The Marriage Debt (Underworld Kings)

The second I’ve closed the gap between us, I grab her face and kiss her harder than I ever have before. Harder than I ever could have imagined, my tongue diving in deep, ready to claim everything she has to offer. And for the first time in forever, she doesn’t fight or push back, doesn’t bite or revolt.

Instead, she opens her mouth and allows me in, kissing me back with equal greediness, and it turns me on so much that my cock tents against my pants.

For years, I’ve dreamed of this moment, jerked off to the fantasy every night. She finally lets me be the one for her, and I’m going to enjoy it thoroughly.

I’ll show her who I can really be.

I shove her up against the wall and pin her by her throat, kissing her so fast she can barely keep up. Her lips are red and yearning for me when I leave her a second to breathe before diving in again. The way she looks at my naked chest makes me horny as fuck as I let my hands roam freely across her dress, the same dress I fucked her in only hours ago.

But none of that came close to what I’m about to do to her now.

I know she only offered herself to me to try to trick me into letting her go.

But this time, there’s no escaping my love, no escaping my ownership over her.

I am laying myself bare for her.

Right here, this is me, in all my fucked-up glory.

And all I’ve ever wanted was to be good enough for her.

“How does it feel when I kiss you?” I murmur against her skin, dragging my lips down her neck until I reach her collar, and I tug that too so we’re eye to eye. “Do you hate me more now that you know what I’d do for you?”

“I never knew,” she murmurs.

“Because I didn’t want you to know.”

Her lips part, her body squirming against mine. “Why?”

I fish my knife from my pocket and hold it up in front of her. “Because my family doesn’t do love. We fuck. We fight. We win. We conquer. But you … you make me feel something I’m not supposed to feel. Weakness.”

“Love is not weak,” she replies as I slide the knife along her cheek, still obsessed with the idea of making her bleed.

“Love is like a drug to me,” I say, puncturing her skin right above her collar. “You are like heroin to me.”

She gasps as the blood oozes out of her skin, warm droplets rolling down. I lick my canines from the hunger it brings out inside me. Her hand rises to touch the wound, her pupils dilating like she’s shocked I’d do this to her, even after confessing why I did what I did to her.

But what she doesn’t realize is that this is exactly who I am.

Exactly what I need.

What she asked for.

“Are you scared?” I ask, just as I did before. When we were still young and on the cusp of discovering who we were and what we were really capable of.

She’s shivering in place, her shoulders rising and falling with every breath like she’s trying to understand. Understand what it means to be loved by me. What it means to fall for someone like me.

“No,” she says.

It comes out in a single breathy whisper. But I heard.

I grasp her hand, pinning one of them to the wall while shoving my knife into the other.

It takes her a while to realize that I released the knife and gave her complete rein.

I gave her the one tool to free herself.

The one thing she can use to destroy me and end all of this.

Strike me. Puncture my fucking heart.

“What are you doing?” she murmurs.

“Giving you a choice,” I retort.

Something I’ve never given her until this day.

It’s now or never. A single moment of clarity in the insanity that’s become me.

“I could—”

“Kill me,” I fill in for her, and I lean in, tilting my head, offering her the easiest way to end it all.

“But why?”

“I’m not afraid of death,” I reply, still looking her in the eyes. “I’ve hurt you, so now’s your chance.”

Her lips quiver as hard as the hand holding the knife does.

So I grab her wrist and point the knife at my chest. “Last chance, bunny. My heart’s right there, beating only for you. Now take it. It’s yours.”

I lean in, but she keeps pulling the knife away farther and farther.

“It’s the only way to stop me,” I whisper into her ear as her hand holding the knife rises above us, hovering dangerously close to my back. “Now choose.”

And as she presses the blade against my skin, I plant my mouth over the wound on her neck, licking up her blood. If I’m going to die, I want her blood to be the last thing I taste.