Page 8

I suck in a sharp breath as he takes a step back and my hand flies up to my neck, trying to rub away his heated touch still lingering there.

Rage coils fast, wrapping around my body like barbed wire and before I even think, I snatch the paintbrush off the vanity.

I spin, arm raised, and without hesitation I drive the pointed edge toward his eye. But he catches my wrist inches from his red contact and in one brutal motion, he twists my arm behind my back, lifts me, slams my ass onto the vanity and drags my body against his.

No space. No air. Just fervour, sexual tension and a fucking burn of fury barely held back.

As I glare up at him, chest heaving, something hot pools at the pit of my stomach from the close proximity and his dominance, but I push it away with everything I’ve got.

God, this isn’t the time to be getting turned on by this psycho. My head tilts back further as he lowers his face to mine, a growl tearing through his teeth, low and full of warning.

“Fuck you and your threats,” I snap, my mouth brushing his as I scowl at him.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, he just holds me there like he’s trying to read every wicked intention behind my eyes., but two can play this game.

“They told me you fuck dead girls.” I say, my face falling expressionless.

I shift, slow and calculated, my hips tilting just enough for my pussy to meet his crotch, dragging myself over the length of him.

His eyes drop instantly, zeroed in on the contact between us, and I see the muscle in his jaw twitch.

“You know what? You want me?” I breathe with venom-laced sugar. “Then take me. Right here, right now.”

His eyes dart back up to mine, wild and dangerous but I continue to grind against him.

“Bend me over, Wrath. Fuck me raw and hard but very much still alive. I’ll be a good girl and play dead for you if you want.” I add with a flutter of my lashes, leaning in until my breath grazes his lips again. “Or fuck off and stop wasting my damn time.”

His reaction is so quick and sudden, I barely have time to react.

One second, I’m sitting there, the next I’m yanked off the vanity with his hand tangled in the back of my hair, dragging me off it with a brutal grip.

Before I know it, I’m bent over and slammed frontally against the cold surface, the strength of him stealing my breath. A harsh gasp escapes my lips, heart pounding in my chest, my body already bracing for his next move.

Fuck. That escalated quickly.

I lay there, almost waiting for it with the threat hanging between us. He breathes heavily above me, a pulse of darkness rolling off him, and I hope, desperately, that he doesn’t actually do it.

His trembling hand leaves my hair, the touch lingering for just a second more before it gradually moves down my back. I side-eye him, catching the hunger in his wide eyes as they rake over every curve of me, taking it all in.

I’ve seen men crave what they can’t have before. They don’t try to hide it; some wear it proudly. The bold and entitled ones get nasty with it, like refusal is a personal offense. It’s familiar and disgustingly predictable.

But Wrath… he’s something else entirely.

He doesn’t smirk. Doesn’t speak. Doesn’t even move like the others. He just watches with eyes too steady, and far too intense.

In this split second, I realize it’s not just desire. It’s not even a twisted form of lust.

He admires me.

Not like just any man admiring a woman. More like a collector laying eyes on a delicate thing he thought he’d never see again. Or like I’m sacred and the last beautiful thing in a ruined world—too rare to touch, too dangerous to lose.And he’s already decided I belong to him.

It should feel flattering, but it doesn’t.

There’s something disturbed and unsettling in the way he stares at me. It’s as if his mind is someplace else entirely, playing out fantasies of me in positions I haven’t agreed to be in. And maybe it’s the trauma in me, but I can sense it even now.

He doesn’t just want to ruin me. He wants to fucking keep me, and he’ll break himself trying.

After a moment of silence, I feel he’s holding back, I’m not sure why, but that doesn’t stop his big hands from finding the small of my waist.

He grips me tightly with a growl and sharply yanks me downward, my ass slamming against his hips, offering us both a taste of what could be.

As soon as I feel his hard cock press against me, a throb of heat develops in my pussy, a feeling I haven’t experienced in years.

Shit, this is backfiring on me.

“Wrath…” I start, but his eyes flashing upward to my side profile, stops me.

His hand finds my hair again, but this time, he lifts my head, and I hiss as it pulls at my scalp. My eyes meet his in the mirror as he leans over my body, pressing his dick further against me.

Suddenly, a pen appears between his teeth and while our eyes stay locked, he bites the lid off, spitting it away. With his face beside mine, he brings the tip of the pen to the mirror and starts writing over my reflection in erratic script I can barely understand.

