Page 39

38

LIA

I flitted between dream and sleep. I was tired.

And I was aware that my body ached, reminding me of all that I had done… all I had let Mael do to me. And right before I succumbed to sleep, I didn’t kick him out of the room like I should have.

Instead, I let him pull me into his arms, and I let him hold me.

I shook away the thought as I reached my hand out to stretch my sore muscles, only to stop when I realized I couldn’t move.

Why couldn’t I move?

What was wrong?

Slowly, I opened my eyes and took in my surroundings. I was on the bed in the room at the cabin. At least that hadn’t changed. What had changed was the fact that my hands were tied together, and my legs were tied to each bedpost.

I was naked, with only a thin sheet covering me.

I had been naked since last night, and I didn’t remember putting any clothes on after Mael and I… finished.

I didn’t remember much of anything that happened after I completely shattered in his arms, and I doubt Mael would have helped me dress, but this?

What the fuck?

I quickly looked around, my eyes landing on Mael sitting on the recliner chair that faced the bed. His face was expressionless. He didn’t seem to be thinking about anything. I knew better.

Mael was always one step ahead of everyone, and that included me.

I pulled on my restraints, glaring over at him. “What’s going on?”

He didn’t answer me right away. I wished he would. The silence was making me nervous. I could feel my heart racing the longer he looked at me in that intense way of his.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said finally.

“About?” I asked warily, even if everything in me said I didn’t want to hear it.

“I think we should have a heart-to-heart. I’ll tell you everything. There will be no more secrets between us, yeah?”

“You’ll tell me everything?” I repeated.

He nodded.

I pulled on my restraints again, testing their hold. It wasn’t hard enough to be painful but firm enough that I wouldn't be able to escape unless he untied me. Mael was obviously good at tying knots. I didn’t want to think about why that was. There were no good options. Either he had practiced tying other people before he… before he killed them, or he had practiced tying up his previous lovers—something I shouldn’t care about, but fuck, I did.

I fucking did, and I hated myself for it.

“Why do I need to be tied up for us to have this conversation?” I asked.

“So you can’t try to run away when you hear something you don’t like.”

I closed my eyes briefly. That wasn’t reassuring. I had a feeling I wouldn’t like much of what he had to say.

“You can’t give me some clothes to wear?”

He reached out and ran his hand up and down my leg. I fought against the urge to react to his touch. “This is purely for my enjoyment. I can get naked, too, if it makes you feel better.”

I shook my head, the image of Mael naked running through my mind. How many hours had I spent just lying there, studying his naked body, as if I were an artist and he was my muse?

His being naked wouldn’t make me feel better.

“I prefer to be dressed.”

“Tough.”

I scowled. If my hands were free, I would have punched him in the throat. He smiled when he saw the murderous look in my eyes, moving over to the bed and climbing on. I tried sliding away from him but didn’t get far.

He pressed his hand down on my stomach over the sheet. I sucked in a sharp breath.

“Ask me, baby.”

“Ask you?” I repeated.

He nodded. “Ask me anything.”

“When did you start stalking me?”

“About a month before I made an appearance in the coffee shop.”

I let out a long, broken exhale over his words. A month he had followed me around. A month of me being oblivious to it all.

“How did we meet?” I asked. I remembered him saying something before about how one look was all it took for him to become obsessed.

I was beginning to see this was more literal than I had initially thought. Granted, he had said it to me as my stalker back then, so I should have already guessed just how literal he meant it. I wasn’t thinking then. I was thinking now.

At least, I hoped I was acting with a clearer head than I was back then.

Then Mael moved his hand gently up and down my stomach, and I felt all rationality slip away, and what was left was the hard, very hard battle of fighting against the urge to give up and just purr like a fucking cat.

I was shameless. And so fucking stupid.

“Stop touching me like this,” I gritted out through clenched teeth. His eyes glinted, telling me he knew just what he was doing to me.

“Why?” he asked in mock innocence.

I shook my head. Fine. Two can play that game. I wiggled my shoulders until I felt the sheet loosening around me. I stopped when just a hint of my nipples showed. Mael’s eyes honed in on them, and he licked his lips.

“Baby, you are playing with fire,” he growled.

