Page 26 of Beyond Hate (Beyond #3)

Otto

T here was a knife in my side, and the pain was making it hard to breathe.

I wasn’t looking at the person who was stabbing me, though—I’d long since gotten over the need to look at the people tormenting me.

My eyes were all for Nikki… Nikki, standing in the corner with his arms crossed over his waist.

Nikki, with his lips pressed together in a hard line.

Nikki, who never took his eyes off me as the knife started to slide upward, peeling a layer of skin back in an agonizing burn that made my vision white out.

When I screamed, Nikki’s eyes widened and his fingers clenched… and I—

I could remember every man I’d found who looked like him… those same wide blue eyes, the dark hair. The expression of confusion when I wrapped my hands around their throat and watched the life leave their eyes… but it was never right.

It was never enough because it was never him, and the same instincts in my body that led me to kill knew it wasn’t him.

It wasn’t Nikki.

It wasn’t…

I woke with my hands around London’s throat.

He wasn’t even fighting to get me off him. His hair was still wet from the shower he’d had before bed, sleep tousled and sticking up at odd angles. He looked so sweet, so soft.

London was just staring at me with wide eyes—those same fucking wide eyes Nikki had—and holding my arm like I wasn’t trying to kill him.

I let him go, and he drew in a deep breath. Thankfully, the sound was clear. I hadn’t squeezed hard enough to hurt him, though I could see the red impression of my fingers against his throat.

“Are you okay?” The question came before he’d managed to catch his breath, and I shoved back on the bed like he’d burned me.

“I just tried to kill you.” My voice was deceptively calm when I spoke, but something inside me was trembling. It wasn’t just memories of being tortured—it was memories of the body I was in. Instincts that wanted me to spill across the bed and finish what I’d started.

I was some fucked-up amalgamation of trauma and response… pain and the desire to kill. I was two broken pieces of a person that still seemed incapable of coming together to make a whole, because all I wanted was to hurt the man in front of me.

All I wanted was to break the one person who’d never done a damn thing to me.

“Otto.” London’s voice was careful, soft, and he telegraphed his movements as he slowly crawled toward me. “It’s okay. You were having a nightmare. You were talking in your sleep and you said my name…”

Innocent.

So fucking innocent—an innocence that would get him killed. An innocence that made him perfect.

A perfect balm to my broken soul.

A perfect victim for my bloodstained hands.

“You don’t get it, London. I want to hurt you.

I’m never not going to want to hurt you.

It isn’t about who you are, or who you’re not.

It isn’t about our past. It’s not about what you did or didn’t do.

It’s this body—the man who was in it before I took over.

He was a killer, London. A psychopath. He…

fuck, he was darker than anything I’ve ever been, and those urges are still here .

Every time I look at you, I can imagine what you look like bleeding just behind my lids.

Every time you cry, it makes me want to break you more.

It makes me hard to see your tears, London.

Do you get it? I crave your pain.” My eyes flicked up to him, the tremoring pulse just beneath my skin threatening to tear out and show him exactly what monster I was talking about. He looked so sweet.

So easy to break.

And I…

I wanted it. I wanted all of him.

He was quiet, like he was taking in everything I’d just said.

His blue eyes were careful when they looked me over, from my shaking hands to what I was sure was a desperate gaze.

And then he crawled forward, shifting my legs apart so he could crowd my space.

His fingers caught in my curls, tugging gently and forcing me to look at him.

“So do it.”

My brain couldn’t make sense of what he’d just said.

“What?”

“Do it. Use me. I want you to, Otto.”

My fingers clenched hard enough I knew I was cutting into my palms, but it was the only thing stopping me from reaching out and grabbing him then and there, taking him up on the offer.

“You don’t get it. There’s a part of me that wants to cut you open so I can run my tongue across your heart and drown in the beat of you.

I want to carve my name on your ribs so you’re forced to feel it when you breathe in—I want to possess every part of you, London.

I want to break you until I’m the only thing you can fit around.

” His breath was coming faster, but he didn’t move away.

“I want to drown in all the ways I can make you cry.”

The silence carried between us for another second before he reached down, and my fingers unclenched as he brought my hand to his face, brushing it across his trembling lips as he spoke.

