Page 40 of Vow to Corrupt You (Gods of Corruption #1)

Nikos

I zip my pants, breathing hard as I look at her, or rather, the mess we’ve made. My cum and her arousal dripping down her thighs, the taste of her still on my tongue. She tries to fix her hair, the strands clinging to her sweat-slicked face. Her chest heaves, her gaze questioning.

“I’m taking you home,” I say, my voice rough.

She blinks, almost as if I slapped her. “That’s it?” she shrieks. “You brought me here, said all those things, made sure I’d remember every second of it… and then, just like that, you push me away again?”

My jaw clenches beyond my control. “You’re the one who betrayed me,” I bite out. “Just because we had a good fuck doesn’t mean everything between us is fine.”

I know those words hit her like a punch, but I can’t knock down the walls I’ve built around myself, even if I wanted to. So, I do what I do best. I’m a heartless motherfucker.

But she catches me off guard with a defiant spark lighting in her eyes.

“I know what you’re doing. You think if you push me hard enough, I’ll break.

Give up. But I’m not going anywhere. If you want me to stay, if you demand I spend my life by your side as your queen—like you say—then you have to start treating me as that. I’m done playing games, Nikos.”

I glare down at her, hissing darkly. “What more do you want from me? Haven’t I proven enough that you’re my equal?”

She lets out a bitter laugh. “Your equal? That’s the last thing I feel like. You treat me like I’m your possession. A prize you traded my brother’s life for. Part of some contract. A deal.”

Anger flares, and I step closer. With each of my steps, she takes one back until I cage her in against the mirror wall. My fists clench as I lean down, my face inches from hers.

“Don’t you see?” The words scrape up my throat.

“I’m doing things I never imagined I’d do—for you.

I’ve spared your brother’s life. Twice. I’ve shown mercy, something I’ve never shown anyone.

And every time you defy me, I let it go.

I forgive you. You think that’s easy for me?

I’m used to obedience without question, something you don’t offer.

And yet, despite all that, for you, I’d burn the world if you asked.

” My voice drops to a harsh grunt, my towering frustration bleeding through.

This woman, seemingly so shy and innocent, and yet she stirs something feral in me—something even my worst enemies couldn’t awaken.

I know, one day, she might be my downfall, my destruction, my undoing, and still, I can’t help but crave her more than my next breath.

She’s like a bullet I don’t want to dodge. How can she not see that?

I lean down, our foreheads touching and gasps syncing like our bodies know each other better than we do. “Does that feel like a contract to you? Like you’re just a possession? Does it really, Serena?”

“Does that mean…” she hesitates, her gaze flickering between mine with as much fear as hope. “Do you… love me, Nikos? Is that why you can’t let me go?”

Her question hits me like a goddamn blow.

It freezes me, tears me apart, and leaves me scrambling for answers I’ve never considered.

I step back and look at her, seeing the vulnerability etched on her, and something inside me shifts.

Something I’ve been trying to bury for far too long.

I feel a cold sweat prick my skin as I stare at her, unsure of what to say, unsure of what love even means.

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. All the reflections of me—distorted and broken—stare back at me, reminding me of every shade of who I was, every version of myself I used to be.

I’ve never been given the luxury of love.

Never been taught it. Never been shown it.

On the contrary. My whole life, I’ve been denied the feeling of so-called love.

I was taught it’s a destructive thing I must never feel.

A weakness. How could I ever give it to her?

She stares at me, waiting, with that spark of hope in her mocha eyes. She believes in something that I can’t even begin to comprehend.

I shake my head faintly, unable to look away from her.

“I don’t understand what love is. Never experienced it.

If it’s thinking of you every minute of the day obsessively, then I love you.

If it’s wanting to possess you, your body and mind, I love you.

If it’s being willing to kill for you and even die for you, I love you. Or perhaps... it is just an obsession.”

I swallow hard, my throat dry as hell. “Because I am obsessed with you. From the moment I saw you, I knew you needed to be mine. And I told you, I’m a possessive bastard. So forgive me if I can’t say those words if I love you, because I’ve never been given the chance to experience love.”

She places her hand on me and whispers, “I think you know, that’s why you’re so scared of it.”