“Yeah? Untie me, and I’ll show you just how badly this can burn.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Nice try. We barely scratched the surface. What else do you want to know?”

I shook my head. I was not going to let him distract me.

“Why me?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment.

“And don’t give me any of that bullcrap of being in lust with me at first sight. Why me? What could I have possibly done to get your attention?”

“You exist.”

I laughed. There was nothing humorous about the sound. What a fucking corny line.

“I’m not just saying that,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell you. That first time I saw you, I was hiding in your room at your dad’s house.”

“You what ?”

That was fucking creepy as hell.

He smiled a little and shook his head. “You were wearing nothing but this thin bathrobe, just getting ready for a shower.”

I closed my eyes and tried to think of the night he was talking about. I had no clue when that could be. My father’s home had been my comfort place since I decided to move out. I visited it often, sometimes spending the night there when I needed some solace.

“And then you got undressed and looked at yourself in the mirror. You were frowning at your reflection as if you didn’t like what you saw, and I remember thinking how angry I was at you for being critical over what I could only describe as perfection.”

“You saw me? All of me that first night?” I asked.

He nodded.

I looked off to the side, feeling violated. How could he just… watch me like that?

“I knew then that I wanted you. I wanted you with a force I had never felt with anyone else. I wanted to possess you, to protect you from everything. I wanted to learn as much as I could about you. I did learn all about you without talking to you. I know your favorite color is pink, even though you told me it was blue, and I know how you like to take your coffee. I know your favorite pair of jeans. You think they makes your ass look good, and baby, I absolutely agree. I know you prefer to keep your hair down than to tie it up. I also know your favorite flower is a white rose.”

My eyes moved down to his side, right where I knew the row of white roses was tattooed.

I always thought they looked new. Newer than his other tattoos.

He smiled and nodded as if reading my thoughts. “Yes, I got this for you. I know more about you than any other person on this planet, and it wasn’t fucking enough. So I started to go out and see you more often, and when I realized that still wasn’t enough, I decided to introduce myself. Who fucking knew you would be everything I thought you would be and so much more than that?”

Had he said it to me in a different context, it might have sounded romantic. There was nothing romantic about his words now.

“What were you doing at my father’s house in the first place?”

He didn’t answer me right away. I knew from the look in his eyes I wasn’t going to like it. “I was there to gather intel on your father,” he said finally.

“Intel for what?”

“To kill him.”

I tensed, trying to make sense of his words. I understood each and every one of them individually, but together? Mael was trying to… I shook my head as the words bounced around in my head, feeling as if I was drifting up toward the ceiling. That wasn’t right. He was saying… Nope, it still didn’t make sense. He couldn’t have possibly said what I thought he just said, right?

“What?”

“To kill him,” he repeated as if that made it better. “I was hired by Leo Briggs to kill your father.”

I inhaled, then slowly let it out.

“I think—” I shook my head. “I can’t breathe.”

Distantly, I heard Mael let out a small curse before I felt his arms around me, and he helped me sit up on the bed. I leaned back against his chest, trying to seek out his strength, and focused on getting enough air into my lungs. It helped that I could feel his arms banding around me tightly, keeping me grounded.

“Focus on me, kitten. Just breathe.”

It was a little easier for me to get air inside. I turned my head to the side and looked at him. His blue eyes were clear, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

There was just so much to unpack from the statement alone. “Leo hired you to kill my dad?”

He nodded.

“Why would he do that? He and my dad are friends. Best friends.”

He gave me a look. I glanced down. I heard my own naivety in that statement—I did—but Mael didn’t grow up and witness the way Leo and my dad interacted with each other. They were close. But of course, that probably meant nothing, considering I had grown up trusting Leo completely. And my dad. And I wasn’t sure if Dad knew what Leo was doing to me, sending me to this cabin without cell service.

“I don’t know the reason. I usually don’t ask for it.”

“What do you mean you don’t usually ask?” I said, my voice reaching a high pitch. “How often do you do this?”

“Do you want to know the answer?” he asked.

“Tell me,” I whispered.

“Often enough that I’ve made this into my profession.”

“You told me you were a freelancer.”

I closed my eyes, trying to keep the nausea at bay.

“Close enough.”