“Then make me cry, Otto. You can have all my tears for the rest of my life. All my pain, all my fear, as long as I’m yours . As long as you let me feel you . I know it doesn’t make sense, but yours is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to be.”

Fuck.

He didn’t understand.

He couldn’t understand…

But I wasn’t a good man, and he was offering me everything I wanted.

I couldn’t refuse.

“Do you want to die, rabbit?” The question came out as a soft rumble as I dropped my fingers from his lips to his throat and used my grip to flip him so he was suddenly pinned to the mattress beneath me.

London looked up at me with wide eyes and bit his lower lip.

“I don’t think so, but I know I might if you don’t fuck me the way you’ve been wanting to since you found me in that alley. I know you’ve been holding back because you think I’m delicate, Otto… but maybe I want to be broken. I—”

I cut him off with fingers tightening around his throat, and the sound of his words catching under the pressure was enough to light my body up.

The look of panic as it quickly chased on the wings of pleasure that flitted across his face was intoxicating, and the way his hand came up to scramble at my wrists—not pushing me away, just holding on like I was the only anchor he had—was everything I needed.

He was everything I needed.

I leaned in and took his mouth with mine as I finally loosened my grip, drinking down the sound of him trying to catch his breath and kissing him before he had a chance to inhale too deeply.

I wanted him dizzy for me, I wanted him aching.

I made quick work of stripping us out of our clothes before coming back to pin him down again.

When he tried to lean up and kiss me, I stopped him with fingers that slid into his mouth and pressed against his tongue.

London moaned, but the sound cut off in a sharp inhalation of breath when I started fucking his mouth in a punishing pace that left no room for softness.

He gagged around me, his nails biting into my skin where he held onto my wrist…

not trying to push me away… he was trying to pull me closer even as he struggled.

It wasn’t enough.

London was so pretty like this, with tears streaking down his face and his cheeks flushed. The sight of his throat, red where I’d wrapped my fingers around it was gorgeous… but I wanted more.

If he really meant what he said—if he really wanted to fuck the monster in me just as much as the man—I needed more.

My hand fumbled almost blindly for the jacket he’d thrown off before coming to bed, for the knife that had set all of this off earlier.

London’s eyes flew open when the sound of the blade snicking from the hilt spilled through the air.

His grip on my wrist suddenly changed, trying to pull my fingers from his mouth, but I shook my head and pressed the digits down on his tongue hard enough to make him gag.

“No, rabbit. If you want me—all of me—this is part of it.” I leaned in closer to him, carefully drawing the knife between us as I did.

I trailed the tip of it along my collarbone, wincing slightly at the sting of the metal playing against my flesh.

It sent little droplets of blood across London’s chest. Just the sight of red on his perfect skin made me groan, and I leaned down with the blade still pressed to my heart and kissed him.

I could tell the second the knife bit into his skin because he gasped into my mouth, but his hands still weren’t pushing me away. He scrambled beneath me, pulling me closer, tugging on my hair and yanking me to him until I felt the blade bite into both of us from the pressure.

I couldn’t help myself—I dragged it downward, trying to keep it light enough that we wouldn’t need stitches, shallow enough that he wouldn’t faint halfway through me fucking him because I’d cut too deep.

Fuck, though, it was his skin and mine—a wound we shared together now, right over hearts that had been broken because fate was a fucked-up bitch who’d always put us together at the wrong time.

When I finally broke the kiss and looked at London, with tears in his eyes and blood slicking along his chest from the shallow cut, I couldn’t stop myself.

I tossed the knife onto the bedside table and sat back for just a second to admire what I’d done—the line on his chest matched mine perfectly, and as I hovered over him, little droplets of blood slid down my stomach and hips to pool at the juncture of his thighs.

My fingers smeared through it, streaking it over the spill of his collarbone, up along his neck, to paint his jawline and his blond hair.

“Look at that—yours and mine. It’s like we’re one person all mixed together now. We belong to each other, rabbit. It’s always been you and me in every life, one way or another.” I wiped my bloody thumb through the tears streaking down his cheeks and brought the digit up to paint my lips.

Copper and salt—blood and tears. Everything that made up London.