The tension between us thickens, like cigar smoke inhaled deep into my lungs, suffocating the words I want to say.

She looks into me like she wants to cut through the darkest layers of me, digging deep into the places I’ve buried, the areas no one has ever dared touch before.

Perhaps what she says is the truth... the truth I’ve spent my whole life running from.

“I want to know you, the real you, with your fractures and scars. Your darkest demons,” she whispers softly, and I swallow hard, trying to ignore the tightness in my throat, trying to keep some control, to keep my walls from crumbling.

“If you want me to stay, to own me, then you must let me in. Show me all of you. I want you whole…or not at all. I want your darkness, even the parts hidden in the deepest corners of your broken soul. The things that make you who you are. The things you’ve done.

The monsters you’ve been forced to become.

The ones that haunt you.” Her hand hovers over my cheek hesitantly, as if she’s scared to touch me, before gently tracing the stubbled skin with her fingertips.

“Open up to me, Nikos. That’s all I ask.

Tell me what happened in your past. Why… ”

“Why did I kill my father?” My jaw clenches.

She can’t possibly understand what she’s asking.

“That part of me… it’s twisted. Scarred.

Dark. I’ve tried to bury it, but it keeps clawing its way up.

Haunting me.” I pause, my mind ravaged by visions of blood-slicked hands and hollow eyes, the echo of breaking bones reverberating in the black pit of my soul.

Images of my violent past flash before me, pulling me back to the scarred sins I can never escape. “It scares even me.”

“I’m not afraid,” she says quietly, shaking her head slightly. “Not anymore.”

Something in me snaps. She’s not scared?

Well, let’s find out. “Are you ready to face death itself, to look it in the eyes?” I hiss, and for a second, I think she’ll back down.

I almost want her to. I’m afraid once I let the demons of my past out, it could ruin her because these demons have teeth, and they’re always hungry.

But slowly, she nods. “Yes.”

“Very well.”

I grab her hand and pull her out of Olympus and into the car.

I don’t say a word; I merely start the engine and push the gas as hard as it will go, accelerating down the road.

I take the curves without slowing, the headlights barely catching the jagged turns and the drop-offs into nothingness.

She grips the seat as the car races faster and faster.

She might’ve just bought her ticket to an early grave.

But it’s the only way I can tell her of my past, with the edge of death hovering over me. Otherwise, I couldn’t.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see her watching me, as scared as she is determined. And for the first time, I realize she might actually be willing to follow me into the dark.

The engine roars like a beast desperate to break free from its cage.

Just like the demons inside me, tearing at the barriers of my sanity, desperate to break free.

The faster I go, the more the adrenaline claws at me, urging me to keep speeding toward the edge.

But I need this. The chaos, the rawness of it, is the only way I can drag the memories back from the depths of my mind.

To actually say them out loud for the first time.

All of it comes at a price…and that price I had to pay was for my soul.

“My childhood was... a nightmare,” I mutter. Every word feels like poison. “My father was a cruel man. He abused me in ways I can’t even begin to describe. The scars you’ve seen... he’d burn my skin to teach me a lesson whenever I disobeyed, whenever I showed any emotions.”

I hear a gasp of terror, perhaps pity, can’t really tell, and that’s not even an ounce of what my past looked like.

I slam my fist against the steering wheel as if it can somehow push the pain down, but it only makes it worse.

The memories flash in my mind—my father’s rough hands, the smell of burning flesh.

The road ahead blurs, and for a split second, I think I see his face in the rearview mirror, watching me.

He’s always fucking watching me. It’s pulling me apart from the inside out.

“He wanted to break me,” I continue, “to mold me into something emotionless, obedient. He’d lock me in a wooden box for hours. No light, no sound, no escape. There was only darkness. And that darkness… it became a part of me.”

Instinctively, my foot slams down on the gas pedal, though it’s already flat to the floor.

I need it. The speed. It’s as if it can drown out the screams in my head.

My father’s face, his cruel laugh as he tortured me, my mother’s screams…

everything crashes back into me like a storm of violent memories.

I can still see it. Her. My mother, blood staining the floor beneath her, begging for her life.

“But all that, the scars, the confinement, it wasn’t even the worst,” I whisper as if to myself, voice dark, choked.