I opened my eyes and looked at him, shaking my head. “A freelancer is completely different from… from…”

“Hitman. You can say it.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Lots of things,” he answered. “You know I would never hurt you, right?”

I looked down at my still-tied hands and then back at him. He picked them up, and before I knew what was happening or could even stop him, he pressed a kiss on the back of one. I yanked my hands away.

“This is different from hurting you. I would never physically hurt you.”

My lips trembled, and I pulled the sheet further up my body. I didn’t know what to say to that, mostly because I could hear the truth in his words. He would never physically hurt me, but what about the other kind of hurt?

“My heart hurts,” I whispered.

“I know, kitten. And I’ll make it better.” Even I heard the tinge of desperation in his voice.

“I don’t think you can.” I looked back up at him, hating the emotions I could see in his eyes. “Are you going to kill my dad?” I asked before he could say anything else about it.

“Do you want me to?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I don’t want you to kill anyone at all.”

Especially not my dad. It would probably be the one thing I wouldn’t be able to forgive him for. But did that mean I could forgive him for everything else?

I didn’t fucking know anymore.

I looked down at his chest. I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. I wanted to talk about something else, so I changed the topic by asking him, “How did you watch me? How did you even manage to learn so much about me without me ever seeing you or knowing I was being followed?”

“I have cameras installed in your place.”

I blinked. That was not what I was expecting him to say.

“You’ve been watching me?”

He watched me in my apartment, at the time I was most vulnerable.

He grinned as if he didn’t see anything wrong with this. “Yes, I especially loved watching you touch yourself in the morning. It has become my favorite part of the day.”

My hand twitched with the urge to slap him. He could probably sense the anger in my eyes because he pulled back a little. Not far away from me—his arms were still wrapped around me—but enough that I had a feeling he might be able to stop me if I tried to slap him. My fists clenched around the sheet.

“You just don’t understand boundaries or something?” I asked, trying to make sense of this.

“Between you and me, there are no boundaries.”

“So you would just be okay with me watching you masturbate?”

He grinned wickedly at me, and I wanted to take the words back. How had the conversation just veered off in this direction? He was a hitman. He killed people for a living. I should be focused on that.

Instead, I was talking about him masturbating?

“Don’t answer that,” I said when he opened his mouth to respond.

“What else don’t I know about you?” I asked.

He seemed to think about it for a moment. Then, “I own the coffee shop you work at.”

“Of course you do.”

He had entrenched himself so deeply into every aspect of my life, and I didn’t even notice it until it was far too late.

There was no escaping him.

I knew this now.

I swallowed as another thought occurred to me. “The police officers I called about my stalker—about you ?—”

“Were on my payroll. They never put in the official report.”

I looked away from him briefly. That would explain why the number the officer gave me didn’t work. That would explain their strange behaviors. But for a moment, I thought there was no one I could turn to. Did he not see how fucked up this was?

I shook my head. I didn’t think he did.

“Anything else, kitten?”

“Just one,” I said, opening my eyes and looking straight at him. Even with all these fucked-up things between us, the one thing that topped them all was the fact that he still just looked like my Mael.

“Yeah?”

“How did you find me here?”

His eyes took in my face as if he was gauging to see if I could handle the answer. I probably couldn’t, but the not knowing somehow felt just as bad.

“Leo texted it to me.”

“What? Why?”

“Technically, he didn’t text it to me, but to the men he had put on you to keep an eye on you.”

“Leo has men stalking me?”

“He did. I took care of them, not that Leo knows. I obtained their cell phone, giving him little updates on you to keep up the pretense that they were still alive and still doing their job. I needed to know why he had men on you. He texted one of them about your location and told them to keep an eye on you here.”

I shook my head. “You’re lying.”

It was the only thing I could say, even if a part of me knew he wasn’t. I had already suspected Leo had put me here for those men to come by, but?—

He had men stalking me?

“Baby, I’m not.”

He stood up and walked out of the room for a bit. He was only gone for a short while, but there was still a part of me that feared he wasn’t coming back.

What was wrong with me?

I tried not to show the relief on my face when I saw him. He was holding a phone I didn’t recognize.

He untied my bound hands and feet, then he unlocked the phone and handed it over to me with the text message on display.

