Her Cruel Empire: A Dark Sapphic Mafia Romance, page 10
This is the woman the villagers cross themselves against.
“I’m not your prisoner,” I say, but my voice shakes.
Eva’s smile is as cold as her words. “No. You’re my property. And obviously I need to remind you of that fact.”
Chapter 13
Eva
Iwatch Robin standing there like a deer caught in headlights, pale and trembling and guilty as sin. My disobedient little bird.
Her defiance of my instruction wasn’t boldness, I’m sure. It was simply thoughtless. Naïve. She wandered off like some tourist exploring the countryside, not understanding that every step outside these walls could have been her last.
That makes it worse.
I advance slowly, deliberately, making each step a promise. A threat. Robin holds her ground, those wide blue eyes fixed on mine, and I want to shake her for her stupidity.
Or kiss her for her bravery.
“You disobeyed me.” My voice is steady, controlled. It gives nothing away of the chaos raging beneath my skin.
“I just—”
“You. Disobeyed. Me.”
I reach her in two more steps. Close enough to smell her fear mixed with that sweet synthetic strawberry scent that I’ve come to associate with Robin. Close enough to see the pulse hammering in her throat.
This is necessary, I tell myself. For reestablishing dominance. For reminding her exactly where she stands in my world.
But beneath that rationalization? I’m scared.
Not of Robin—never of Robin. But of how much she’s getting to me. Of the way I ache to touch her.
Of how I cut my Zurich trip short because I just couldn’t stand to be away from her any longer.
I take her wrist—not hard enough to bruise, but firm enough to remind her who owns her. She doesn’t resist as I lead her through the halls, but she doesn’t cower either.
Her silence is worse than an apology. I want her to beg. To justify. To explain what possessed her to ignore my explicit instructions.
Instead, she just follows, her breathing steady, her steps matching mine.
The defiance, the scornful compliance, makes my teeth clench.
We reach her bedroom and I pull her in, then shut the door behind us with a bang that echoes off stone walls. Robin turns to face me, still wearing that infuriating calm.
“Did you think you could just wander off?” I step closer, backing her toward the wall. “That there wouldn’t be consequences?”
Her chin lifts slightly. “You said I wasn’t a prisoner.”
“I said you were in danger.”
“In danger of what, Eva?” Her eyes flash. “Or are you the danger?”
That snaps the last thread of my restraint.
I let out a sound I’ve never made before in my life, a low hiss, and pull her close to me in one swift movement. “You’re mine. And you don’t get to make your own decisions while you belong to me.”
Then I kiss her—hard, furious, claiming. My mouth bruises against hers, all teeth and tongue and the taste of possession. She gasps against my lips, and I swallow the sound greedily.
Her hands come up to clutch my shoulders, and I feel her body melt into mine despite the violence of my kiss. Always so soft. Always so willing. Always so fucking dangerous to my self-control.
She’s probably right. She’s not in any danger at all.
I’m the one drowning.
I undress her without ceremony, my movements sharp and urgent. A seam tears in her sweater—that beautiful cream cashmere I chose specifically for her. She gasps at the sound, but doesn’t protest, as though she can read my mind: I could have a hundred more here by this evening if I wanted.
I shove her jeans down to her knees and find she’s wet already. Soaking right through those plain cotton panties that shouldn’t be sexy but somehow drive me wild with their innocence. When I ordered all those clothes for her, I made sure to get her usual underwear, the exact brand and size. Something about those white cotton panties she wears is far sexier than anything some high-end designer could put her in.
“You like this?” I mock, sliding my fingers along her seam through the thin fabric. “Learning your place?”
She meets my eyes without flinching. “Yes. Even though I probably shouldn’t.”
Simple. Honest. Devastating. I freeze for a heartbeat, staring into those impossibly blue eyes that see far too much and somehow miss everything important.
“Take off your underwear. Kneel down. And wait.”
I watch as she complies, and then I leave the room.
I make my preparations slowly, letting her sweat, and then I head back into her room via the passage that connects my room to hers. She visibly jumps when she sees the wall slide open, her lips opening in protest as she realizes there is an entrance to her room that she wasn’t aware of.
“Surprise,” I tell her coolly. “And now I have another one.” I shrug off my satin robe to reveal that I’m wearing nothing underneath—nothing but a harness, that is, with a thick dildo jutting out from it.
I watch her face carefully, enjoying the shock, but her shock gives way to a kind of wary eagerness. I smile. “I told you I was going to fuck that greedy little cunt of yours. Didn’t I?”
“Y-yes.”
I move towards her, enjoying the way her gaze locks on the toy between my legs. “And now,” I say, “I will teach you to obey me, little bird.”
She gasps as I shove her down on the rug and pull her legs open. She’s soaking wet. Her nipples are hard, and her cunt glistens with moisture. I press the tip of the dildo against her clit and rub, making her gasp.
“This is what you want, isn’t it?”
She nods, biting her lip.
“Tell me.”
“I want you to fuck me.”
I lean in and kiss her. “Beg me,” I whisper against her mouth.
