Page 36 of Carved Obsession (The Sanctum Syndicate #4)

Scarlet

I try to squash and shove away the disappointment that attempts to make a home in my soul. He can’t feel what I desperately need him to for us to be...us. Carter can’t feel love.

He said it himself—care is a logical reaction that he understands, but anything more intense is simply unfamiliar to him. How can I be with a man who would never love me?

No. Not “would,” but “could.” He could never love me.

One can argue that his love is the last thing I should want since he clearly lacks certain parts of his humanity.

I’ve looked into it before, back when I was trying to understand my own murderous tendencies.

I would have preferred to be like what I think he may be—a psychopath—but sadly, I discovered I’m simply evil.

Or maybe he’s not a psychopath and he has alexithymia, an odd, fascinating condition I discovered as I fell into that research hole for weeks.

I’m curious. I’ve seen the emptiness peering back at me.

It’s as if his eyes are made of precious stones—beautiful, but cold. Like all emotions were stripped long ago, yet they still linger deep in the untouchable abyss of his soul. Because he looks like he was born of despair that finally accepted its condition.

I think there’s more to him than a simple diagnosis, and I shove back that intrusive voice that tells me he’ll never be able to give me what I want, because I crave to peel his layers and find out more about him.

Especially when he’s so keen to keep me.

“And you, Scarlet?” he asks, pulling me out of my thoughts. “What’s your poison ?”

Only my family knows my deepest, darkest secret—my need to inflict pain on others. I even kept it away from Bernard, and I can’t pinpoint why I didn’t feel like I could share it with him. Now I know that deep down, I never trusted him.

Yet, as I stare into Carter’s devastatingly beautiful gaze, something clicks.

“Pain,” I rasp.

Fuck, it feels good to say it. It feels even better to see the slight twitch in his eyes, like surprise and intrigue mars them.

“Brutal, raw pain is my poison.” I exhale a breath of relief. “I love seeing how it lands.”

“Really?” he asks, genuine interest in his voice. No judgment. No horror.

“Oh, yeah! Their reactions to it are addictive. And I—What are you doing?”

Carter slides down my body, his lips dragging over my breasts, reaching my peaked nipple. He sucks on it until pleasure ripples deep in my belly.

“Continue, Scarlet. Tell me more.” He dives beneath the blankets, tongue and teeth brushing around my belly button, over to the sensitive dip next to my hip bones, before he continues down.

I yelp when he grips my hips and yanks me sideways so I’m on my back. He situates himself right between my thighs, breath close to that aching spot that still bears traces of him.

“Carter, I—Aaah!” I cry out when he pushes his tongue inside my core, regardless of his cum still coating my walls, then sucks my clit like he genuinely wants to take my breath away.

No warning. No teasing.

“Tell. Me. More,” he orders, punctuating each word with another stroke of his tongue.

“Oh, fuck.” A few centering inhales are required to find some stray brain cells through the mind-bending zaps of pleasure. “I-I love how crushing their bones twists their vocal cords.”

I grip his hair with one hand, steadying myself on the wall behind me with the other, my breaths sawing out of me as hard as his tongue presses inside.

“How the indignation and...ego shining in their eyes turns into a sheer veil they think I can’t see through,” I continue.

Fuck, he’s so good at this. A surge of pleasure crests inside of me, tearing at my walls to rip their way out as he builds the pleasure higher and higher, stroking my clit tortuously slowly with his thumb.

The peak is in sight once more.

Just at the edge of rational thought and pure, unkempt oblivion.

“What else?” he presses, before he licks me with the flat of his tongue. My back arches off the bed in response.

“It-it’s a marvelous thing,” I blurt out between whimpers, “affecting the body—Ah.” I cry out when his tongue dives back inside me, eating me out like a man starved. “And the mind. It quickly makes an atheist choose a god to believe in.”

He chuckles against my sex, sending tingling vibrations through it, and I press him harder against me, fingers tangled in his hair as I moan.

“So wet. So greedy. So perfect ,” he praises, voice low, husky. “My wild fucking girl.”

“Aaah!” Pleasure arrows deep in my core as he plunges his fingers inside.

“This pussy is mine now.” He lays his claim as a current strikes through my body with each powerful thrust of his fingers.

Yours . . .

I don’t know if I spoke that word or just thought it. He growls against my folds, hungry and demanding.

“What else do you love about inflicting pain, kitten?”

