Page 24 of Sadist (The Triarchy Collection #1)

OCTAVIA

T heo was asleep on my stomach, her long, dark hair unbound and fanned over my chest as I ran my fingers through it.

We were laying on the floor in a mess of blankets and strewn pillows from the couch, and my arse had long since gone to sleep—but I wouldn’t have moved for anything.

Not when her fingers were wrapped around my free wrist, holding onto me even in sleep.

I had lost count of the hours, my body deliciously sore from the attention she had lavished on me, and my jaw ached from how long I had spent between her thighs, dragging orgasm after orgasm from her until she had made me stop.

I licked my lower lip, savoring her taste on it as I trailed my fingers along her hairline.

“What the fuck,” I whispered under my breath, gazing down at the face I had gone from hating, to?—

I cut myself off, unable to finish that line of thought.

“I agree entirely,” she murmured in a sleep-roughened voice as she cracked an eye open and surveyed me. “What time is it?”

“Just past four,” I said, leaning to peer at her discarded watch on the side table.

“How are you still awake?” she asked, nestling back against me. “I’m almost offended.”

Theo looked so different with her hair loose and her features softened by sleep. I dared to trail the backs of my knuckles down her cheek, committing the sight to memory.

“I think I’ll have trouble getting up, if it makes you feel better?” I said.

She huffed, a lopsided smile teasing the corner of her lips as she closed her eyes again. “Don’t stop.”

“Huh?” I asked.

“Hair,” she mumbled, turning her face into my bare stomach and mumbling something incoherent that sounded surprisingly like “Please baby.”

“Wow,” I said, chuckling softly. “All it took to turn you into a demanding, tamed puddle, was a few orgasms. I should have seduced you sooner.”

She grunted at me, grasped my hand and placed it back on her head while delivering truly diabolical side eye.

I snorted. “You know, you could have told me this is all it would take.”

“I didn’t know I liked it so much,” she mumbled, shivering delicately as I scraped my nails along her scalp. Her eyes fell on the brand at my hip, and she gently ran her thumb over the tender mark, her name clear within the rectangular outline.

The matching mark on her hand had cracked and bled during our frenzied attack on each other, streaks of dried blood decorating my skin. She had both figuratively and literally bled for me to brand me with her claim.

“Tell me about the company you work for,” I murmured, scratching my nails slowly up the back of her neck as my heart kicked up a few notches. This was it. The moment I found out what this was. Was it a fleeting moment that would cave under the trust I was asking for, or would it be real?

She stilled, her breath coming shallow, and in that moment, my stomach turned cold, my fingers stilling in her hair.

Shifting her body, she turned until she could look at me, her eyes searching mine.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” I replied quickly.

Her lips thinned as she pressed them together, her eyes lingering on my brand as she thought for a long moment before sighing quietly.

“I had been deported back to the UK after being court-martialed and discharged from my US transfer,” she said, choosing her words carefully.

“I floated for a while, but money ran out, and employment opportunities are limited for someone with my record. I was young, and when the opportunity came to make some fast cash fighting in an underground ring, I jumped at it.” She paused for a moment, her lips tilting in a smirk.

“I was good. I made a name for myself fast. It got me noticed by the organizers…and from there I was taken on as private security for their less than morally clean corporation.”

“This is who my father is going head-to-head with?” I said dryly. “Fight club?”

She chuckled. “No, Sweets. I gutted fight club from the inside out when I realized who they were. It just so happened that they were already on The Triarchy’s radar, and Erryn was leading the team trying to infiltrate them.

I razed the entire place to the ground in twenty-four hours after she had been working on it for over a month.

The next day, I found myself in front of the three Chairs of The Triarchy, looking down the muzzle of Erryn’s Glock, and was given an ultimatum: Work for them or be terminated on the spot. ”

I blinked at her. “Theo…you had no choice in this?”

“There’s always a choice,” she said. “I could have disappeared at any point over the last decade, but I’m good at this.