I’ll fuck you so cruelly, even your screams will lose their hope for mercy, he scrawls in rough strokes, his control slipping and the words, the tension, they send a tremble down my spine.

I can feel it radiating off him and the edge he’s standing on with each second that passes.

He’s losing it.

But that doesn’t stop my attitude.

“Oh yeah? Then why haven’t you done it already, necro? Why haven’t you killed me?” I breathe out, barely able to get enough air into my lungs with his big frame pressing down on me. “You could have when you watched me sleep, and you know it. I could have been your perfect little victim.”

He wipes his words away, his head turning slightly to catch my side profile as he answers me.

Because death would be mercy. And I’d rather have you live—tethered to me until you forget you ever wanted to be anything but mine.

My jaw tightens with distain as I read the words. Then there’s another swipe followed by more writing, but his red eyes never leave my face, he tracks every flicker of expression I give him.

Why kill you, when I can watch you die a thousand times by my hands—each time resurrecting your cold, lifeless body, just so I can do it all over again?

I don’t answer. I can tell he’s messing with me. He has to be because everything he’s saying is completely and utterly insane.

Swipe.

But if I ever did get that urge and stupidly take your precious little life. I wouldn't just screw your dead, useless cunt; I’d keep digging you back up until all I could feel is my hard cock fucking your decaying, rotting bones. Only then will I truly let you go.

“You’re sick,” I snap out, my voice sharp and cutting as I send spit hurtling toward his reflection, watching it splatter against the mirror.

For a second, there’s hush, just my heavy breathing as he turns his dark gaze toward it, eyeing my saliva like a man staring down a challenge.

Then he decides to do something that shows me just how depraved he really is. He leans forward, and my stomach turns at the sheer audacity of what he’s about to do.

His pierced tongue flicks out and gradually, he slides it up and over my spit, collecting and tasting it.

“Jesus Christ,” I shudder out, the bizarre action doing something wrong to me.

When he finally pulls back, the air between us is heavy with disgust and undeniable desire. Without breaking eye contact, he lifts the pen again, his hand trembling slightly with the kind of unhingeness only a man with no limits could feel.

Next time, aim for my fucking mouth.

I feel speechless for once, and I realize, in this moment, that this game we’re playing has no rules and I am completely lost of a voice for once. He could seriously be the death of me.

Swipe.

I get off over the fact you think you have control, but you have none here. Not with me. I'm the one who pulls your strings, and you’ll dance for me like my very own little fucking puppet. However the fuck I want you to, whenever the fuck I want you. Understand you’re mine now.

I just stare at his reflection, a scowl forming on my face and he picks up on my silence right away, causing him to swipe and write on the glass again.

I prefer it when you're quiet, little corpse. Because pretty little dead things don't talk back.

With that, he brings the pen to my throat, pulling my head back further, and drags a thick, black, single line straight across it.

I can’t help the whimper that escapes me as he starts adding little stitches along the line, one by one, as if he’s sealing my throat shut after he’s just sliced it open with his cruel, soundless words.

When he’s finished, he moves the pen to the mirror, and drags the tip over each of my eyes, carving little black crosses like he’s X-ing out my soul.

And just above it, in that erratic, obsessive scrawl of his, he writes:

See, so damn pretty and mine 4 ever.

Like a promise.

Like a warning.

Like a curse dressed as a fucking love note.

“I’ll never be yours,” I finally state in frustration. “I’ll kill you before you ever kill me.”

He inhales deeply as he turns his head, pressing his forehead against the side of mine with his eyes closed as if he’s trying to hold onto every shred of restraint he has left.

Swipe.

Fuck. Don’t threaten me with a good time, little corpse. I might take it as consent to break your cunt wide open.

I roll my eyes with a sigh, ready for more of the same, until his hand moves again, swiping and then suddenly, he switches tactics, drastically.

You were mine second I saw you at Oddity.

I didn’t fall for you—Ifucking collapsed.

Swipe.

Everything I am curled toward you like a dying thing desperate for warmth.

My breath hitches at his unexpected beautiful, dark poetry, my eyes wide as they trace each letter, each word more unhinged than the last.

“I… I can’t…” I manage, my voice barely a whisper, a desperate attempt to gather what little defiance I have left, to stop him, to do something.

Swipe.

You’re an obsession that has me rotting from the inside out, Allure. It’s a fucking hunger—And I’ve never felt so empty and starved. Feed. Me.

His eyes stay closed, like he doesn’t need to see the words to believe in them. He’sconfidentin their truth.

