Page 77 of House of Cards (The Devil’s Den #2)

Smith

When the blade slices into her skin, it’s like I can feel it biting into my own flesh. My hands shouldn’t be this steady, not when everything inside me is chaos, but thank Christ they are, because this is the most impatient I’ve ever been.

I’m strung out, light-headed, clamping the inside of my bottom lip between my teeth so I don’t let out the groan building in my throat.

Should wait, but I can’t.

The knife moves over her skin like a bow over violin strings.

Another line of red blooms. Parallel to the first, but higher up, closer to her bent knee. There’s a tiny runnel of blood already trickling down her skin from the first cut, headed for her hip.

Soon, there’ll be two.

Zoey watches me with muddy green eyes that pierce too deep into the darkness where I hide. This isn’t the first time she’s seen the monster I’ve kept caged since before I knew it had a name…but she only ever got a glimpse before.

But it doesn’t matter, because Zoey will never face this monster again.

She’ll be gone tomorrow.

No one would stay around after this.

But tonight, she belongs to me.

Tonight, she’s mine.

“Does it hurt?” My voice is deep, and rough.

She nods dully, but there’s no fear in her eyes. Just a morbid fascination.

“Yes.”

“Sure you don’t want me to stop?”

She shakes her head, just as slowly, frowning at her own reaction.

“No.”

I don’t believe her. Won’t believe her.

No one wants this. Why would she tolerate me marking her in this way, drawing precious blood, exposing this sickness inside me?

I never trusted anyone enough to show them this darkness. I’ve only ever played out this fantasy in my head. Yes, I’ve drawn blood in the past. Sometimes the participants were willing, but most of the time they weren’t.

But never like this.

Until now.

And it terrifies me.

But the doubt, the fear, the vitriol—it dissolves the moment the knife touches Zoey’s skin.

I scrape the tip along the outside of her thigh, hard enough to leave an angry red line, too soft to penetrate the skin.

Zoey hisses, her back arching off the plastic. The sound goes straight to my cock, and I have to grit my teeth against a feral wave of lust.

“I should let you leave,” I mumble, even as I press the flat of the blade against her trembling stomach.

“I’m staying,” she whispers, and I hate how much I need to hear those words.

A third cut.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

A fourth.

“You okay?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine.”

Five rivulets run jagged red lines down her thigh.

“Christ, baby, are you still okay?”

A groan, then a murmured, “Mm!” that sounds something like consent.

Blood pools in her hip like a sip of spilled wine.

I dip into it, rubbing it over my fingertips as I press my mouth, then my teeth, against her knee.

Fucking giddy as I suppress a laugh at the cool wetness, the slipperiness.

Fuck ‘dark’.

I’m not a monster. I’m a goddamn artist.

This? This is fucking art.

A heart wrenching sonnet penned in red.

Art—and catharsis.

My cock throbs painfully as I watch a droplet of blood slide down the curve of her thigh.

I trace the flat of the blade over Zoey’s ribs as I drag my fingers over her belly, smearing that pale skin with her own blood. Her lips part on a moan as she shivers under my touch, goosebumps breaking out on her skin.

Another cut. And it has to be the last.

Has to, has to, fucking has to…or I’ll never fucking stop.

It’s the deepest yet.

Barely a razor-blade’s edge left before I hit tissue.

My cock throbs as I watch the blood well up, as Zoey gasps in pain.

“My baby still good?” I don’t recognize this voice, these words, this man who’s so earnestly checking in with the woman sprawled in front of him.

I don’t recognize the flushed, writhing beauty on the bed, either. The wicked glint in her eyes, the way she keeps licking her lips and moaning.

No violence.

Just dark sensuality.

I promised myself—promised her—no sex tonight. This isn’t about that.

But Christ, the way she’s squirming against me is testing my control like nothing ever has. Her foot twisting and pushing into my lap.

“Smith,” she pants, desperate. Her hand slides over her hip, headed for her pussy or her clit, I can’t tell. But I slap it away before she can touch herself.

“No.”

Her groan is petulant, frustrated, but she fists her hand and shoves it down at her side, obeying.

Submitting.

“Fuck, kitten.” The words are muffled as I graze my teeth over her knee, her kneecap so close to the skin I could bite down and leave marks.

“You don’t know what it does to me when you obey.”

