Sins That Find Us, page 7
After all, there’s no satisfaction in pain when he can’t get me to scream. Or when he knows I’ll like it too fucking much.
James has no right to be angry with me, though. We’d split up when we lost visual on the pretty princess, and I’m better at this game than he is. He’s still young and still learning, and I know that pisses him off.
He can take it out on me all he wants, though.
It doesn’t bother me, especially knowing that in a few steps, my body will belong to Phoenix, and he’ll give me everything I could possibly ask for.
Chapter 7
JAMES
I was twenty-one the first time someone called me a nympho. It was Kane, and he had been fucking me for hours, and I still wasn’t close to being done. I think he said it to try and humiliate me, but instead, I started wearing it like a badge of honor.
It’s only gotten worse as the years go on, and now, the sound of screaming through the speakers that Phoenix left on is really doing it for me. I’m balls-deep in Phoenix, laughing my ass off as he grunts and squirms against the sheets, and I time my thrusts to the sound of Ari working the poor bastard over for his final breaths.
The fucker was already half-dead, but Ari has a way of reviving people just when they think it’s over. It shouldn’t get my blood running as hot as it does, but what can I say? We’re all a little fucked-up here.
Beneath me, Phoenix finally shudders and manages to drag his dick against the sheets just hard enough to come, and I let him moan through it before shooting my load deep inside him. I give the side of his ass a pat like he’s some kind of dairy cow, and then I roll off and fall flat on my back.
He collapses in his own mess, his brow furrowed and his eyes mostly shut since he took his prosthetics out somewhere during his afternoon with Ari. He looks almost sweet. Of course, it’s a mistake to think of any of us as sweet, but that’s probably what makes us so dangerous.
I’m probably the only one that stands out in a crowd, but that’s mostly because of my arm. And maybe a little bit of the metal in my face and ink on my skin, but people we come across tend to think my piercings are hot, and my stump is mysterious…or whatever.
Unable to help it, I think about Alice and the way she’d stared at my arm. In that moment, it had bothered me the way she stared at my scars. Maybe because there wasn’t disgust or that sort of unconscious revulsion that most people feel when they see a mangled limb. With her, there was curiosity and maybe even a little empathy.
So I told her it was a shark bite, and the sarcasm she shot at me took the place of any potential pity. That was the Alice I needed. The Alice that would mouth off and push too far and force our hand. That was the Alice that had to be present because Kane has plans for her, and nothing any of us says or does would change his mind.
He is God here, after all.
“Check the monitor.” Phoenix’s voice is hoarse, probably from the way I’d forced him to deep-throat me, and with my dick piercings, that was never kind to sensitive flesh. He doesn’t sound annoyed about it, though. In fact, he’s kind of smiling.
Rolling over, I pull the tablet from the bedside table, where I always keep it. Each of us has one that connects to every piece of monitoring system that Phoenix has set up. I touch the button for the playroom, and I see Ari having a cigarette, leaning against the table. The man in the chair is slumped over, and the monitor in the room is registering only one heartbeat.
RIP, you piece of shit, I think to myself with a grin.
“Dead.”
Phoenix pushes up on his elbow with a frown. “Who’s dead?”
“The fucker Ari and Kane have been working over,” I answer, confused because who the fuck does he think I meant?
Phoenix scoffs, and he’d probably be rolling his eyes if he could. “No, jackass. Check on her.”
Her. Alice.
She’s been unconscious ever since Ari stuffed that rag in her mouth and drugged her to oblivion. She’s been out so long I’ve started to worry a little bit, even though her vitals monitor says she’s fine. She’s probably dehydrated as fuck and hungry, and I don’t think she’s going to get much comfort when she wakes up, but it’s still good to know these things.
I think.
I feel a weird sense of trepidation as I hit the menu button and hover my finger over the cell in the basement. Only a few people have ever occupied that space. It was originally built for Phoenix when he tried to end his life after his injuries, and I spent time in there when Kane gave me the worst punishment of my life.
