I deserve that and her anger. If I’d been more vigilant and less distracted, then neither of us would have been taken.

The council bitch climbs up beside me on the bed, so close I can feel the knobby bones of her knees. I struggle against the bonds. “No, don’t. Not in front of Rose.”

She narrows her eyes and shakes her head, placing a hand on my abs. “Oh no, the time for negotiation has passed. She should watch, learn who your new master is.”

Fucking hell, she’s really going to do this, right in front of the guard, in front of Rose. The only reason I can think of is to punish us both.

Despite my disgust of the woman, my dick is hard. I ignore it, but she doesn’t, her eyes sliding there covetously. She must have put some kind of Viagra or something in her little drug cocktail, just like she had to do last time.

I mumble a second and then get hold of the words in my foggy brain. “It must gall you to know you can’t get me hard on your own. That you have to drug me into it.” I flick my chin toward Rose. “She can do it just by looking at me. Just by breathing too closely to me. You’ll only ever get me by force and by pharmaceutical application.”

She slaps me hard, but I only smile. “You can’t hit worth a damn either.”

For a second, she leans away and produces a knife. “I might not have the strength you do, but this will do just fine if you want to play games.”

She trails the tip of the knife down my belly to rest gently against the head of my cock. “If I can’t have you, no one will. Don’t make me unman you before I even get to have a ride.”

Bile rises in my throat, and I can’t hold my head up anymore. She takes it as my submission and pulls the blade away. It disappears under the bed again, and she resettles near my hip. When she throws one thigh over top of my pelvis, I struggle harder. She can fucking stab me for all I care. I’m not going to make it easier for her to rape me.

I buck my hips upward, and for a second, she thinks she’s won, that I’m finally trying to meet her, but I get my knee sideways enough that I hit her in the rib cage hard enough to knock her off my body.

She lets out a satisfying oomph and then scrambles farther away. From somewhere nearby, Rose laughs. “He’s a bastard, but he’s going to make you work for it, isn’t he?”

“Shut the hell up,” the council bitch snaps. “I didn’t ask your opinion, and if you keep talking, I’ll be sure to get the gag. Or maybe I’ll bring you closer, put your face on the bed while I fuck him, let you see how much he loves to give me his cock.”