The one above the newest text was the location of the cabin, the message saying this was where I was, but it was the newest one that caught my attention.

And don’t interfere with me teaching my little Lia a lesson about not lying to me.

Leo sent those men to teach me a lesson because I lied to him about not knowing who my stalker was.

My lips trembled.

Mael was watching me carefully. I could accuse him of lying again, but I knew he wasn’t. With everything out in the open, he wasn’t lying.

I didn’t know what to think or feel anymore, and I just hated, hated the way he was looking at me now, as if he thought I was on the verge of breaking and he didn’t know how to help me.

The phone in my hand shook. It took me a moment to realize it was me. I was shaking.

I could feel everything boiling to the surface, and I just wanted to make it stop.

Please make it stop.

With a scream, I threw the phone across the room. I got no satisfaction from the loud clang it made when it hit the wall.

It wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough.

I lashed out. I hit him on his chest, his face, his arms, anywhere I could get my hands on. I didn’t think about holding back. I didn’t care. I wanted to hurt him as much as I was hurting, but it didn’t seem to matter. It didn’t seem to be doing anything to him.

He sat there and took it, not reacting to anything I did, which only made me even more angry.

This wasn’t like me. I didn’t lash out at people, wanting to hurt them, but Mael just had that way of bringing it out of me.

My mind moved back to the text.

It wasn’t true.

I grew up with Leo and my father, and nothing had ever indicated they were shitty human beings. Were they just that good at hiding it, or was this new?

I…

I shook my head.

I didn’t want to think about it anymore.

I let out a small cry. “Why?” I asked.

Mael shook his head. “I don’t have an answer for you.”

That wasn’t good enough. And suddenly, I was just too angry to think rationally. “This is your fault!” I screamed. “My life was going well without you in it!”

He laughed, the sound hollow. “Hate to break it to you, but Leo and Luckas were already pieces of shit before I ever made an appearance in your life.”

I shook my head, even though I knew it was the truth. It just wasn’t the kind of truth I wanted to accept.

“No,” I said.

Something like anger flashed through his eyes, but I wasn’t scared of him. I was past holding onto anything like self-preservation.

Mael grabbed my shoulders and pulled me in closer to him. It didn’t help that I was naked, and he wasn’t, leaving me already feeling at a disadvantage. The way he grabbed me like this made it worse.

“I’m not lying to you. I will never lie to you,” he said.

I tried to push him off. “Hate to break it to you, but a lie by omission is a lie. You didn’t think to tell me you were stalking me?”

“I would have told you if you had asked. You didn’t want to ask. You didn’t want to know the answer.”

“Bullshit.”

He didn’t retort to that. Instead, he slammed his lips against mine, and he kissed me. I tensed in his arms for a quick second before I struggled against him, trying to push him away. He didn’t relent. He kept kissing me, his lips harsh and demanding against mine. There was no yielding in this kiss. No gentleness I had experienced with him before. This was a punishment, a claiming. He tasted like fury and desperation and everything ugly and something else I couldn’t quite name. Something else I didn’t want to put a name to.

My body reacted before my mind could. I kissed him back. I didn’t know when the resistance left me, and all that was left was this energy I felt inside.

I kissed him just as desperately as he kissed me.

His hands left my shoulders, one hand reaching up and curving around my neck, squeezing gently at first, before he tightened his grip marginally, cutting off the air. Panic set in a little, and I pulled back to look at him.

There was a frenzied look in his eyes that sent shivers up and down my spine.

He didn’t say anything as he pulled me back and kissed me once more, his hand squeezing my neck again.

I rubbed my legs together; the thrill of knowing he could cut off my air supply at any moment did something to me. There was something seriously wrong with me if I was turned on by him choking me.

His chest rumbled against mine as he let out a low growl.

He eased the pressure on my neck, and I gasped for air, the sudden rush of oxygen making me lightheaded. His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide, watching me like I was the prey he’d cornered. He liked seeing me like this.

I didn’t want to think about how that thought made me feel, mostly because there were still things I didn’t want to admit to myself just yet.

“Do you like this, my sweet girl?” he asked, somehow making the question sound rhetorical.

I turned my face away, my breath coming in short gasps as his grip tightened slightly. “No.”

