Page 26

CHAPTER 24

B eatrix

The dungeon walls are comforting. They shouldn’t be. Everything I ever thought I knew about myself. Everything I ever thought about life. You’re not supposed to crave the prison. You’re not supposed to feel secure tucked up below ground.

Or maybe I am. Maybe it’s the denning instinct. I don’t have any decisions to make down here. I don’t have to worry about killing someone that I shouldn’t. I don’t have to worry about being good or bad, because down here the only thing that matters is what Armand wants—and what he wants is what I want.

I am comfortable. For the first time in my life there is no pressure, no fear, just the very real and very comforting reality of being kept. Other people’s worst nightmares are my dreams. And my nightmares? Few could stand them.

I hear him coming down the stairs. Is it day? Is it night? I don’t know. I don’t care. I mark time by his presence, or lack thereof.

He looks at me with those deep slate eyes that only flash silver now and then when they catch torchlight.

“Is it just me, or are you more at peace here than you’ve ever been?”

He brushes the hair away from my face as he asks the question.

“I like it down here,” I say. “I haven’t been in trouble since you put me down here. I haven’t had a problem. All I’ve had is the hottest fucking sex I could imagine.”

His expression is a little morose as he hears that. “Well, as much as I’d like to keep you captive forever. I don’t know how long I can keep you down here.”

“I thought you said I could stay down here forever.”

“That’s when I thought you were relentlessly and remorselessly hunting down anything with a pulse and a role in authority. But now I know better. You didn’t kill those detectives.”

He says it almost like an accusation.

“I never said I did. I actually think I said I didn’t. You didn’t believe me. It’s okay.”

“It is not okay. I should have believed you.” He shakes his head at me. “I really thrashed you, Trixie. I fucked your ass hard… I punished you, and you just took it.”

“Maybe I liked it?”

He lifts a brow at me. “You liked it?”

“Is that a bad thing?”

Armand kisses me passionately, deeply. “It’s not a bad thing,” he says when he breaks the kiss, my head dizzy with desire. “ Mon dieu , you are an intense little thing. I feel like I am only beginning to scratch your surface. Maybe it will always feel that way with us. But at the very least, I owe you an apology. I never meant to punish you for a crime you did not commit.”

“Bad boy,” I smirk, unworried. I can tell he feels guilty, but the truth is, I felt like I did deserve the treatment on some level, and I certainly enjoyed it on another.

He chuckles, and shakes his head at me. “Sometimes I get so caught up in the things I feel I need to fix about you, or that need to be controlled or unearthed… I forget to notice all the incredible traits you have. You are powerful, you do what is right even if it will cause you harm, you take blame, sometimes even when you’re not to blame, and you make the best of what little life gives you.” He looks at me with a fierce passion. “I will not allow myself to be one of the many monsters who makes you act like one. I will not deny you what you deserve, blame you for what you are, or give you anything less than my full trust.”

I listen to him, feeling my inner self welling with what feel like tears, but they’re not from sadness. He’s suddenly seeing me. I don’t know how, or why. Something must have happened up above ground.

“Do you know what that sounds like?”

“What?”

“Almost sounds like a proposal.”

He slides to the side of the bed, down on his knees, looking up at me with silver eyes that seem to hold tears of the same emotion I feel.

“Trixie, will you marry me?”

“Of course,” I say. “I have to. You paid ten million dollars for me and you’re holding me captive in your sex dungeon.”

He frowns slightly. He wants me to be earnest. He wants this moment to matter. And it does. So I stop being an asshole.

“I would marry you even if I wasn’t currently imprisoned, Armand. You’re the only person who has ever made me feel loved. You are my safe place. That’s why I don’t mind being down here. Whenever I am with you, I know I am going to be okay. I don’t have to want to spend the rest of my life with you, I know I am going to.”

“You are perfect,” he says, cupping my face in his hands. “And you are mine.”

We breathe in the moment together.

And then I have to break the silence, because I have a question that has to be answered.

“How do you know I didn’t kill the detectives?”

“That’s a long answer. I can give you the short version: I found out someone else killed them. But it’s related to the next thing I have to tell you. Some of your family are arriving soon.”

“They are?” I pause. “They’re already close and they’ve been killing people, haven’t they.”

“Yes. And you’ve already met one of them.”

“I have?” I narrow my eyes a little, thinking… and then it hits me. “Not Volkov. Tell me it’s anyone but Volkov. Tell me it’s someone I ate. Tell me it was Duplante.”

He winces as I talk.

“I’m sorry, but it is Volkov.”

“Fuck. No. I’m related to that guy? Why?”

“I don’t know why,” he laughs. “If it helps, I don’t think he’s a close relative. A second cousin or something like that. I am guessing. He may be even more distant. Everybody coming is a distant relation, I think. Your immediate family…”

“Died because of all the killing, because that’s what happens when you’re a violent, murderous creature. Eventually, the murder comes for you.”

“Something like that.”

I throw myself back on the bed. “Can I not meet them? What if they’re all like him? Can you not tell them I’m serving time in your fuck dungeon?”

“Nothing is ever as I expect it to be with you,” Armand says with a smile. “You don’t have to see anybody you don’t want to see. Not Volkov, not any of them. I’ve offered them a place to stay, but I will banish them if you like.”

“Banish them,” I laugh. “No, don’t do that.”

“I think your entire extended pack have fallen on hard times. There’s a reason they couldn’t come for you in that orphanage. The part of the world you come from has been at war for a very long time.”

“So they sneaked a therapist here?”

“Volkov is the alpha. When I put the call out, he heard about it. Also, when you pay ten million dollars for a shifter girl in an orphanage, people hear about it. I think he came out of curiosity. And when he realized who you were… he started putting events in motion.” He lies down next to me. “I think he was going to kidnap you, but thought better of it.”

“He was going to kidnap me?”

“That’s my guess. He didn’t say that. He did say something about trying to take you to live with his pack, but I think that might have been bluster. I don’t think there’s anything left.”

“So we’re all ending up here, in your pack. A whole pack of murderous shifters. Are you worried?”

“No more than usual. Are you ready to be released from captivity and welcomed into the bosom of your family?”

“No.”

“Then you’ll stay here for now. You can stay down here as long as you like. I’ll keep you safe from yourself and everybody else.”

He wraps his arms around me, and makes a nuzzled apology in my ear.

“I’m sorry, Beatrix. I’m sorry for all this shit. If I had just left it alone, Volkov wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t have gone to Bordeaux, there would never have been a file, no bad dreams. I could have made this so simple, but I fucked it up for both of us by trying to dig because I had this stupid obsession with whether or not anybody else had ever been with you. I’ve blamed you for all of this, but most of the time it was me putting you in situations you should never have been in.”

“So I’m down here because of you. Not because of me,” I say, trying not to be too smug, but being a little smug anyway.

“Maybe you should have been down here all along. Maybe down here isn’t so much a place as it is a state of being. Locked away, just you and me, focusing on ourselves, not worrying about our pasts, or what people want from us. And maybe I should worry less about what you do in the world. Maybe murder is a viable way of handling people who are problems…”

He’s never this open with me. Maybe the therapy has done him good, even if it wasn’t actually therapy.

“I don’t kill anybody who isn’t a threat,” I say. “I never have.”

“Why didn’t you say that when I put you down here?”

I let a little smile emerge. “Because I like it when you’re forceful and possessive and when you make the decisions.”

“You like it when I am the alpha.”

“Yes.”

“Twisted little monster,” he growls lovingly. “Do not worry. I will always be your alpha, and this dungeon will always be here if you need it.”