“I do,” she challenges in a hoarse whisper, biting down on her bottom lip as she grinds the heel of her foot into my lap.

There’s so much pleasure mingled with the pain I can’t separate the two. I lose myself to it, when I really shouldn’t. Drag my fingers through that shallow well of blood, when I really, really shouldn’t.

And force my eyes open so I can stare at Zoey as I bring my fingers to my mouth, tasting her.

It’s a test. One I expect her to fail.

Expecting her to recoil—disgust, shock, perhaps even confusion twisting her features.

It’s what should happen.

It’s what happened all those years ago, an eternity now, when I was barely fourteen. In and out of foster homes since I was born. A trouble maker, a wiseass. Never a permanent home because I could never convince anyone to love me.

On my way back to a youth shelter, a handful of stolen Slim Jims in my pocket and a packet of cigarettes I preferred to use as currency instead of calming my nerves.

My nerves have been calm since the day Linda—foster mom number five—told me she deserved the split lip her husband gave her. That I’d learn to deserve mine, too.

I’m still not sure how I convinced myself to run away instead of slitting his throat in his sleep.

But it’s why I was on that street that day, the exact time a truck ran the red, and a soccer mom’s minivan swerved, lost control, flipped.

I watched it roll over, over, and come screeching over the tarmac.

Thought I was done for.

Didn’t even get a recap of the pathetic life I’d led—just a hard buzz in my ears as something came tumbling out of the smashed windshield like a big bag of laundry.

The driver. A woman—blond and used to be pretty. But after scraping over the road and being tossed in my direction by an invisible hand, she wasn’t pretty anymore.

So much blood.

And more pooling under her.

I was compelled to go up to her, watching as her body twitched and jerked.

So much fucking blood.

She was in pain. I could tell by how she croaked for help. And I think I wanted to help her, because why else would I touch her blood-slicked forehead?

Warm, slippery blood coated my fingers. I kept rubbing my fingertips together as I watched her drag in an awful breath. Then another.

I brought my hand to my mouth, wanted to know if her blood tasted like mine, but the look of revulsion on her face made me stop.

That’s the look I’m expecting on Zoey’s face.

But instead of revulsion, she looks the way I must have whenever I took a bullet or a knife or a fist. When I’d coat my fingers in my own blood, and know for just a second, just one blissful fucking second…that I was alive.

Face flushed.

Chest rising and falling in rapid bursts as she pants.

Eye doe-like, pupils dilated—not with fear, but with lust.

Every breath brings me her scent—the metallic tang of blood, floral body lotion, arousal. I’m sure I’m imagining the last, despite how desperately she reached between her legs a moment ago.

But when I smear my fingers over her bloodied thigh, and trace wavy red lines over her inner thigh, and push those fingers inside her pussy, she’s soaked.

Undeniably turned on.

I pump my fingers inside her, taking one last nip at her knee before dragging my tongue down her thigh. She moans, her hands flying to my hair, not pushing me away but pulling me closer to the weeping cuts in her flesh.

Wanting it.

Needing it.

I lick the newest cut, applying enough pressure to make it sting.

“ Fuck …” I hear myself rasp.

Something breaks loose inside me. A dam rupturing, flooding me with sensations I’ve never allowed myself to feel. This goes beyond the satisfaction of a good caning, beyond the power of domination.

This is primal.

Religious in its intensity.

I’m lost.

So completely fucking lost.

I said no sex, and I meant it. But Zoey’s pussy is so warm, so wet, so fucking inviting…a mere mortal like me doesn’t stand a chance at resisting.

Pushing up my hips, I tug down my sweats and free my cock. It slaps the inside of her thigh—hard, heavy.

“Yes,” she moans. “Please fuck me.”

“That what you want, baby?”

I keep one hand on her thigh, fingers slippery with her blood, the other wrapped around my cock, stroking it. Still waging a battle of wills, trying to collect myself.

Fuck reason.

Fuck sanity.

Zoey is mine, and I will claim what’s mine.

Claim, ravage, destroy.

But not like this.

She’ll watch my cock splitting her open.

And tomorrow, when she’s out of my life, that image will be seared into her mind. She’ll think of me every time she touches herself. And when some asshole wants to touch her, wants to fuck her, she’ll reject him because I’ll have ruined her for any other man.

She’s mine.

If I can’t have her, no one fucking can.