“What a cute little liar you are.” His thumb traced my jawline, surprisingly gentle compared to the harshness of his other touches. “Your pulse is racing. I can feel it under my fingers. And if I touch your cunt, tell me, will it be wet?”

I made a choked sound from the back of my throat. Mael smiled at me, the kind of smile I imagined a crossroad demon would give the victim he had just made a deal with.

He turned me around until I was lying on my stomach on the bed. I let out a small squeal. Mael palmed my ass. I looked back and glared at him, and his smile widened. He pulled his hand back and spanked me.

I wiggled, trying to get away. He held me down with one arm wrapped around my waist, and he continued to spank me.

“What are you doing?” I asked in a gasp as the stinging pain spread.

He laughed. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m spanking you.” He moved to my other ass cheek. “Fuck, but look how pretty your skin looks, turning red from my handprint like this.”

“Mael… this is…”

“Yes, kitten?”

I shook my head. He reached under my stomach, then moved up and took hold of my breast, his grip painfully tight.

I suppressed a cry by biting my lip. Each sensation was a brutal paradox—the pain of his grasp, the pleasure radiating from his touch. My body betrayed my mind’s confusion, arching into his touch even as I tried to convince myself this wasn’t what I wanted.

Mael was right. I was a liar.

He gave me several taps on my ass cheeks, from one to the next, and I closed my eyes when I felt my arousal drip down the inside of my leg. Something Mael didn’t miss.

“Fucking hell,” he said, his fingers tracing along the wetness. I looked back in time to see him suck on his finger, his blue eyes dancing when he noticed me watching him.

He let go of the finger with a pop of his mouth.

“Delicious,” he said, and though I didn’t think it was possible anymore, considering all that we’d done, he still managed to make me blush.

He grabbed my hips and pulled me in closer to him. “I’m not fucking done.”

I wasn’t prepared when he leaned down and swiped his tongue up and down my center from behind. My arms gave out, and I could no longer hold my weight up. I pressed my face against the side of the mattress and closed my eyes, letting him take control, letting him play with my body in a way no one else had done before.

My fists tightened around the sheets when I felt his tongue push inside me.

“Fuck, Mael!”

“That’s right, baby,” he said, his voice vibrating against my skin. I trembled from the sensation. “Say my name. You know it’s me eating out this sweet little cunt, don’t you? God, you taste so fucking good.”

My thigh muscles clenched at his words just as he smacked his hand down on my ass cheek once more. I jolted from the sensation as the pain spread through my skin.

I let out a small groan, and he chuckled wickedly, giving my other cheek the same treatment.

“Do you know how pretty you look wearing my handprint on you?”

I was not going to answer that question. It didn’t seem like he was looking for one, anyway, because he went back to eating me out, driving me crazy.

His hand moved around me until he found my clit, rubbing around it over and over again; all the while, his lips became relentless, never stopping, building me up and up and up…

I exploded with a boom.

I cried out his name. I cried out for a God I wasn’t sure existed, and I begged mercilessly when the sensation became too much, and I was suddenly afraid of what might happen after.

I didn’t know.

I felt Mael turn me around, and I wrapped my arms around him without a thought, clinging to him.

I didn’t even know when it happened.

One moment, I was trying to get back down from my peak without it breaking me, and the next, I was falling apart.

I cried in his arms. I couldn’t help it. The tears just kept coming, and I had never felt more out of control than I did then.

Mael tightened his arms around me when I shuddered, letting me cry for all that I lost, for the truth I didn’t want to know, and for the hopeless feeling, the lost feeling I felt pressing down and crushing me.

“I d-don’t know what to d-do,” I said, my voice shaking. I was shaking. “My dad?—”

There was just no way, but he was. And Leo…

Was my childhood nothing more than a lie? Were they just raising me up to get me ready for slaughter?

I didn’t know. I didn’t know anymore.

“You don’t have to know,” Mael said, his voice strong and sure. “I’m right here. You don’t have to decide anything.”

Didn’t that sound nice? But reality didn’t work that way. It was messy and chaotic, and I couldn’t just wholly depend on another person. I was an adult. I was supposed to be stronger than that.

I buried my face in his chest, letting the chaos swallow me whole.