The memories are flooding back like a goddamn torrent.

“It was when he killed my mother. Right in front of me.” My hands are shaking now, so I grip the steering wheel tighter.

“She tried to protect me, but she didn’t stand a chance against him.

.. He fucking murdered her for it. And all the while, he kept telling me it was a lesson.

A lesson to never love, never care for anyone. He said it only leads to destruction.”

“Nikos, I don’t… what to say,” she mutters. I feel the vein in my temple pulsing, and I barely register her words. “I didn’t know.”

Of course, she didn’t. No one did.

Maybe now she will understand the man I was forced to become. The monster I am now. The monster he created. He destroyed every part of me that could feel or love. Now, I destroy everything I touch, and I know I’ll destroy her, too…

“I realized that to survive, I had to become what he wanted.” The words spill out with a brutal honesty I’ve never allowed myself before. “A monster. I buried every fucking feeling. Every bit of humanity I had, I buried it deep inside. I became cold and merciless. It was the only way to survive.”

I glance at her—pale, lips parted, fear and pity etched into every line of her expression.

I don’t want pity, especially not her pity.

“Is that why you killed him?” Her voice trembles. “Because of the abuse? Because of your mother?”

I let out a bitter laugh. “No. I didn’t kill him because of that. Although I should have.” The words taste like poison as they slip from my lips. “I allowed myself one more weakness. And it was the last time I ever did.”

The memory comes rushing back, vivid and violent. The girl. The one person I thought I could love. My mind flashes to her face, her fragile body collapsing to the floor, the innocence in her eyes fading as life left them.

“I was sixteen,” I mutter. “I fell in love with her. She was pure, like you. Innocent. And that night... my father, he…” My hands tighten on the wheel as the memory takes over.

“He caught her with me, tied me up, and made me watch as he fucking murdered her. He slit her throat in front of me like it was nothing. Like she was nothing.”

I hear my breath quicken, coming harder, veering recklessly into the opposite lane. If a car appeared now, we’d die—but even that isn’t enough. It’s still not enough to silence the screams, to erase the images in my mind.

“When he finally untied me…” My hands squeeze the steering wheel with force, my knuckles turning white.

“Everything inside me snapped. All the shit he did to me, my mother’s death, Lydia’s death.

.. it all came crashing down at once. I didn’t even think.

I just fucking lost it. I threw myself at him, and I started choking the life out of him.

I didn’t stop. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until his blood was on my hands. ”

A single tear spills down my cheek, and I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to stop them. The tears. I can’t allow myself any weakness. Never again.

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” I whisper, barely above a breath. “But I did. And now, his blood... his blood’s still on my hands. It haunts me every fucking day.”

Serena doesn’t say anything. She’s silent, and I can feel her gaze on me, but the road ahead is a black void. Just like my soul.

“Nikos, watch out!” she screams at the blinding lights of a car speeding toward us. The shriek of its horn pierces my ears, drowning out every thought, every memory. Finally, I no longer hear the voices in my head.

Serena urges me to steer back into the right lane to avoid the crash, but I don’t react, almost as if I want it.

Maybe I do want to die tonight. Maybe I want to take her with me.

Tires squeal, rubber fighting against asphalt as the car bucks beneath us. I glance at her; her face is pale, but her eyes aren’t just scared. They look calm. Oddly calm. As if she’s ready to die too.

But I can’t let that happen. Everything I’ve done that has led me to this point was to protect her. My visceral need to drag her to the depths of my darkness, break her, corrupt her, all to make sure that the one person who could mean the world to me doesn’t die.

My hands wrench the wheel to the right. The car lurches violently, tires skidding as we spin in sickening circles. The world outside blurs, and I see only her.

Her hair falls across her face, her body wound tight. The car groans to a halt just beyond the road; our heavy breathing is the only sound breaking the deafening silence. Adrenaline still bursting.

Slowly, I turn to her. Her eyes meet mine, wide and unblinking. I reach out, my fingers brushing her cheek. She doesn’t flinch.

“I’m giving you a choice, wicked one ,” my voice sounds unfamiliar, hoarse as if it’s not me speaking. “I’m giving you a choice to leave me.”