But I’m struggling to form words when his digits stroke the most forbidden parts of me on a maddening rhythm that threatens to rip away any semblance of sanity.

“It’s a beast...lying dormant inside people.

” My back arches high, nails scraping against the wall above my head with the pleasure rippling from the clit he so expertly sucks.

“And when it gets a voice...it devours their humanity. Powerful enough that it even turns them against the ones they love the most.”

Memories flash in my mind of people who had fallen victim to me. Beautiful moments of agony I carefully mapped out and learned. Enjoyed. Now they mix with this exquisite assault led by Carter’s tongue and fingers. The combination is exquisite.

He knew exactly what he was doing when he slid under the covers.

A trap I launched myself into.

But I wouldn’t crawl out, even if I could. The ecstasy is addictive, cresting higher and higher, and I need to find out where it takes me. It feels different from before, when he fucked me so very well and gave me my first ever orgasm by a man.

“One more,” he whispers.

My pussy stretches with a further intrusion. A fullness that makes me writhe with the wanton pleasure it brings. With erratic breaths, I roll my hips like I’m fucking myself with Carter’s fingers.

“Yes, just like that, my greedy little whore. You’re so fucking wet for me.” His smoky praises work on me just as well as his fingers, and I would crawl at his feet if he’d keep talking to me like that. “Pain is a wonderful thing, love. What do you like most about inflicting it?”

“Their tears.” I don’t waste a breath with my reply. “Blood, screams, or death are not the peak of it all—tears are.”

He rolls his fingers against that sensitive spot that has never felt another person’s touch before. My ex is completely clueless, clearly, and the few before him never took the time.

“They’re the tangible relinquishment of hope in the face of agony,” I add between heaving breaths.

His tongue presses against my clit as his lips latch onto it, pleasure brimming at an untouchable edge I want to dive off of as I curl my toes and dig my heels into the mattress.

“They’re the omen of finality,” I whimper. “The ode to pain.”

With that last word and one final roll of his digits, I explode around them in bursting stars and ripples of ecstasy coiling inside my sex, my belly, through my spine, gripping my nipples and tearing out of my throat in a primal scream that puts the thunderous storm to shame.

“And I collect them all...” I whisper through the orgasm’s shattering waves.

Carter

Through the fascination at Scarlet’s violent orgasm, quivering body, and pleasure-laced features, my mind snaps to that moment in her house when I saw some delicate vials under the vanity mirror. Are those it? The tears she collects?

She’s such a weird creature.

And here I am, fucking mesmerized by her.

“I don’t know how you did that. Twice,” she murmurs in a lazy, well-fucked voice as I crawl up her body and lie next to her.

“Almost make you squirt?”

“Sorry, what?” she exclaims with widening eyes.

I pull my hand from under the cover, her wetness all but dripping off of the three fingers I fucked her with, though my entire hand is coated. Half my face too.

“Oh my god...” she whispers. “Let me get you a towel.”

“I’ll get it, love.” I slide two of those fingers between my lips, sucking her sweet flavor off of them on a long groan.

“Holy fuck,” she all but moans.

I cock an eyebrow, then slide out of bed to grab the discarded towel, wipe myself, and slide back in.

“And you really never orgasmed before by another person?” I ask.

Shaking her head, she looks sheepish for the first time since I met her.

“No wonder you’re divorcing Camora.”

She bursts into chesty laughter, and I’m transfixed. God, the more time I spend with this woman, the more I find new things to be enthralled by.

“If only that would have been the reason. But others before him were just as unsuccessful. I thought I was to blame.”

The mention of the other people she’s been with makes me want to track them all down and beat the memories of Scarlet right out of their brains.

“What was the reason?” Finally, I get to know why she’s divorcing Camora.

“I found out he was cheating on me, for quite a while. That night, actually...when you and I first met.”

“And that night you were . . . ?”

“Trying not to kill them both,” she answers bluntly.

I think I understand. She was removing herself from the situation.

“Walking alone through the dark alleys wasn’t the most brilliant idea, though,” I say.

“Actually, it was. You see, murder for me is not a sick craving to satisfy my bloodlust. It’s an almost involuntary reaction to fury. My wild fits of rage are rash. Destructive. And chasing an adrenaline-fueled high in the absence of a kill is the only way to calm my nerves.”

“You willingly put yourself in danger to spare that fucking asshole?” I seethe between clenched teeth.

She has no response to that. Just stares at me as the dying embers of the fire sparkle over her features.

“When we return home, I’ll take him out for you.”