But outside our little island of misfits? I usually think of that place as death row because no one ever comes out of there and lives much longer than a few more heartbeats.
I ignore the feeling in the pit of my stomach as I tap the button and the room flares to life. It’s dark, but Phoenix’s cameras have amazing night vision. Alice is on the bed, and her eyes are closed, but she’s finally starting to stir.
With a breath, I stroke my finger over her midnight-black hair, which is fanned out and tangled, and I try not to think about how I feel…and also why. There’s no need for it. My entire world exists under this roof, and we’re perfectly fine as we are.
She’s just a means to an end.
So why does this all feel…wrong?
I jolt back to the present when fingers brush against my jaw, and I look up from the screen as Phoenix rolls a little closer. His touch trails down my arm, over my fingers, then onto the screen. “What does she look like?”
I know he knows. His AI is programmed with more descriptive abilities than most humans have, but I know Phoenix also hates it sometimes. He just hates trusting other people not to lie to him even more. Tech, he always says, is incapable of blowing smoke up his ass to make him feel better.
Once upon a time, Kane tried to lie about the way Phoenix’s scars looked. Then he had his AI describe what was in the mirror, and it was the worst fight I’ve ever seen. And Kane allowed Phoenix to hurt him because he knew he needed to pay penance.
We’ve learned since then, and I think Phoenix trusts us, but I know he’ll be fact-checking me the second we’re alone.
“She’s starting to wake up,” I tell him. I let the tablet fall against my stump so I can link my fingers with his. “She looks pretty fucking wrecked.”
“Pretty,” he echoes.
Shit, he caught that. I swallow thickly. “Yeah. She is. She’s got really innocent eyes—like she doesn’t quite know what fear is. It’ll be a shame to watch Ari break her.” Phoenix sighs in my silence, then squeezes my hand to tell me to go on. “She’s thin. She probably hasn’t been eating well since the night at the bar—maybe before that. I can’t imagine being related to Guido Romano does wonders for anyone’s appetite.”
Phoenix snorts. “No.”
“I think you’d like her.”
“I’m not capable of that,” he argues.
I don’t call him out on his obvious bullshit. I know it makes him feel better to pretend like none of this affects him. I pull my hand out of his hand and push my fingers through his hair. He normally keeps it long, but he cut it short a few weeks ago, and it suits him. He’s got a gentle wave, the strands a sort of grey-streaked caramel brown, and it looks gorgeous in the sun.
“Her hair’s black,” I tell him.
“Like the color or like absence?” he asks.
Leave it to him to put it that way. “Like a raven—sort of iridescent in the right light. Her eyes are like the color of wet earth, and her skin is rich tawny. She looks nothing like Romano. I think she takes after her mum.”
He hums softly, then pulls my hand from his hair, kissing the tips of my fingers before biting my wrist so hard it stings. I suck in a breath, dropping the tablet as I tug him over my body to kiss him. We kiss like we fight—without a care in the world and desperate to win. He overpowers me in my exhaustion, though, and I’m happy to let him.
His kisses remain sharp as he attacks my jaw, my neck, down my shoulders. He scrapes along my stump, setting my severed nerve endings alight like lightning bolts that hit me in the gut and the groin and all the way down to my toes. He keeps going even when he can tell it’s too much, and just when it’s on the tip of my tongue to beg him to stop, he drops against me and lets me take all of his weight.
“Has Kane said what he wants to do with her?” Phoenix asks.
I’m a little surprised. If Kane opens up to anyone, it’s to Phoenix. Kane loved him first and will probably love him last. Kane loves him to the point of insanity, locking him away like fucking Rapunzel. Only there will never be a prince riding up to his rescue.
We’ve all tried. I tried—and I paid the price for it.
A month in solitude without a word spoken, without a single touch except for the whip against my back. It wasn’t until I dropped to my knees and swore I would never, ever beg for Phoenix’s freedom ever again that Kane relented.