And I can make a difference .” She picked up my hand and traced the outline of a three-pointed crown.

“That’s my signet. My calling card to tell everyone who took the kill.

A crown because I have the strength to keep the three Chairs in power, or take it. ”

“With abduction and murder?” I asked, raising a brow.

There was a flash of teeth as she smirked.

“There is more to what I do than just that. But I wasn’t lying when I said that hostages were not my area of expertise?—”

“Nooooo,” I cut in. “You don’t say?”

“What gave me away?” she asked, doing a great job of looking offended.

“Might have been when you seduced the hostage, but to be honest, I haven’t seen your code of conduct and company policy, so I could be mistaken with my assumptions…” I trailed off, distracted by her smile as she chuckled to herself.

“The Triarchy have…morally grey methods,” Theo said after a moment. “Abduction and murder are tools they use for the greater good, and their results are the reason I’ve stayed. In a corrupt world, they keep the worst of humanity in check.”

“And my father fell on the wrong side of that?” I asked.

A muscle ticked in her jaw, her eyes losing their softness.

“Your father ,” she said quietly, “and I use that term in the loosest possible way—doesn’t know what’s coming for him.”

“This…Triarchy. They will keep trying to take him down?”

She was silent for a moment, and I waited for her to choose her words.

“The Triarchy needs something from him,” she said finally. “Or rather…needs something back.”

“Tell me,” I urged.

Shifting against the mattress, she was silent for a while, her mouth pursing as she frowned at the ceiling.

“I’m telling you this because you need to know what will happen if he wins,” she said. “Vanguard Technology was integrated into Triarchy software a while ago, and it corrupted the files to give William access to everything. To the records that could put its entire existence in jeopardy.”

“What is he asking for?” I asked. “Money?”

“No.” She shook her head. “He doesn’t want money—he wants Erryn’s Chair, which would give him control of the UK chapter and all of its resources.”

I stared at her in horror. “That kind of power…”

“My concern is that he’s already tried to have you murdered once,” she said.

“And with the software we have available to us—not to mention a global network of assassins—you would always be looking over your shoulder. If you ever slipped up, he would be notified. I can’t let him get that foothold, and it’s why I need you out of the country.

If he gets the Chair, the transfer of power will be quick.

I doubt I will retain my position, and if I survive that, I definitely won’t have the resources to get you out like I do now. ”

I froze, an icy hand closing around my heart.

“What?”

She looked at me, a crease forming between her brows.

“I will get passports and documentation sorted through my contacts. You won’t be picked up leaving?—”

“After everything, you are still sending me away?” I choked out.

A look of confusion crossed her face. “Sweets…I can’t hide you here forever, and your face is everywhere. You cannot stay in the country. What did you expect was going to happen? I need to focus on making sure he doesn’t get that Chair.”

“You said—” I cut myself off and shifted, trying to pull myself out from under her, mortified by how gullible I had been.

A warm hand closed around my ankle.

“Octavia.”

“What?” I spat.

“I’m coming to find you after.”

My ears were ringing from the violent storm of emotions that I usually avoided like the plague, so I chose to focus on the way her thumb was running up and down my ankle in soothing strokes.

“I need you out of the country in case this goes to shit. But I am coming to find you once it’s over.”

“You…are?” I breathed, struggling to pull back the hot flare of anger. Tears were threatening, and I refused to give in to them.

She rolled, prowling up my body as she pushed me back against the pillows and settled herself between my legs.

“Yes,” she murmured, leaning in to kiss me. “You think I’m letting you get away after showing me how devastatingly good your tongue can be, my Sweet?”

I leaned back as her lips brushed mine, raising a brow and hoping she couldn’t see how emotional I was. “Just my tongue?”

She grasped my hand, pulling it between us, and I sighed softly as she shifted her hips, my fingers slipping through slick, delicate skin and finding her clit.

“Fine,” she breathed, rolling her hips against my touch. “Your fingers are adequate.”

