Page 5 of Beyond Hate (Beyond #3)

London

O tto was gone when I woke up, and I lay there on the bed with my hand on the space beside me—the warmth where he’d obviously just been slowly fading away as I wondered what in the fuck was wrong with me.

He’d told me he was going to kill me. He’d laid it out with perfect clarity that he was going to give me some drug and…

what? Bring back the person who he thought had hurt him?

It was all impossible, completely ridiculous…

but it didn’t mean he wasn’t going to drug me up with something so he could live out his fucked-up revenge delusion.

I wasn’t Nikki.

I didn’t know Otto.

But that didn’t stop me from falling asleep in his arms last night. It didn’t stop me from feeling his kiss still pressed against my mouth when I woke up this morning.

It didn’t stop me from some weird, misaligned sensation that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. All those pieces of me that had been missing my entire life, all the parts of me that had felt broken and empty…

For just a second, for one blissful second, they’d all clicked into place when I’d felt his mouth against mine. It was like, in the darkness of the room, I was seeing color for the first time. Like I’d finally figured out how to take a full breath.

And…

I was inhaling a threat, the promise of death . I was breathing in hate.

It still didn’t stop me from pressing myself against him when he held me, and letting myself float on some fucked-up sea of fear and contentment.

I really was messed up. Affection starved.

With him gone now, though, I could think more clearly.

I had to figure out a way to get out of here. I had to figure out a way to make him let me go.

“Go to what?” I muttered as soon as the thought flicked through my mind. The apartment was under Hudson’s name. I didn’t have any money.

I didn’t have anywhere to go.

I had nothing.

Nothing, except…

Like he could hear me—or maybe he’d been waiting for me to wake up—Otto came into the room with another tray of food. I tensed as soon as I saw him, drawing in on myself as much as I could. I brought my knees to my chest, like that was enough of a barrier between us to actually keep me safe.

He’d made it obvious last night that he could do whatever he wanted to me, and I was trying to convince myself it was just my body’s fucked-up self-defense mechanism that folded like a wet paper towel—if he wanted me, maybe he wouldn’t kill me.

It didn’t have anything to do with that brief flash of serenity I’d felt… with that shining burst of wholeness that tried to snake its way through my logic.

Otto wanted to hurt me.

Past lives didn’t exist. He was crazy, and I…

“How’d you sleep, London?” The smoothness of his voice was the echo of a demon, because the smile on his lips told me he already had his answer.

He knew, because he’d been here.

He knew because the bed had still been warm when I’d woken up.

I looked up at him almost helplessly, like that could somehow change what had happened, change the way I’d reacted to him.

Like it could alter the fact that clinging to him while he told me he wanted to erase me from existence was fucked up, but I’d slept better than I had in years in the circle of his arms.

And Otto just smiled, sitting on the edge of the bed and offering me a piece of toast. When I hesitated, his gaze flicked to the other men in the room. The one chained to the wall had his eyes closed—whatever Otto had done to him last time had really pushed him over the edge.

The other was staring at us from his bed, his expression almost accusatory.

I hadn’t even thought about the fact that there were people in the room with us last night, and they could probably hear every little noise I made, every low moan I’d done my best and failed to keep in.

My face was suddenly burning when I glanced in the direction of the one who was still coherent. It was the man chained to the wall, though, who spoke in a ragged voice. After all the screaming he’d done, I was surprised he still had the ability to speak at all.

“Always going to be his whore, aren’t you, Nikki? Doesn’t matter what life—” He coughed, and it sounded wet… but my eyes weren’t on him anymore.

I watched in horror as the almost soft look on Otto’s face melted away to a cold rage beating against a deceptively calm expression. I still tried to stutter out words that could save the man who’d just insulted me. “I’m not… I-I… my… my name is…”

Oh, God. It didn’t matter. Otto’s attention swung around to the man, and I saw the knife in his hand as he stood. It flashed in the too bright light of the room and told me something terrible was about to happen. For just a second, that catlike gaze turned back to me.

“His name is London.” Otto finished the sentence for me, making my heart feel like it was going to seize in my chest. “Don’t worry, though, brother.

You could have just told me you were jealous.

” His eyes stayed on me as he spoke, searching my expression, drinking down the terror written clearly on my features.

“You have my full and undivided attention today. It’s about time I showed London what we’re really here for anyway. ”

Him calling me London didn’t make up for the way I’d watched his entire demeanor shift from man to monster. Something unfeeling. To the same predator I’d seen looking at me in the alley, the same one I’d seen watching me when his eyes had still been dark.

No matter how good it had felt to press my body against his, at the end of the day, Otto was dangerous. He wasn’t good.

And as he stepped forward and very carefully slid the knife he held into the delicate skin of the chained man’s finger, I felt my stomach clench and roil.

I was going to be sick—I couldn’t watch this.

But for some reason I couldn’t look away, because in the end… I knew.

Everything Otto did was because of me.

He didn’t finish for an hour. The first twenty minutes had been full of screams that were still buzzing around in my head.

The second was sounds I’d never heard a human make—low whimpers, wet snuffles, and gurgling groans cut off by gags.

Otto took the man apart one tiny piece at a time, and before he’d lost the ability to speak, he was apologizing.

To Otto.

To me.

To God.

