Page 40 of These Monstrous Ties

“Do you understand?” he asks me again, his fingers curling tighter around my throat.

I nod.

He groans in my ear, his breath hot against my skin.

“You’re mine now, Lilith. You’re mine from now on.” One hand still on my throat, he drags the other possessively down my body, until he’sthere, in between my thighs. Right where I want him to be.

He grabs me, hard.

“This. It’s mine.” His hand goes back up, and he cups one breast, and then the other, running his thumb over my nipples. “Mine,”he growls again.

He pulls away, one hand still on my throat. The other on my chest.

“All of you. You’re fucking mine now.”

I think of the girl. Of her baby. Of Atlas and the other Unsaints. Of what Ria had implied about them. About what they are. What they do. I think of all of that, but I don’t care. Tonight, he isn’thimand I sure as hell am not me. Because the ‘me’ that had left my apartment had wanted to die. The ‘me’ I had been mere hours ago was long gone, because if she hadn’t been, I wouldn’t be here now.

But I am.

He picks me up and throws me on the bed and I roll over, onto my back.

He reaches for something out of my sight, and then he kneels over, his eyes devouring me, one hand on my chest. He holds up a bottle like an offering.

Rum.

A twisted, sick communion that I won’t refuse.

“Before you take this, there’s something you have to say.” He’s still pressing one hand against my chest, still kneeling over me.

“What?” I ask him, curious.

“The Death Oath.”

He drops the bottle on the bed and pins my wrists roughly above my head. He leans down, his mouth over mine as he speaks the words I’m to repeat back to him.

I bind myself to you tonight,

No matter the shift of the knife.

Through blood and bone,

Flesh and heart,

Death may come,

But we shall not part.

I repeat every line into his mouth, and keeping my wrists held together in one hand, he reaches for the bottle of rum, unscrews the cap with his teeth, and holds the bottle over my mouth.

“That means you’re mine for tonight, Lilith, no matter what I do to you. And I don’t feel like playing nice. I want to fuck the feel of every man you’ve ever had out of you.” He runs his tongue down my throat. “Now open wide.”

I open my mouth, flick my tongue out, and he smiles. Then he pours the liquor on my tongue, slowly, and I relish in the burn of it.

His mouth meets mine and we drink together, rum spilling over us until he tosses the bottle just like he’d tossed my gun. We don’t need those things. Not right now. We’re each other’s own drugs. Each other’s own weapons.

He slides the strap of my body suit down, and then seems to think the better of it. He stops, finds the knife in the floor of this underground room, and holds the blade up between us.

“Don’t move,” he warns me. “Or you might get another scar.”