“Please, Eva.” Her voice is breathy but steady. “I need you.”
Not “it.” Not “release” or “orgasm” or any of the things the others always begged for.
She needs me.
I slide inside her without warning, and she arches up with a sharp gasp. She’s so perfectly responsive that I nearly lose myself right there, driven by the need to pound into her, make her fall apart for me.
“Say my name,” I hiss against her throat. “Tell me who owns you.”
“You do. You do, Eva.” It sounds like worship. Like something sacred that has no place in my dark and terrible world.
“Mine,” I growl. “You’re mine.” I bite her collarbone, and she jerks beneath me, clenching tight around the dildo. “Tell me.”
“Yours,” she breathes. “I’m yours.”
That does it. My self-control vanishes in an instant.
I drive into her, thrusting hard and fast, but with unerring aim. Her hips meet mine, rising to meet every stroke. Her hands clutch my back, nails digging in as her gasps become frantic little cries. “You don’t come until I say,” I pant in her ear. “You will obey me, Robin, or you will regret it.”
I keep thrusting, feeling her heat rise with mine, watching her face grow flushed. “Please,” she gasps. “Please let me.”
“No.”
Her cry becomes a sob. She’s trembling under me, struggling to hold back.
“Please, I have to. Please, please—”
“Who do you belong to, little bird?”
“You,” she whimpers. “Please, Eva, I’m yours. You know I am. Please. I won’t disobey you again--”
“Then come for me,” I say. “Right now.”
Robin sucks in a deep breath, her whole body shaking, her legs wrapping around me as she comes in a long, jerking shudder.
I fuck her through her climax until she’s begging me to stop, and only then do I let myself go, grinding down against the ribbed harness until I find my own release. When it comes, it’s more like a punch in the gut than the usual wave of pleasure, and I roll off of her feeling even more frustrated than before the orgasm.
Because I don’t think I believe her. She meant it in the moment, certainly...but she has a curiosity to her that will not be vanquished. And I have no idea what to do about it.
For a few moments, I can’t move. Can’t think. Can’t do anything but lie there feeling Robin’s chest rise and fall under my arm across her.
Her hand slips into my hair, fingers combing through the strands with impossible gentleness. Like she’s petting something wild that might bolt.
That tenderness could break me completely.
I jerk upright, rolling away from her warmth, her softness, her sickly-sweet honesty. I wriggle out of the harness and pull on my robe.
“Eva?” Her voice is small, uncertain.
I don’t meet her eyes. Can’t. If I look at her now—naked and rumpled and glowing from what we just did—I might never leave this room.
“I have work to attend to.”
“But—”
“I said I have work.” The words come out sharper than I intended, but I don’t soften them. Can’t afford to.
“Will you…” Robin starts, then stops. Starts again. “When will I see you?”
The question is so quietly asked, so carefully neutral, that it nearly undoes all my careful reconstruction.
“When I decide you will. In the meantime, do not leave this room, little bird, or you will not enjoy the consequences. I can teach a lesson kindly, as you’ve just seen—but I can also be cruel.”
With that, I walk to the door without looking back.
I make it only a few steps down the corridor before my legs threaten to give out. I press my back against the wall, breathing hard, my body still humming with the aftershocks of what just happened.
I’ve fucked presidents’ daughters and cartel queens and contract killers who moan more tunefully than opera singers. I’ve had women beg me to take them away from their gilded cages, and others who’ve tried to put bullets in my brain when they realized I wouldn’t.
But no one has ever looked at me the way Robin does. Like I’m not some mythic creature to hide from in the dark. She looks at me like I’m…
Like I’m just another woman. Another woman who has the capacity to fall, and fall hard.
No one has ever made me feel like I’m the one who might get ruined.
I straighten my spine, smooth my hair, and continue down the hall to my bedroom, where I will shower and dress, and then get back to running my empire. I have enemies to crush. A reputation to maintain.
Robin Rivers is just a temporary tool. A stress reliever that I will use when I need it and put it away when I don’t. By the time our thirty days are up, I’ll be tired of her.
I’ll trade her in for a new model, just like I do every time.
Chapter 14
Robin
Istay in my room as instructed, jumping when Mrs. Kovacs brings in my evening meal, and then I go to bed when I can no longer stand being awake. But I barely sleep.
Every time I close my eyes, I see those bloody bandages. Or else I feel Eva’s hands on my skin, claiming and desperate one moment, cold and distant the next. Hear the village woman’s words echoing in my ears: You should not be at the castle.
The problem is, a single heated glance from Eva Novak is enough to get me soaking through my panties for her. The memory of her fucking me is just as compelling as the warnings from the village.
By dawn, I’m up and sitting by the window, watching gray light creep over the black lake. My reflection in the glass stares back at me—tired, hollow-eyed, wearing one of Eva’s expensive nightgowns with a matching robe. It feels more like a costume than clothing.
Did she kill those village girls like the ancestor she seemed so proud of? Did that ancestor behave like Eva, keeping a “toy” in a room nearby, and creep through that secret passageway to do terrible things to them in the dark of night?