“Theodora,” I said, my voice wavering ever so slightly as I tried to sound offended. “Let me remind you what had you chanting my name like a fucking prayer last night.”

***

It didn’t happen all at once. Cohabitation snuck up on us like everything else had. We developed a rhythm that seemed as natural as breathing. We ate together, trained in the gym…when she wasn’t using the equipment to ruin me.

I cooked more than once after sending her off with a shopping list that had her grumbling under her breath, desperate to eat something that wasn’t from a tin, only for her to slather it in ketchup—which is a fucking war crime in my opinion.

I had watched in horror as she wolfed down the lasagna-ketchup-soup abomination that had taken me hours to create and mere seconds for her to defile.

She’d laughed. A real laugh. Like something fractured had finally snapped into place…

and then she fucked me into a boneless mess on the picnic table, under the fairy lights.

But it was the nights that I adored most, when she seemed to relax in the darkness and tell me about her life.

There were silences too. Quiet stretches where we didn’t need to say anything, where the air felt full of something neither of us could name.

It was almost enough to make me forget that my funeral was creeping closer—the day I would leave the country—and had to trust that I’d left enough of a mark on her to make her follow…

It was Friday, the night before the funeral, when I came out of the shower to find a yellow envelope sitting on the bed next to my neatly folded clothes. I didn’t say a word. Just wandered out to where Theo was busily working in her office and placed it on the desk between us like a loaded gun.

Her hand slid up the back of my leg as she finished reading the latest media release that had just popped up, a picture of my face plastered front and center, and it felt…easy. In a situation that was so exceptionally complicated…when she touched me, none of it mattered.

“What is this?” I asked quietly.

She dragged her gaze from the screen to the envelope, then up to me. “Passport,” she said, her thumb skating along the curve of my arse. “New name. New papers. Plane ticket. Funds. Everything you need.”

I glared at that fucking envelope like it was the devil itself.

“We’ve discussed this, Sweets,” she murmured. “The best time for you to go is while all eyes are on that funeral. That PR firm is blowing this up to be the most televised event of the year—no one is going to be looking for you at that airport.

I gingerly picked the package up, ripping it open and peering in. “Jesus Christ,” I muttered, eyeing the neat stacks of money alongside the passport and a thin folder of papers.

“You can’t take more than ten grand through customs undetected,” she said, “I wanted you to have cash in case you needed it, and there is an account set up for you at your destination with more—the details are all in the paperwork.”

I blinked at her. “Where is that coming from?”

“One of my personal accounts,” she said, winking. “Oh, and don’t bother arguing, you will lose.”

“Theo!” I hissed.

“To quote you,” she said, clearing her throat. “Get fucked.”

“I don’t need it,” I argued, shaking my head.

“I really don’t care,” she replied, leaning back in her seat and giving me a flat look. “Call it a security deposit if you must. I don’t know what will happen here either.”

I leveled a dark look at her as I slid the passport out and thumbed it open. A dark-haired version of me stared back, and I raised a brow at her. “Dye or wig?”

She chuckled. “You can choose. I got the washout stuff because I thought you might be precious about your golden locks…”

I opened my mouth to argue and faltered as I read the name.

Elvira Lancaster.

I slid my eyes back up to see the wicked smirk on her face.

“You look like an Elvira,” she teased.

“Lancaster?”

“You’re mine, aren’t you?” she asked, her eyes darkening as she hooked my thigh and pulled me closer. She kissed my hip, right over the brand. “And my name looks good on you, Sweets.”

Every single iota of irritation…fled.

“Elle for short,” she murmured, raising my T-shirt and kissing my stomach. “Ellie, if you want. To new friends.” She raised her gaze to mine and held it. “But, My Love, to me.”

I had no words. Nothing. Just a warmth in my chest that I had never felt before.

“It’s not often I render you speechless,” she murmured, undoing the top button of my pants. “Let’s see if I can take your breath away too.”