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I spit that word in my head with a mean little curl, because it’s a joke, isn’t it? Never been in love with myself, not even enough to buy that snake oil.

Even so, I wrap my own hand around the ache, the one problem in this cell that I can solve without an audience, and resolve to see the thing through quick.

Nobody’s coming to see a show.

Nobody’s listening.

I jerk myself in that numb way a man does when he’s chasing down a ghost, not really seeing his own hand moving, justwanting the pressure to break, needing the ache to yield for a second so he can gather himself and shut it all down again.

The skin’s cold but the heat inside isn’t, and I work myself hard and mean, knuckles white, body shivering under the sheet of freezing water that Blackthorn’s finest think will shrink me down to something manageable.

My jaw’s locked. I grit my teeth so the sound doesn’t escape, but even then, a groan grates up my windpipe, loud enough I’m sure it echoes down the stone. Shame is a concept for people with a reputation left to lose.

If the guards are watching the feed, let them look.

I think about her,only her, and it’s not a gentle fantasy.

No soft focus, no romantic slow-motion. I picture her crouched at my feet, the world’s tiniest devil in her pink jumpsuit, glass between her fingers and that razor smile curving her lips.

It’s her voice—flat, cold, a threat dressed up in a dare—that plays in the echo chamber of my head.

The precise way she said “Violet,” like naming the color of the violence she had coiled behind her teeth.

I imagine her mouth on me, and it’s not even the lips or the tongue, it’s the shape of her fucking teeth, the way she’d bite, the way she’d laugh if she drew blood.

I see her climbing me like a ladder, hands, knees, and hips, see her pinning me down instead of the other way around, see her riding the power the way she rides the air in those tightropes she walks upon in this space she clearly owns without stating it to the world.

I picture her with my hand on her throat and her hand on mine, both of us unwilling to blink first.

The cut on my neck is stinging worse, and I want her to do it again.

I want her to go further.

To feel her jaw work under my palm as I haul her mouth to mine.

For her to ruin me, if only so I have the excuse to do the same.

She said she was “dangerous,” and I think she was underselling by half.

The hand I’m using is too harsh but I don’t care. I want it to hurt. I want it to be as rough as the memory, as sweet as the threat. The water comes down ice cold and I let it, let it numb all the places that aren’t on fire, let it baptize me as the worst kind of sinner.

My other hand claws at the floor, scraping red lines in the pale slab, and I wonder if she’d lick the blood. I wonder what she tastes like when she’s wet and wild and unafraid.

And then there’s that last image—the way she looked at me when she said “wide enough,” the way she meant it, not joking at all, just stating a fact she already knew.

My hand works me harder, desperation taking over, the ache in my cock now a nuclear-grade crisis that nothing short of violence is going to solve. I’m using my own fingers like a cudgel, grip so tight it’s a miracle I don’t snap something, veins standing out on my knuckles and shaft alike, my whole body a pulsing wire rigged for detonation.

The thought of her—the way she’d surely cut her own skin to win the moment, the dare in her voice when she named the thing that lived under her skin—feeds my pulse, too fast, too bright, ricocheting off the walls of this cement coffin like a ballistic round.

I can’t stop thinking about the curve of her grin, the murder in her eyes, the sound she might make if I shoved her hard up against the wall and made her take every inch of me, whether or not she begged for it.

The memory of her scent isn’t a memory.

It’s live, viral, gone systemic. It’s the only warmth in the room, and even as the water needles my shoulders and back and nuts to the point of numbness my cock doesn’t care.

It’s all her, every inch of her, and she’s so fucking vivid in my head I swear I could draw her from memory, every freckle on her face, every split end of her pink-and-violet disaster hair.

I imagine her as she could have been:covered in someone else’s blood, mouth open in a scream that was half-laugh, glass in one hand, promise in the other.