Page 48 of Refrain (Beautiful Monsters #2)

There’s pain in the way he says it. He put his own dreams on hold for his friend. But that’s only half of it. The rest of the truth takes longer to spill out, lingering over his tongue.

“I got sucked in,” he admits. “This life… There are no consequences. No real rules. No law. It’s the only kind of environment where someone like Arno could ever judge someone like me.”

“You think he’s disappointed in you.”

He sighs and rakes his fingers through his hair.

“I wanted to go to France one day, you know?” he says.

It seems like he’s speaking to me, but the eye contact is merely for my benefit.

The words come from his soul. “I thought I could make a living drawing tourists around Paris. Learn from some pretentious fucking art school. I even took classes.” He laughs.

“I’d grown up drawing on the back of notebooks and napkins, whatever I could get my hands on.

But these people… They had ‘art tutors.’ They took trips to Europe to learn how to copy shit from fancy art museums. Their stuff was a mockery of what they thought looked pretty.

It didn’t contain an ounce of their soul. Their pain. So I dropped out, and…”

His gaze drifts down to my face, and his thumb grazes the corner of my mouth, feeling the wet hint of himself lingering there. He opens his mouth. To talk, I think. To reveal more of his past. In the end, he just kisses me again, more deeply than before.

We wind up flat against the tabletop, with me on top of him, writhing to feel him harden up against my thigh.

This time, it’s quick. We both use each other, grinding ourselves into one another’s skin.

When we finally break apart, panting, I don’t know what makes me say it, my cheek partially pressed against the cold tile floor.

“You had dreams. I had…goals. A checklist of things I had to do in order to make it through each day.” I can see them flit across my mind, even now. Obey. Resist. Submit. Survive. Over and over like clockwork.

He stiffens up beside me, running his hand down my back. “With Vlad?”

I inhale the question and exhale the truth. I tell him everything. Every dark, twisted, sordid detail save Piotr’s return. I don’t hold a single damn thing back. I spill it all. He breathes it in. Like smoke. Like nicotine. He’s high on me, hating the buzz even as it burns through him.

My face feels wet when I finally trail off, and he’s holding me, his body braced overtop mine, his breath warm on my shoulder.

It’s enough. Against Piotr and his madness, his touch is enough.

I can overcome it, just for now. I can relish the sore ache of him and the brutal spice of his scent.

I don’t have to worry about the consequences.

I don’t even have to feel. I let him own me, this angel. For a brief moment, he flies me out of hell.

Arno isn’t content to just call this time. He attempts to break the front door down, and Espisido has barely managed to draw his pants up by the time he barrels inside.

“Espi…” His gaze flickers over in my direction. “Can we talk in fucking private?”

“No.” Espi reenters the kitchen to grab his shirt from the floor and pulls it on over his head. “Anything you want to say to me, you can say here.” There’s no anger lacing his tone. That’s because I’m carrying it all. His confessions linger on the air like wild electricity, sparking and alive.

“Fine, then.” Arno slams the door behind him and stalks forward. He has his head lowered, but it’s only when he comes closer that I recognize the motion as more contrite than aggressive. “About what happened back there… I’m sorry if things got a little—”

“It’s okay,” Espi says. He even looks like he means it. Twenty sordid minutes could purge him of his darkness and let him pretend again.

Am I jealous? Impressed? I’m too tired to tell, haunted by my own demons. Piotr’s waiting. With Anna? Or chains…

“Did Jose get what he wanted?”

Arno’s eyes flash a dangerous green. “Oh, hell yeah,” he says. “More than enough. He, um, persuaded Mack a little bit more to make sure he wasn’t fucking around. We think we know which warehouse will be hit next. The plan is we get there tonight. Ambush.”

Espi sighs, his jaw clenched. “Do you think Dante— ”

“Don’t know,” Arno says tightly, cutting him off. “If you need anything, see Francisco. He’ll stay back at the—”

“I’m not letting you go there alone.” It’s final. Decided.

Arno doesn’t bother to argue as Espisido slips his jacket on and pulls the zipper up to his chin. He looks back at me, his eyes questioning.

It takes everything I have in me to shake my head.

Arno observes the exchange with barely any reaction. “You ready?” he asks.

Espisido follows him.

Once they’re what Arno must assume is out of my earshot, I hear him say, “We have got to work on your taste in women.”