They set something on fire inside me, and I become fully entranced. Somewhere deep and buried beneath everything broken, those words settle, heavy and final.

I should be afraid and move. Try and break this thing forming between us before it starts to breathe on its own.

Before I let myself slip any further into the quiet comfort of his madness—It clicks and my usual stubborn, sceptical demeanor slips into place. The part of me that screams to be cautious and don’t believe any of it.

“Is this your plan?” I breathe, my voice quiet and shaky.

His eyes open slowly, locking onto mine in the mirror—calm but distant.

“Maybe if you tell me enough of these beautiful, fucked-up words, I’ll start to believe them, huh?” I continue, voice hardening.

“Maybe I’ll let my guard down just enough for you to kill me when I least expect it. Is that how it works, Wrath?”

I stare at him squarely in the mirror, my reflection trembling.

“Is that what you did to the others? Am I just another body you can fuck and bury? Am I just one of them to you?”

His doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move, doesn’t write, doesn’t even blink. He just watches me with that same dangerous gaze—like he’s somewhere far away.

My brows draw tight with fury before I wriggle in his grip, frantic now, every inch of my body screaming for space.

“Get the fuck off me!” I bark.

And then, he finally lets go and takes steps back. I bolt upright, spinning to face him, my finger jabbing hard into his solid chest, my neck craning back to meet his eyes head-on.

“Let me make something very, very clear,” I hiss through tight teeth. “I don’t plan on dying anytime soon. You can’t kill me. I'm already fucking dead inside. You can’t take what’s already gone. Congratulations—you’ve found that one bitch too broken to break.”

For a second, I think I see something glint in his red eyes, but then he steps forward, his body pressing flush against mine. And just like that, I forget how to fucking breathe again.

“I’m not… I’m not…” I start to say, but it withers in my throat as he lifts a hand, slowly sliding it around the side of my neck. Gentle, almost too gentle.

The heat of it sinks into my skin like it shouldn’t belong to someone like him, someone this cold and terrifying, but it’s there, and my eyes flutter shut as my chest heaves, my body becoming traitorous and exposed. His hand keeps moving until his fingers thread into my hair, taking a handful and he pulls, tilting my head back.

When I open my eyes, his marker is already poised in the other hand, then he brings the tip to my chest and begins to pen one last thing.

I can’t see what he’s writing, but I let him, because stupidly, I want his response. I want his crazed reasoning.

My gaze sweeps over his face and god, I wish it didn’t. I soak in the black paint, those glowing red eyes, wondering what he looks like beneath it all. How soft his dark hair is. Hair I strangely want to run my fingers through and pull.

While riding that pierced tongue.

Jesus. Get your mind out of the gutter.

I let out a low growl, turning my eyes away, forcing myself to look anywhere else until he’s finished.

When it happens, he straightens, releasing my hair and I glance down to my chest, but the sound of him walking backward pulls my gaze up.

We hold eye contact as he backs away, until finally, he turns and walks out of the dressing room. Leaving me confused, shaken, panting and maybe, shamefully, a little bit aroused.

Looking down at myself, I realize he’s written backward again, so I turn to face the mirror, leaning in to read it.

You’re the first I’ve spoken to without my voice,

The first I’ve touched and left alive by choice.

The first to feel my mind unravel and unfold,

The first to live but still bound by my hold.

You’re the first to witness what’s buried deep—

And you’ll be the little corpse I’ll forever keep.

My breath gets caught in my throat, his poem seeping into me like a pretty poison.He’s telling me I’m the only one he’s ever let himself be like this with and it curls through me, both intoxicating and suffocating.

Something sick settles inside me, almost like I want to unravel and taunt that fucking monster in a way no one has ever dared. I want to continue getting too close and see what happens when I poke at the thing everyone else seems to run from.

And I know I shouldn’t. I should know better and keep my head down, avoiding him at all costs. But a part of me doesn’t want to. It’s clear he wants me for something and that in itself is a power I already have over him.

My hands shake violently as I quickly reach for a make-up wipe and after pulling one free, I hover it over the writing for a beat too long, the temptation to keep it gnawing at me.

But I can't. Ican’tlet it stay. I can’t let him in.

I lift my eyes to the mirror, lingering on the words one last time, before I force myself to scrub it away and erase the last trace of him from my skin.

Once I’m clean and finally have my contacts in, I straighten my circus outfit, taking a deep breath to steady myself and with one final glance at the mirror, I turn to leave, ready to start my first day of Oddity training.