Blood roared loudly in my ears, and my breath cut off as Macalister’s shoulders tensed and he let out a loud, long grunt. As he came, he stared at me with his bottomless eyes and his face twisting with ecstasy.

She flinched with each streak of liquid that struck her, and he painted ribbons across her face while his body shook and shuddered. At last, his fist slowed and he issued a sigh, releasing his hold of her with a small backward shove. It made some of the semen drip down off her chin and onto her designer sweater.

It was such a shockingly vulgar and demeaning act, it was breathtaking.

He was almost done recovering when he spoke to her. “Now,” he said, “tell Marist you’re sorry.”

I gasped with horror as she turned to look at me with her face covered in his semen and her shame. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

His tone was plain. “That time, I believed you.”

He bent, grabbed the sides of his pants, and as he pulled them up, he assessed the result of his work across her cheeks and lips. His expression was cold and unfeeling as she peered up at her husband, desperate for him to say something. Anything.

“Go wash your face,” he ordered. “You look pathetic.”

There was no audible snap when she broke. She didn’t cry out or even say a thing as she cleaved down the middle. Alice climbed gingerly to her feet, her knees no doubt tender, and looked utterly dead inside as she carried herself from the room, her vacant eyes connecting with nothing. She moved as if she were hollow, and she was.

The Minotaur had eaten her soul.

I was at a complete loss for words as he finished doing up his zipper and began to button his shirt.

My voice was disembodied. I didn’t realize I was speaking until it was out. “You’re . . . you’re so fucked up.”

His hands ceased moving. There was the subtle, resigned nod of his head. “You told me you love fucked up things, though.” The uneven way he said it was disorienting. “It’s your favorite part of mythology.”

It was true. I wondered if something was wrong with me because I enjoyed such twisted stories, but I only liked them when they were trapped inside their medium and couldn’t touch me. My life as a tragic, fucked up myth didn’t have any appeal.

I couldn’t stand to be in this room with him a moment longer, especially when what he’d done to her still lingered freshly in the air. I pushed to my feet and balled my hands into fists. “I hate you.”

His reaction was shocking. Why did he look so stricken? “I don’t care very much for myself right now either.”

What?

He tucked his shirt into his pants and bent to retrieve the sweater he’d cast off. “But I did what needed to be done. Do you hate her?”

His humiliation of her was so horrible, all my anger flipped on its side and I only felt sorry for her now. “No. Only you.”

“Good.” He pulled on the sweater, tugging it into place. It was amazing how quickly he composed himself. “I can’t control how you feel about other people’s actions, but I can control my own, so I’ve absorbed the anger you had for her.”

Meaning he’d purposefully been awful so I would see him as the villain of the story and not her.

His shoulders rolled back, and his posture straightened so he looked ten feet tall again. “You can believe you hate me, Marist, and that’s fine. But, given enough time, I will change that.”

“We’re done here,” I hissed.

“Yes, we are.”

There was a finality to his statement that would have given me pause if I weren’t so fucking eager to get away from him.

I had only made it down the hall before I collided with Alice as she stepped out of the guest bathroom. Her face was pale, as she’d scrubbed most of her makeup off, and her eyes were pink, but she wasn’t currently crying.

My heart hurt for her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She bristled. “But this is your fault.”

I froze. “Excuse me?”

“Hales only want what they can’t have. Once the chase is over and they’ve won, they’re on to the next thing.” Her eyes were as hard as the diamond earring she wore. “If you’d just given Macalister what he wanted, this would have been over months ago.”

She pushed past me like I was a spoiled child she didn’t want to deal with, and as she strode down the hall, I felt less sorry for her.

I treated the horrible afternoon in the lounge with Macalister and Alice the same way I treated the initiation. It was something to never be spoken or thought about, because nothing good could come of it. At least my guilt over not telling Royce lessened each day.

Tags: Nikki Sloane Filthy Rich Americans Billionaire Romance
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