Page 10 of The Killer Cupcake (Poison Cherry #3)

"Not anymore." And it was true. When the honest Janey surfaced—vulnerable, broken, achingly beautiful—he could no more suppress his love than he could stop breathing. "I believe you, cara mia . My darling Jane.”

She lifted her face and closed her eyes, waiting for his kiss. Carmine smiled through his tears. Though his body wasn't as virile as he wished—the poison had seen to that—it still worked well enough for a man condemned to an early grave.

He lifted her in his arms as if she weighed nothing, carrying her to their massive four-poster bed. She curled into his embrace like a cat seeking warmth, no longer the brazen killer but simply his woman, his heart, his damnation and salvation rolled into one impossible package.

He laid her down with infinite care, then undressed her the way a man might unwrap the most precious gift imaginable—slowly, reverently, memorizing every curve and hollow.

The seduction wasn't entirely his, though she had a way of making him feel as if it were, a way of slipping into his mind and taming the raging beasts without him even realizing she'd done it.

As Carmine began removing his own clothes, his eyes misted with unshed tears.

Someday—perhaps sooner than later—he would not be able to touch her, love her, protect her from the consequences of her choices.

What would happen to her when that inevitable day arrived?

If she could not control her need for vengeance against the white men who preyed on innocents, then eventually other men would find a way to hunt her down and control her through methods far less gentle than his own.

The thought seized him with paralyzing terror, part of the madness that had consumed him since the night she'd tried to kill him. His Janey wasn’t safe in this world.

Maybe he should end it all. Take her with him.

Maybe in the afterlife, they could have peace with just each other. If only he were sure that it was true.

“You still want to kill me, cher?” she asked.

His face flushed. “No, Janey.”

“It’s okay. I can see it in your eyes. If I thought death would give us peace, I’d bake a cake for both of us. But my sins will not be forgiven. I will have to pay. Heaven is what we got now. Here.”

Janey stared at him. He was frozen, gazing down at her, tears glistening like gems on his dark lashes.

She knew that look intimately—first came the anger and rage over perceived betrayal, then the forgiveness that made her feel whole again.

But sometimes, before the sweet nectar of making love to the only living man she'd ever truly loved, came something worse: fear, pain, sorrow, grief for the life they'd built together that could end any day, any moment.

“Forgive me,” she said, almost child-like.

He shed his clothes with deliberate slowness, each movement a promise and a threat.

Janey didn’t blink. When he joined her on the bed, his kisses whispered gentleness while his hands spoke a harsher language—one written in bruises from spankings during sex, and even his hand at her throat until she released a breathless surrender.

Carmine's appetites in sex had broken lesser women, sent them fleeing from desires that bordered on sadistic cruelty.

But Janey never ran from his darkness. She once told him, when he had her tied to the bed for two days, only giving her water and bathroom breaks while he explored his sexual desires and perversions on her, that all of it was just sex play.

That she was the darkness. Then she poisoned him to prove it.

Janey Elliot Wynn was his match, meeting his sadism with her own twisted hunger, their lovemaking a battle neither truly wanted to win.

She groaned when his dick thrust into her hard and punishingly.

He caught himself from fucking her too hard and too fast. He made gentle love to her vagina and body first with his tongue instead, and then saved the punishing penetration and unbridled lust with all of his energy for her whipping.

Spanking both cheeks with his belt until they were fiery red, he oiled her up and fucked her hole with pistoning thrusts, keeping her wrists bound tight to the bedpost.

She whimpered and endured. It had been months since she’d been adequately punished.

And she had lied to him. She had let DeMarco fuck her.

She lied, and he knew it. The only way to get close enough to the evilest of men was to give in.

She enjoyed DeMarco’s attention, but it turned to addiction when she refused to let him fuck her more.

She tortured him with teasing promises and sweet treats she made for him. Softening him up for the cherry pie.

When the spanking became too much, she began to cry. Carmine stopped, and then Janey collapsed into laughter that dissolved into more tears—the line between pleasure and pain blurred beyond recognition. When he finally released her from their dark ritual, she lay still, wrists marked by silk bonds.

“Don’t hurt me, cher,” she whispered, voice raw.

He heard her plea. He studied her—still the most beautiful woman in Tremé, even broken and remade by their twisted dance.

Part of him wanted to keep her bound, suspended her from the ceiling, and keep her trapped naked that way for the rest of eternity while he worshipped at her feet. At that moment, she was entirely his.

“We have company. They will not understand our games, my love. Stop the spankings and breaking of things. Let me take care of you,” she purred.

She turned and winced at the sting to her buttocks when she had to position herself in a sitting pose before him. He extended his hand to her, and she stood slowly, carrying the evidence of their violence like armor. His seed leaked from between the cheeks of her red and inflamed ass.

“Are you okay?” The question felt absurd even as he asked it.

She looked back, tears cutting through her smile. “I feel better now. Thank you.”

As she left to compose herself, he knew she'd return with salves and tenderness—the other half of their ritual. He closed his eyes and wondered, not for the first time: How would this end? When would it?"