Page 38

Kael

“Y ou stink.”

Kael inhales the spot between Veronica’s ear, the strange scents clinging to her skin makes his jaw tense.

His ladybird, ever defiant, glares at him, rage flickering in her eyes like a dying candlelight.

“You fucking reek of other men, Veronica.” His lips brush against her ear, earning him a tiny little gasp, and he doesn’t have to look, her body betrays her before her mouth can say it.

His fingers close around her jaw, his thumb dragging across the red of her lips—smearing, tainting, marking. She jerks in resistance, trying to shake free of his grip, still latching onto defiance. But her pupils have already dilated, her breath quickening. He inhales again. Beneath the layered scent of men’s cologne, her arousal thickens in the air, suffocating him with its truth.

“You know I have to fix that, right?” His voice is velvet over steel, his hands slipping from her jaw to wrap around her neck. Perfect, as always. Like she was made to fit into his palm. It was as though, whoever created her, placed her life in his hands and told him to do whatever he wanted with it.

“Fix what?” Her voice comes out smaller than she intends, thick with need. Kael is sure that if not for the shred of pride she’s trying so hard to maintain, she would already be grinding into him by now, chasing friction.

His fingers flex around her throat, thumb stroking the delicate line of her artery.

“Fix the fact that you stink of other men.”

He has been choking on those scents since he picked her up from school—the sharp mix of at least ten different brands of men’s cologne clinging to her skin. One might belong to that little friend of hers. But the rest is a fucking provocative mess.

Heat licks beneath his skin, tilting something dangerous in his head. The thought of those men, their hands on her makes his fingers twitch with the urge to snap her neck. Fucking end Jacob Durand’s bloodline and have an impressive number of people call him a hero. A lot would love to know that the serial killer who took their loved ones’ lives has incurred a loss, too—his precious daughter.

But that will be a waste. There are just too many things he can make her do. Killing her won’t change anything.

“What the fuck?” Veronica barely gets a word in before his hands knot in her curl, dragging her across the room. She screeches, her skinny arms flying over her head to claw off his hands, but he is already shoving her onto the open kitchen counter.

Her bare chest hit the polished surface with a dull thud, her nipple brushing over the cool wood.

“Who were they?” he demands, her naked ass brushing against his straining cock, his vision pulsing black at the edges. She is wet. Fucking soaked, the sight of her slick thighs causing his restraint to fray by the second.

“Who?” A whimper settles in her heaving chest, her cheek pressed into the counter.

He tugs her head back, forcing another sound from her throat. “Don’t fucking play stupid,” he growls, the sound of his belt’s buckle hissing through the air before the zipper of his pants is yanked open.

“Who the fuck touched you at school today?” His voice carries the lethality of poison. “Your string of boyfriends? Is the one you were whispering sweet nothings to earlier part of them?”

“They’re just friends.” Her fingers claw at the counter, nails digging into the polished surface as if grounding herself. She doesn’t need his instructions, her body already bends to his will, back arched, ass pushed out in offering.

Such a pretentious little slut.

“Friends?” A harsh sound leaves Kael’s sneering lips, his free hand disappearing inside his boxer briefs, pulling out his cock—thick, throbbing, aching for her. “Am I supposed to believe that?”

“It was just a harmless hug with Shiro’s friends from the soccer team,” she mumbles, her tone snarky. “Stop being so dramatic. And I can hang out with whoever I want to. Stop being delusional, you don’t fucking own me. I am not yours.”

She is taunting him. Using the phrase she knows he despises and it’s fucking working, as something dark unfurls in Kael’s chest, a sickness, a hunger. The room tilts, his vision blurring in a haze of black, grey, and red.

That fucking sentence. That fucking lie. The urge to wring the breath from her throat claws at his control, but instead, he grabs her neck, squeezing just enough to feel her pulse skitter beneath his palm.

Angrily, he shoves her thighs apart, fingers gripping her hip. No warning. No teasing. He drives his cock into her, and she chokes on a gasp, body seizing.

“You.” Thrust . “Are.” Thrust . “Mine.” Thrust . “Fucking.” Thrust. “Mine!” Thrust .