And even then, he made me earn my way back into his good graces.
That’s the price of his love.
That’s why knowing Alice has no chance of living through this is actually her freedom. Because the alternative is so much more terrifying.
“He hasn’t said anything to me,” I confess.
Phoenix rolls off me and traces fingers over my throat, then over my lips. “Will you go visit her?”
I don’t answer that. I can’t. I want to say no because the more time I spend with her, the stronger these feelings will get. But I also don’t want to lie to Phoenix again. “Will you?” I counter instead.
He laughs. “You know I won’t.”
It’s the truth, I suppose. He won’t, because apart from Kane, Ari, and me, everything he’s ever tried to keep has been ripped away from him.
I stay with Phoenix until after dinner. His meds kick in sometime around the chocolate lava cake that Ari had the kitchen send up, and he slumps over at the table, so I get him into bed and then leave. He has night terrors, and for that reason alone, none of us ever sleeps with him. I love being choked as much as the next masochist, but it’s not the most pleasant way to wake up.
Especially since Phoenix is blind and can’t use those visual cues to remind himself who’s in bed with him.
I know that dying young for men like me is inevitable, but that’s not the way I want to go.
I stand by his door in an open button-up and jeans for a good long while until I’m sure he’s really out, and then I head down the hall. It’s only when I pass my room that I realize where I’m going, and I glance behind me to see if I’m being followed.
It’s only my paranoia talking, though. Ari’s worn-out from the playroom, and Kane left the property hours ago, probably to check into the info he was able to extract from the stranger we took alongside Alice. I still don’t know his name or where he came from. I sent Ari a message on his tablet asking, but he left me on read like the little fucker he is.
It doesn’t exactly matter, of course. We have Alice, that guy is dead, and it’s only a matter of time before Kane comes back and orders us to start working her over so we can get Guido on the hook. My heart’s beating in my throat at the thought of seeing Alice in Ari’s chair, and I shove the thoughts away when I reach the door to her cell. The little window is open, and I can hear her mumbling to herself.
Her words aren’t slurred, so I turn on my heel and head up to the kitchen because the least I can do is make her last few hours more comfortable. I’m not a gourmet chef or anything. The kitchen is normally Kane’s domain, so I throw together a sandwich and grab a couple of bottles of water and slap them on a tray before heading back down.
I can hear Alice moving around a bit more now, and I hesitate before balancing the tray on my stump, pressing my thumb to the keypad, and listening for the lock to move. The moment it clicks, I hear her scramble away, and then the place is as silent as the grave.
She knows she’s in danger.
Smart girl.
I use my stump to press the handle down, and then I hip-check the door wide. It creaks loudly, then gives way to the dark. It only takes me a minute for my stump to find the switch, and the room is suddenly flooded with a painful LED.
It was meant to be that way—harsh and cruel, and the effect on her is immediate. Her eyes slam shut, and she presses herself against the wall, holding her knees to her chest. I take a few steps into the room, and her entire body goes so tense she’s probably going to pass out if she’s not careful.
“Careful there, darling.”
Her head snaps up, and she forces her eyes open, though I doubt she can see me very well. “You.”
“James,” I tell her. I didn’t introduce myself that night at the bar because that would have been stupid. But it doesn’t matter now. “It’s good to see you again.”
Her eyes narrow into little slits, and she drops one leg, though her posture is still defensive. “Where the fuck am I?” Her voice is hoarse, and her fingers shake—probably from hunger as much as from fear. I carefully balance the tray on my hand, and I set it on the edge of the bed.
One of the water bottles topples off to the side, and she jumps half a foot.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I tell her. Not a lie. It won’t be me giving her pain. I take her in as her gaze shifts to the sandwich, and this close, she’s even thinner than on the screen.
