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“You look so fucking pretty with my cum all over your face,” he murmurs quietly, reverently.

Almostsweetly.

Then, without any warning, he lowers his face, eyes still locked on mine, and kisses me.

Slowly. Deeply. Not caring that his cum is still smeared across my lips as his tongue dances with mine.

This is madness.

Damnation.

And thesweetest fucking oblivion.

17

NERO

I feel like a predator.

Not in a bad way. I tend to not view that word in the negative at all. I think it’s used far too often to describe those who commit heinous acts of cowardice or evil. But they aren’t actuallypredators. Just creeps. Monsters. Evil, shitty humans.

Real predators don’t lurk in the shadows, trying to sneak photos of children. They don’t lie to women to get them into their car, or exploit someone’s misfortune.

Those arejust wastes of space who, for all I care, can be rounded up and summarily shot. Good fucking riddance.

So, no. When I say I feel like a predator, I don’t mean a lascivious monster preying on the innocent. I mean I feel like aking. Like an apex hunter of the jungle, enjoying the spoils of the hunt.

Because that isexactlywhat I’m doing.

I sit back against the headboard of the bed, one knee up, the other leg stretched languidly out. My eyes are glued with smug, cocky self-satisfaction on my prey, laid out before me.

Milena.

She's currently only semi-conscious, tangled in the sheets near my leg. Her yoga pants got tossed aside at some point, as did her bra. But her panties are still around one ankle, and her shirt's still shoved up over her tits.

She’s still wearing her socks, too, which I find strangely adorable.

Her hair is a fuckingmess. Her skin is flushed, mottled with red marks andcoveredin me, in every sense.

Bruises paint her skin like a crazy artist went to work on her with an oversized brush and cans of purple and blue, especially around her throat, breasts, and thighs. My cum is glistening as it dries on her neck and chest.

A streak of blood still mars her inner thigh.

A lazy, languid, satisfied grin pulls the corners of my mouth upward.

I reach over to the nightstand, open the drawer, and pull out a pack of cigarettes and my father’s old copper Zippo—the one with the wolf face etched across it and the words “Homo homini lupus est” engraved below.

Man is a wolf to man.

Milena stirs slightly as I flick the flint, igniting the wick and bringing it to the cigarette between my lips. The tip glows orange as I take a slow drag, dropping the lighter back onto the side table and exhaling toward the ceiling.

This is the point where most people would talk. Check in. Debrief after all that insanity. Maybe whisper something soft and intimate, to make it feel romantic.

But I’m not most people, and this wasn’t romance.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

I take another slow drag, sliding my eyes down to meet hers. Even battered and bruised, with my fucking cum drying on her chin, she looks…