“Oh god!” she cries, her cunt swallowing him whole, dripping as she grinds against him like she is starved.

Her nails scrape against the counter, tiny veins surfacing along her knuckles as she grips the edge.

“I don’t care what you think.” He yanks her head back, until his hot lips hover over her ear, his voice a low, lethal whisper. “I don’t care what you feel.” He thrusts deeper, making her whimper. “You are mine. Your body is mine, your soul is fucking mine. And you see this tight pussy of yours? All. Fucking. Mine!”

Her pretty moans are thick and desperate, her wetness coating his length, dripping down her thighs, slicking the floor beneath them.

“Now.” He releases her hair, but doesn’t let go. “Let’s try that again, shall we?”

He pulls out, and her moans turn to a needy whine, her body arching in protest, slick folds clenching around nothing. Pathetic . She has no shame, no dignity, begging for the cock of a man she claims she doesn’t belong to.

“Look at you,” he taunts, rubbing the head of his cock against her swollen clit. “Dripping for me, crying for me. If you want this cock back in your needy little cunt, tell me who you fucking belong to.”

She nods frantically, eyes wide, lips trembling. She is fucking crying for him.

“So.” He tilts her head to the side, a slow smirk playing at his lips. “Who do you belong to, Veronica?”

“Kael,” she breathes, her lips trembling, desperate, voice wrecked.

The sound of his name on her lips sends a violent jolt through him. His cock jerks, throbbing, aching to ruin, to brand her from the inside.

“Again.” His voice is strained, self-control fraying, sanity slipping as his hip takes her, driving into her without mercy.

“Oh my god,” she whimpers, eyes rolling back as he drives himself to the hilt. “You’re—fuck, you’re so fucking big. I can’t—”

“But you love it, right?” he taunts, biting back his own moan. Her pussy is too tight. Too fucking good. Too, too perfect, he just can’t help it.

“You love how big it is, don’t you?” His fingers dig into her hip, wet sounds piercing through the air as their skin collides in a rhythm. “You like how full your pussy gets when I’m buried deep inside you, right? You like how it tears through your fucking cunt, isn’t it? Is that why you’re always making such a fucking mess? Unable to control yourself? Begging and crying for me to go deeper, to fuck you hard and fast? It’s because you’re addicted to this cock, isn’t it?”

She can’t speak, only nodding, her body convulsing as he pounds into her with the insatiable urge of a beast, her back arching like a puppet on his string, grinding harder into him, trying to match his madness and rhythm.

His heavy pants punctuates the air as he slams into her harder, deeper, again and again until she is nothing but a shaking, incoherent mess beneath him.

“Who owns this fucking pussy?” he demands, each word breaking past his lips followed by a brutal thrust.

“Kael,” she cries louder, voice breaking, body unraveling. She clenches around him, milking his cock as he fucks her raw and hard, feeding her the pleasure she is too weak to deny.

She is a wreck, soaked, ruined, dripping. The scent of her arousal is thick, intoxicating, filling the room, filling his lungs, sending his mind spiraling into a deeper madness.

God, he really hates her. Every fucking thing about her. Because of her, he had to smother his brother, steal his control, and lock him away because he was a threat to his need to possess her. He hates the way he wants to unravel at just a look from her, the saccharine cheer in her voice as if she isn’t using arm warmers to hide a secret she doesn’t want people to see. He hates the illusion of innocence in those wicked, deceptive eyes as if beneath the layers of makeup, the skin doesn’t bear a deeper scar. And he hates the way she fucking turns him on without even trying too hard.

But none of this changes the fact that he is utterly obsessed with her, enough to betray his own brother.

He is fucking addicted, bound to her in the most primal violent way. And he will be damned to not keep her close enough until she can taste the darkness, become one with the darkness, crave the darkness until she can’t breathe without it.

And if any man so much as lay a hand on her, if anyone dares to look at her with even a whisper of claim, he will not hesitate. He will maim. He will burn. He will kill.

All of them.

If the world itself dares to stand in his way, he will set it ablaze. The sun will be nothing against the inferno of his wrath.

Nothing in this world will keep him from making her his.