Page 60 of Crescendo (Beautiful Monsters #1)

I’m half mindless when he finally slows, his body heavy against my back.

I don’t react when he pulls out and comes against me.

I just lie here, relishing the heat he gives off in the otherwise cold room.

He doesn’t shift his weight from me when I slump facedown against the mattress.

He braces a hand against my spine instead, once again rubbing his release into my skin, using his thumb to meticulously paint me with every single drop.

Once finished, he hits the mattress beside me, his breathing harsh and unsteady.

“Lynn,” he grits out. “Is that your name?”

I flinch and shake my head, though I’m not brave enough to lift my face from the pillow.

I inhale the dust that’s embedded in the cotton along with the sweat from my own skin and his particular brand of musk.

Seconds pass before I realize I never gave him the correct answer.

All this time and he hasn’t cared to ask my name.

Maybe he still doesn’t; the devil is as curious as he is volatile.

In the end, I lift my head just enough to free my mouth and whisper, “Danny. My name is Danny.”

He grunts in acknowledgment, but I can’t tell what he thinks of it. Did he expect something different? Something prettier? I nearly laugh out loud at the fact that his approval actually seems to matter to me .

“Only Vinny calls me Lynn,” I add, though I’m not sure why. “My real name is Daniela. He thought it wasn’t good enough for me.”

It’s strange how detached I sound, as if the silly matter of a name didn’t bother me in the slightest when, for fifteen years, it’s been one of the shackles Vinny has used to keep me under his control.

He’s turned me into three different women.

Only now can I start to somewhat reconcile those broken parts into one cohesive person again—though I don’t seem to be the only one with a nickname hovering above my head.

I wait for nearly a minute before I gather up the nerve to ask him. “Why do they call you Kitty?” By “they,” I mean Mack, who wielded the moniker like a weapon.

He’s inches away, but I still feel him stiffen.

Lucifer can make a natural silence seem eternal.

Even the steady huff of his breathing quiets.

It’s not fair. Music has always been my refuge, and he takes every sound from me until the frantic beat of my pulse is all I have to count the rhythm of my sanity to.

Finally, he shifts, the mattress creaking under his weight.

“My first time in the cage, I tried to climb out,” he admits.

“I was sixteen, and I was the bait before the real fight. A warm-up,” he explains.

“The man was nearly twice my size, but all I had to do was last ten minutes and I’d earn three percent of the cut—but I didn’t last five before I chickened out and tried to scale the fence.

One of the men running the cage waited until I nearly cleared the top before he stuck a knife through one of the gaps and stabbed me in my side—” His hand moves to his thigh, hovering over a particularly nasty scar.

“When I fell back in, he shouted that ‘scared little kittens’ didn’t belong in the cage.

Only mad dogs could survive in this world.

” He inhales and then exhales on a sigh.

“I broke three ribs and didn’t earn a fucking dime.

But I came back, and they never forgot the scared little Kitty who couldn’t run with the pack. Until I started to win, that is... ”

I picture him down in the arena, cold and calculating. Then I imagine the way he went after Mack. Those two creatures don’t even seem to be one and the same. A calculating devil and an out-of-control monster.

“Whatever they call me, it doesn’t fucking matter,” Lucifer adds. “It still wouldn’t change a damn thing.”

Part of his words resonate deep down inside me and linger long after the high from the sex has worn off. I didn’t even orgasm this time, and I don’t know why it doesn’t seem to matter. He used me the same way Vinny’s men did their “prize” whores, sating himself and leaving nothing behind.

But his breathing sounds easier. The mattress dips deeply beneath him as he spreads out on his back, and for one brief, dangerous second, Lucifer is completely relaxed—as much as a devil ever could be.

How easy would it be to fish my knife from my pocket and jab it into his throat?

Maybe it’s the fact that he tore my pants off in the other room that makes it easier to lie there and accept this. Accept him.

The thought alone is a sadistic game to play.

He is Russian roulette, only the gun is fully loaded with bullets.