This is when I realize I’m not wearing my sweatpants.

Or underwear. With I sigh, I sink to the floor and fish them from the tile.

Then I creep into the bathroom and shower, doing my best to scrub myself clean, wiping away every last drop of him.

I have to make myself presentable, after all.

There isn’t time to savor—but I do anyway.

It could be the last time I have the luxury.

So I relish the feel of him inside me. The aching soreness that flares whenever I move.

I let it wash the taint of my past away for a little while before I’m finally forced to shut the water off, face the world again, and redress in the same clothes.

I blindly return to the kitchen and pull drawers open at random, searching.

Hunting. It isn’t until I’m standing on tiptoe and lowering a black case from the top of the fridge that I find two knives, thin and made of steel.

They fit easily inside the pocket of a borrowed sweatshirt.

I take a syringe too, filling it to the brim with liquid from a vial.

I blink a burning sting back. There isn’t time for guilt.

I replace the case and then leave the house, locking the door behind me.

It’s a long, quiet walk to the hotel where Piotr is waiting.

This time, I don’t placate myself with fantasies of killing him.

I just remember…everything. The pain, the beatings, the fear.

Mainly the fear. The way he used to hold me, the words he would mu rmur into my skin.

The way my heart used to crave his approval. Was that love?

If so, then I prefer hate. Caressing fingers and searing looks. Letting my body go wild. Not having a checklist of requirements to tick off with every encounter. Smile. Simper. Wider. More. Let him touch you. Moan—but not too loudly.

I let the darkness of those days sober me from the very last dose of my latest addiction.

He leaves me for good the moment I enter the lobby of the hotel.

Or does he? A man is lingering near the entrance, his head covered by a low hood.

He’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt in a building that caters to men who lap at the Petrovs’ wealth.

Did Piotr change the uniform of his soldat ?

I try to catch a glimpse of his face and flinch. Flashing blue—but the features are all wrong, what little I see of them. The body is too big. But those eyes…

I step closer, aiming for another look, but he turns and crosses over to the other part of the lobby.

I dig my nails into my palms to keep myself from following.

I’m stalling. The delay only buys me a precious few seconds of sanity before I take the elevator up.

The door to the suite is unlocked once again, but this time, I find five guards lounging in the entryway.

One of them spots me and reaches for his gun. “Name?”

I don’t bother to give him one. Rather by recognition or sheer confusion, he doesn’t pull the trigger as I brush past. Piotr is waiting for me in his study, but tonight…he isn’t alone.

My nostrils flare, catching a feminine scent that belongs only in my memories. Not here. Sweet like roses. Soft like the sunshine we used to play in as children. Anna. Her presence floods my body seconds before I register her standing there beside his desk.

Her slight frame is balancing upon an impossibly high pair of white heels. He dressed her head to toe in the color—a gown that swallows her slender body, formed of swaths of white chiffon and lace. The maid must have arranged her flaming hair into a single braid that drapes her shoulder.

But no amount of expensive silk or hairdressing could disguise what lurks behind those unique navy eyes. Nothing. Blank. Emptiness.

“Do you like your present, Ksei?” Piotr gestures from my sister to me. There’s something in his other hand. Round. Metallic. He raises it when I don’t answer and strikes a button on the front with his thumb.

A buzzing sound hums in my eardrums. Then Anna jerks back, her fingers twitching at her sides. There’s something around her neck that I notice only now. It’s tucked against the neckline of her dress. A thin strip of black leather, secured by a metal buckle. A collar.

“Say your name,” Piotr commands.

“Anna,” the girl says woodenly on cue.

God. It’s exactly how I always imagined her sounding had she lived to be old enough. Soft. Delicate. Little Anna. Everything is the same but the pain.

“What the hell is this?”

“Tsk tsk,” Piotr remarks, shaking his head. Seven years later and I still recognize the dangerous signs of his disappointment. So does Anna. She inhales sharply as he speaks again. “Your full name.”

“Annastasia Olenova.” She sounds so young. So terrified.

“What are you doing?” I don’t know how I speak. Piotr’s last assault was child’s play. This is death. My heart stops beating. My lungs seize. Somehow, I’m still standing. Still able to listen.

I can’t help but listen.

“Well.” Piotr flicks the button on his tiny remote, ensuring I see each deliberate motion. “I will ask you again. Do you like your present, Ksei?”