No one was listening, though, and I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs to tell Otto it was enough.

To beg him to stop.

To…

Do anything.

I just sat there on the bed with my eyes glued to the carnage and watched a man being tortured until he finally fainted from pain and blood loss, and I really wondered if he was going to wake up this time.

My entire body was trembling as Otto carefully placed the knife on a table away from me and my cellmate—he’d also been quiet, watching with wide, horrified eyes. It took me a second, but I realized why.

He was next.

He knew he was next, and he was getting a live preview of what was to come. The difference between the two of us was that he’d buried his head beneath his pillow after the first ten minutes, and I half wondered if he’d smothered himself.

It meant he wasn’t watching when Otto turned to me—for someone who’d spent so much time torturing a man, who’d soaked the floor crimson with his blood, there was barely anything on him. He wiped his hands carefully on a white rag, leaving behind a smear of red, and turned his attention back to me.

“They’re not worth that look, London.” He’d been perfectly silent while he was torturing the man on the other side of the room, or if he’d spoken, it had been in such a soft murmur that I hadn’t heard it over the screams. But now…

Now his voice was clear, and his eyes were all for me, even though his pupils were slightly dilated, like the violence had done something to him.

And when he kneeled on the bed beside me, I couldn’t force myself to recoil any more than I already had. I was so drawn in on myself there wasn’t any space. There was just his eyes, fixated on me, studying the shivers running through my body, the terror on my face.

“You never looked like this before,” he whispered, and for the first time it didn’t feel like an accusation.

I opened my mouth to try to speak, but the only sound that came out was a soft, trembling sob, a little hiccup of pain and terror that turned into a cut-off cry when he shifted forward and threaded his fingers slowly through my hair.

“Nikki never looked at me like I was a monster.”

I’m not Nikki.

The thought beat in the back of my mind, the thing I’d tried to say to the man before he talked enough to get himself tortured to the edge of death. The thing I’d been trying to tell Otto… and…

Fuck. When he smoothed his hand down the side of my face, I could smell the slightest hint of copper, the distinct smell of blood that made me want to recoil, that made me want to vomit, that…

Engulfed me when he slid forward and dragged me onto his lap. I hadn’t realized how hard I was shivering until his warm arms wrapping around me forced me to feel it. I hadn’t realized I was taking fast, shallow breaths that were making me dizzy until his voice came soft and low in my ear.

“Breathe, London. You’re having a panic attack.”

“Of c-course… I-I-I…” I couldn’t get the accusation out, couldn’t tell him that the reason I was having one was because he’d just tortured a man in front of me.

“You didn’t have to watch.” It was like he could read my mind. He shifted us until my thighs were hooked over his hips and he could wrap his arms completely around me.

I fucking hated it when I felt my fingers fist into the front of his shirt so I could drag myself closer—because he was right.

Panic was pouring through me and making my body go numb, making my scalp prickle and my lungs feel like they were filling with lead that refused to let me take a breath.

He turned his head, pressing his lips to my ear.

“Breathe with me.” And I felt him inhale slowly.

I wanted to tell him he was a patronizing bastard, wanted to tell him to let me go because he was a monster…

but his arm around my waist pulled me closer, and the other snuck between us so he could lift my hand and press it to the center of his chest.

To his heart that was beating in a soft, steady rhythm, like what he’d done hadn’t even warranted a jump in his pulse. I tried to turn away, but the movement somehow pressed my face into the curve of his neck.

His pulse did jump when my lips found it, his arm squeezing around me tight enough that it forced me to inhale a gulp of air.

“London… He tortured me worse than that for months. Every week. He smiled while he did it. And he told me every time that you were the reason he was there.” My jaw clenched, the same denial I had every time burning up my chest and making it hard for me to breathe again.

Before I could work myself up, he kept speaking. “That Nikki was the reason.”

Nikki.

Not me.

“Not me…” I finally squeezed words out around the sensation of my ribs trying to collapse my lungs.

“No, you were never like this.” He slid back on the bed and pulled me closer, his hand trailing up my back so he could run his fingers through my hair.

Some part of me was aware that I was doing it again—I was letting a psychopath comfort me—but for some reason, when my eyes were closed and I could smell his scent, warm and earthy beneath the sharp sting of blood in my nose, I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I didn’t know him, but fuck…

It felt like I knew this. And I knew it wasn’t just my brain being totally fucked, because Hudson holding me after he showed me what a monster he was had never felt like this.

It had never felt like a place I wanted to be…

But I didn’t want to be in Otto’s arms. I wanted…

Fuck…

I tried to push against him, but the attempt was so weak that as soon as his fingers gently tugged at my hair, at the soft prickle of pain dancing down my spine, I gave up.

“Don’t…” It came out weak, and I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say.

Don’t do this.

Don’t hurt me.

I don’t want this…

Don’t stop?

Fuck.

I started crying as I lifted my free arm and grabbed his shirt, dragging myself closer to the only comfort I had, even if that comfort was the entire reason I was in pain to begin with. How had we ended up like this again?

It was fucked up—this whole situation was fucked up—but pressing my mouth to his pulse and counting the steady beat of his heart finally managed to calm me down enough that I heard it when he murmured. Softly. Nearly an accusation.

“You feel… different…”

Different. Everything was different, and I was pretty sure it would never be the same again.