I go to the wall now where she appeared from, just as I have gone to it scores of times this long night, and run my fingers over the hidden seam. It’s so perfectly set into the molding that I can barely sense it—and I have no idea how to open it. I have to assume it’s a way for the lady of Castle Blacklake to enter this room in secret, but whoever is in here can’t get back through the other way. That’s why she left by the usual door, after she was done fucking me into submission.
But why didn’t she tell me about this secret door? And speaking of secret doors, what’s behind that locked one that I’m not allowed to enter? Who is bleeding behind that door?
The questions circle in my head like vultures. I can’t go on like this. The not-knowing is eating me alive, making me question my very safety.
I have to find out what’s really going on in this place.
I dress simply—a pair of jeans and another sweater from Eva’s carefully chosen wardrobe for me, and underneath, I wear the cotton underwear. She told me to stay in my room, but I’m not going to let her treat me like some naughty child. I’m a grown woman, for God’s sake.
And if she thought giving me an incredible orgasm was enough to teach me obedience…well, she has a thing or two to learn herself.
The kitchen staff are standoffish when I arrive for breakfast. They barely look at me, speak in hushed tones that stop when I get too close. Word has clearly spread about my village excursion and Eva’s fury.
But I sit at my usual spot anyway, sipping the thick, sweet coffee and picking at bread and cheese. Waiting. Watching.
And I don’t have long to wait before they appear. The woman with the silver braid and the man with the gun. They sit at their corner table, eat their breakfast in perfect silence, then rise to leave.
“I should get back to my room,” I announce loudly enough for the cook to hear. “Thank you for breakfast.”
She nods curtly without looking up from her kneading.
I head toward the main corridor, but the moment I’m out of sight, I double back, finding my way to the corridor where the locked door is situated. And I guessed the layout of the castle right, for once. Just a few seconds after I tuck myself into that empty room again, the strange pair emerges from another doorway and into the hallway.
If I do what I’m thinking about doing, I could wind up dead. But if I stay trembling and wide-eyed in my allocated bedroom, I could also wind up dead, if the villagers are to be believed.
I’ve tried to be good. I’ve tried to follow the rules. But the rules here seem designed to keep me not safe, but contained. And I’m not going to die from being naïve.
So I watch carefully as the man unlocks the forbidden door down the corridor and ushers the woman through. Just after they move through the doorway, I sprint as quietly as I can down the hallway and catch the door before it latches. I wait a few heart-pounding seconds for one of them to notice, to come back, but there’s nothing.
At last, I pull the door slowly open, praying it won’t creak.
It doesn’t. The hinges are well-oiled.
The hallway inside is dimmer than the rest of the castle, lit by overhead lights that have been put in as what looks like a temporary measure. And the air smells different here—antiseptic mixed with something…old.
But it’s not unpleasant. It doesn’t, for example, smell like sweat or blood or death. I think it’s just a very old part of the castle.
I press myself against the wall, moving as quietly as possible over the worn runner that covers a smooth stone floor. I can’t see anyone; nothing lies before me but a long corridor leading to another door at the end, but from a doorway halfway down the corridor, I hear the scrape of chairs, low murmured conversation.
This is my chance.
I creep carefully past their doorway after convincing myself from the sound of their voices that they’re facing away from the door—and they are. I catch a quick glimpse of them standing at what looks like a modern kitchen counter, and I continue to the end of the hall.
The heavy wooden door at the end of it stands slightly ajar.
I push it open and step inside.
Chapter 15
Robin
It’s not a dungeon.
It’s not a torture chamber or some medieval oubliette where Eva keeps her enemies.
It’s a hospital room.
Monitors beep softly in the dim space. IV lines snake from hanging bags to a pale man lying motionless in a hospital bed. The equipment is state-of-the-art—better than anything I’ve seen outside of TV medical dramas.
And beside the bed, dressed in blood red, sits Eva herself.
She holds the man’s hand, stroking it with infinite tenderness. Her dark hair falls like a curtain around her face, and for the first time since I’ve known her, she looks…small. Vulnerable.
Human.
Her head lifts. Her amber eyes meet mine.
The transformation is instant and terrifying.
Eva explodes to her feet, her chair clattering backward. In one quick motion, she grabs a gun from God knows where, and points it directly at my chest.
“Who sent you?” Her voice is as hard as I’ve ever heard it.
I freeze, hands instinctively rising. “What?”
“Are you here to finish the job? Are you a plant after all? Or a fucking assassin—one of those Syndicate mercenaries? Christ, how could I be so stupid?”
The composure I’ve seen her maintain through every interaction—with her men, her staff, even in moments of passion—has gone completely. Rage and grief and humiliation all seem to be boiling up from somewhere deep inside her, and I realize she feels exposed. Caught.
“Eva, I don’t understand—”
“Don’t.” The gun doesn’t waver. “Don’t you dare lie to me. Not now.”
Her finger rests on the trigger, and I know with crystalline clarity that she will pull it. This isn’t the Eva who bought me expensive clothes or whispered commands in bed.
This is the other Eva. The descendant of a long line of very vicious and dangerous people.
