Page 64 of Heartless Heathens

“Did you come looking for me, Pet?” He smirked and I stepped back.

“N-no.” I shook my head, and he tilted his chin at me like he wasn’t sure if he believed me.

Part of me wasn’t so sure either.

I felt like I was somehow always looking for Sonny if he wasn’t in the room.

He closed in, his palm reaching over and shutting the door behind me so that when I stepped back again I hit a solid wall. I slid my hand over the holster Corvin gave me and felt the smooth surface of the black opal handle. I held it up in a threat, but it didn’t seem to faze him. His eyebrows creased in the middle, but his mouth seemed to be finding amusement.

“If you’re trying to seem unappealing to me, Pet, you’re doing a shit job at it.”

“S-stay back Sonny. I’m not in the mood for your crazy tonight.”

He took another step, and I swung my hand out at his chest, slicing deep into his flesh before he caught my wrist and pulled it away. He tightened his hold until the knife fell loosely from my hand, and I cried out in pain from him squeezing.

“You’re just making me want you more, Romina.” He brought my fingers to the fresh wound, pushing them in and opening the cut wider to force the blood out faster.

“You’re messed up Sonny,” I whispered, almost hoping he couldn’t hear me.

“Am I?” he asked me.

“That’s why you like to hurt me,” I said with a nod.

“Do I hurt you?” I wasn’t prepared for the question. I wasn’t sure that I had the right answer.

“Uh- it’s, it’s, it’s uh- it’s complicated,” I stammered out, unsure of myself.

“And what does that say about you? Do you enjoy pain?” He smirked something sinister like he could see through me in a way I refused to see myself.

He pulled my bloodied fingers back and wiped them over my lips, spreading the taste of liquid metal over my tongue. He took his thumb and brushed it over my lip, pulling it down roughly before manipulating my chin and lifting it up to the angle I’d grown accustomed to by his height.

He bent his neck down, pressing his forehead to mine before pulling my chin up higher with an aggressive tug. His lips were on mine before I could exhale out the breath I’d been holding in my lungs. My tongue brushed along the inside of my lips tasting his blood again just before his tongue invaded my mouth.

That same hostile manner he took with everything else he did, followed him here, even in what seemed to be an almost tender moment. Aside from the blood. I’d read plenty of books where princesses were gifted with a kiss once they’d been rescued by their princes. But these men weren’t heroes, and they hadn’t saved me. He pushed his way into my mouth with no abandon, raking his tongue over mine and letting the pressure of his fingers soften around my jaw.

My hands reached for him, needing to touch, to feel something real before I lost my head in the void of darkness inside of him that kept calling to me. I should have been afraid, but every time I got close to Sonny, every fear, every uncertainty stayed frozen deep inside of me.

He pulled back, breaking our connection with a knowing look in his eyes.

“Come find me when youarein the mood for my crazy.” He reached back, finally grabbing the towel off the hook before wrapping it around his waist.

He stepped to my side and opened the door once more before walking through it, leaving me stunned and breathless. A state all three of these men were somehow easily capable of leaving me in with very little effort on their part. I touched my fingers to my lips again, still feeling the pressure of Sonny’s mouth against mine.

The snake coiled up my arm in my dream just moments before I woke up in the dead of the night, feeling a tugging on my chest like my soul was being beckoned from somewhere else. Felix’s arm was still draped over me heavily and I looked over to find him fast asleep, not a care written into the expression on his face. I lifted his arm off of me and stood from the bed, the magnetic sensation growing stronger the more I decided to follow it.

I stepped forward, feeling the cold bite of the floor against the bottom of my feet while I urged myself closer to whatever called to the throbbing ache inside of me.

It was almost painful to try to ignore it.

My fingers found the handle of the door and with a loud creak I pulled it open.

“Careful what you seek, pretty girl,” Felix mumbled sleepily.

A part of me begged to heed his warning while the other didn’t care to listen.

Had I always been this self-destructive? Was it something they unlocked in some part of me? Or had it always been there, suppressed, like everything else Frollo tried to hide away inside of me? My feet tapped against the wooden floorboards slowly, and the calling inside of me grew to a force that felt like it could burst from my chest. My limbs trembled while I stood in front of his door.

I had found myself at the lion's den.