Page 101 of Corrupted By You

Zeno pressed his hips to mine, and everything in me ached for this man. God had spared nothing when crafting my husband’s shaft because even half-mast and hidden beneath a towel, it was magnificent. “Tell me how you got in here while the door was locked.”

“Magic.”

“Try again,” he said, almost threateningly, and ran his knuckles down my right breast. Zeno plucked my nipple and tugged over the material of my skimpy red negligée. “And remember that I will always punish you for your disobedience.”

I chose the high road and admitted, “I used a key.”

“Hmm.” He rolled my nipple between his nimble fingers. I suppressed a moan. “Does it happen to be the same key François claims to have lost thenmagicallyfound in his bedroom this morning?”

I tapped my chin thoughtfully. “No. I think it was another one.”

Zeno boosted me onto the dresser and stepped between the open V of my legs, his upper body caging me against the mirror.

“You shouldn’t roam the halls at night wearing silky little nothings, Darla,” he rasped against my cheek. “You might tempt the wrong beast.”

My negligée hiked up to show the tops of my red stockings and the garter containing my knife. I yanked it out, switched it open, and brought it between us.

Right over his jugular.

“Maybe I wanted to find you,” I whispered seductively, trailing the knife over his neck in a teasing graze. “Maybe I wanted to force you out of hiding so I can do this…”

The tip of my knife danced over the gold chain resting between those inked pecs. I scooped the cross on the surface of my weapon and cocked an eyebrow at him.

Unaffected, my husband continued to invade my personal space until our noses almost skimmed. “I thought the less you saw of me, the better?”

“People change their minds all the time.”

“So it would seem,” he murmured unflinchingly when I dragged the knife back to his pulse. Living in this household, with all these demons, heightened my own devious nature. In bed, I would always be a submissive whore but outside—I’d be hellish, just the way my husband liked. “You want to carve me, baby?”

“It would serve you right. You’re not a good man.”

His nose trailed down to my jaw, where he inhaled my scent greedily like it was as paramount as the oxygen he breathed.

Zeno banded an arm around my waist and tugged me into his wet, unyielding chest, fitting our lower bodies like two perfect puzzle pieces. “You’ve barely scratched the surface, Darla. I’m worse than anything you can imagine.” In a move that caught me off-guard, he yanked my hand over to his Adam’s apple, the sharp edge of my blade digging into his skin. His eyes pulsed with a venereal quality. “You want to hurt me for what I’ve done? Now’s your one and only chance.”

“Stop it, Zeno,” I said in a near shrill when he dove a hand into the nape of my neck and roped me impossibly closer—to kill him or kiss him, I didn’t know. My hand holding the knife was crushed in his vice-like grip and despite my words, I didn’t want to make him bleed. Just toy with his soul the same way he’d done to mine. “Let go!”

The blade nicked him and a thin drop of blood loomed to the surface.

The sight of blood smarted the base of my throat with fear and…wicked temptation.

Lord knew my husband deserved this, but I wouldn’t be the one to slay him.

“You hate me—you wish you never met me?” he growled angrily against my mouth, squeezing my hand. “Then end me. Fucking do it, Darla.”

“Zeno,” I croaked, my gaze rising to his wild one. “Arrête, s’il te plaît!”

He bit my bottom lip and wrested it to a point of pain before lapping the sting with an effortless stroke of his tongue. “Swear to God, I didn’t die the first time around, but if there’s anyone worthy of killing me…it’s you,mon ange.”

There was a white scar on his neck, hidden under the thread of his chain.

Someone tried to kill him and the realization chilled my bones.

A strangled sound escaped me and Zeno finally dropped my hand. I chucked the blade far away and grabbed the back of his wet hair, wrenching him to me for a kiss.

Three sheets to the wind, the flavour of our passion effervesced, dissolving the protective barrier keeping our sanity in check. I thirsted for his essence—a tincture of merciless and immoral—and he poured it into me like sacredvinin a chalice.

“I want you so bad, I can barely breathe,” he whispered against my sensitive mouth, clutching my thighs with the strength of a man who only knew a life laced with war. “You were never supposed to be this addicting.”