A small fire made of rage and disgust begins to crackle in my belly. How does a man like Guido Romano let his last surviving child—his one treasure—get this bad? I can’t help but wonder if maybe Kane got it wrong because she certainly doesn’t look like the spoiled Romano princess he claims she is. She sure as shit doesn’t look like anyone’s taken the time to love her in a good long while.
“You need to eat, and you definitely need water.”
“Fuck you,” she spits, and I can’t help my grin as I walk across the room and snag the chair that’s shoved up against the wall. It’s obvious by the look of surprise on her face she hadn’t realized it was there, but then again, how could she? She was unconscious and then woke to nearly pitch-black.
“We can visit that idea later,” I tell her with a wink as I drop into the chair. I gesture at the tray again, and she looks at it like she’s contemplating throwing it at me. It wouldn’t be the wisest choice. I don’t particularly want to hurt her, but my patience is paper-thin right now, and I have no problem leaving her here to suffer on her own while I work out why the hell I feel this way. “If you want those drugs out of your system, you need to eat.”
“Right, and get knocked out again so you can do God knows what to me?”
I meet her gaze steadily and tell her the most brutal truth about her situation. “Darling, we don’t need to knock you out to do anything.”
Her skin goes even more wan, and she swallows thickly before finally reaching out and snagging one of the bottles. I can see her silent sigh of relief when she realizes the bottle is sealed, and she wastes no time gulping it down. It’s only when I realize she’s going to make herself sick that I jump up and snatch it from her hand, and she stares up at me, panicked.
“Slowly, darling,” I tell her. I carefully use my extended pinky to tip her chin up, then press the bottle to her lips again. I can’t take my eyes off her throat as she swallows a few more delicate sips. “Good girl.”
She shudders, and I shove down the ideas now forming in my head about that. But she’s only here for one thing: Kane’s judgment and sentence.
“What do you want with me?” she finally asks.
I sigh at that because it’s the one question I don’t want to answer. Tucking the water bottle in the crook of my stump, I reach for the cap and twist it on before setting it down and pushing the tray toward her. When she stares again, I roll my eyes, then snatch up one half and take a bite before walking back to my chair.
“Is it, like, some kind of secret? Or is this some sadistic form of torture by keeping me in the dark.”
I laugh because, yeah, we’ve all got sadism and masochism running through our veins, and I don’t think she knows how right she is. “It’s just not my information to give, darling.”
She scowls at me as she nibbles on the bread crust. “Stop calling me that.”
“Don’t think you could make me,” I say with a shrug. She could beg, but it wouldn’t do her any good. The nickname helps me keep my distance from her. I know she’s Alice Romano—the daughter of the man responsible for the worst pain I have ever experienced in my life. I want her to suffer the way I suffered, and yet, I can’t help but see all the wasted life in her eyes.
Before I can taunt her more, or maybe flirt with her because who the hell knows what I’m actually doing right now, my watch buzzes. It’s a message from Phoenix letting me know that Kane’s back. I rise from my chair and head toward the door, and I hear the bed creak as Alice shifts to the end of it.
“Where are you going?” she demands.
I shrug and reach for the light, stopping when she makes a noise of panic. “Something wrong, darling?”
“Don’t leave me in the dark,” she whispers.
I turn to face her, letting a small sigh escape because there’s nothing I really can do to help her. “Trust me when I say it’s better without the lights on.”
Boldy—surprising me completely—she stands up. “Why do you sound like you know?”
“Because I do. This room and I were good friends once, so I know better than anyone how to survive it.”
“Does that mean there’s a chance I might live?”
I hold her gaze for a long moment, letting her read whatever she can from my eyes, and then I flick the switch and step out of the dark and into the dim light of the corridor. “That’s not up to me, darling.”
“Then who?” she calls as I start to close the door.
“God,” I tell her. “He’s just gotten home and heading for his throne room, but I’m sure he’ll be by to pay you a visit soon.” Then I shut the door and leave her to the mental torture of knowing that these are probably her last hours.