His eyes are a barrel to the chest. The rasp of his voice against my aching skin is like being pistol-whipped with the body of the gun itself.

But, when his fingers come to trail the length of my shoulder blades, he’s mercilessly putting the gun to my head and pulling the trigger. Bang.

There’s no real warmth in the scarred, callused hands, but my flesh is so sensitive that I can feel every wet, open inch of his.

His blood paints me too, mingling with his sweat and his seed.

I should feel disgusted, I suppose, but my corrupted pores open wider, eager to absorb every last, twisted drop.

Suddenly, it isn’t just enough to lie here. I have to draw my legs together and arch my back to find enough leverage to relieve the pressure building there. His hands are still on me, and Lucifer doesn’t miss the movement .

“Does it hurt?” He doesn’t sound concerned. Just curious. He really is like a cat, always prodding a new mystery with his claws.

I wince and draw myself upright farther, propping my knees against the mattress and my hands against the pillow.

“ Yesss ,” I admit, my voice tight. It hurts.

The pain of the first time was easier to ignore in the tense moments that came after.

I’d turn the water in the shower to scalding and worked until my shoulders throbbed, scrubbing away at every trace of himself Lucifer had stained me with.

This time, I’m left gaping open. Misused muscles scream out in torment, having been ripped apart during his invasion.

I try my damn hardest to sink into that pain.

I gnash my teeth and clench my thighs until tears spill from my eyes and sink into the cotton sheets.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, I chant to myself.

But even the agony he delivers is a bitter poison.

My body prefers to focus on the heat he gives off instead and the pulsing ache between my legs that I won’t be able to ease with the pathetic friction caused by rubbing my thighs together.

I know pain, fluent in every nuance of it both mental and physical.

But whatever he gives me is foreign, and I want more .

Admitting that stings worse than any blow Vinny’s ever inflicted.

I need him to leave. I need him to take what he wants and ignore the mess he leaves behind.

When the mattress shifts, betraying the moment he stands, I assume he’s of the same mindset. Let’s make this clean.

I hear him pad into the hallway, and it’s only when I’m sure he’s gone that I lean against one elbow and slide the opposite hand down along my belly.

Carefully...slowly... When my fingers finally make contact with sore, vandalized flesh, I can almost pretend that they aren’t my own.

The lie feeds the flames, and they rise up into an inferno.

At first, I only move my fingers in rapid circles where my body craves friction the most. I don’t think.

But the needle’s in the other room, and like the world’s most pathetic addict, I can’t stop myself from prodding the tip of it.

Drip by precious drip, my mind floods with lethal doses of him.

I picture him down in the cage. The way he looked at me.

.. I see him in the bar, fighting Mack . Him. Him. Him.

I gasp when my body finally begins to ride the high, but it’s just an echo of the pleasure only he can bring.

This is that tasteless nicotine gum Vinny used to quit smoking; there’s no real satisfaction, and deep down, some part of me registers a terror I refuse to let myself dwell on now.

Whatever happens within the next few days.

..gum is all I’ll ever have—my own fingers struggle to imitate the fire only he can set.

He was so worried about the heroin, I think, choking out a bitter laugh while my fingers swirl and twist.

Lucifer was worried about me. He used his own pain as a bitter antidote to counteract the drug—only I was the fool who got addicted to that new sting. Vincent Stacatto couldn’t have devised a crueler form of torture.

My eyelids drift shut. My head thrashes, tethered to my body when all it really wants to do is break off and float away.

I’m panting with the effort it takes to drive myself toward the edge of sanity, but right when I’m just about to tip over it, I’m back inside my skin.

My fingers stiffen and pull away before I realize why.

Then I hear him, his footsteps heavy as he crosses over the threshold of the room and finds me there, hunched over and red with shame.

“Turn over.”

I flinch at the command. No , my body tells me. No. Hide. Ignore. Hide . I should curl in on myself the way I used to when Vinny would come into my room at night to “show” me how just he loved and needed me, stroking his cock while I was forced to watch.

Only God knows Lucifer’s intentions—an ironic twist.