I swallow as he nears me, my heartbeat accelerating even more than usual. He lifts my hair and sets it over one shoulder. He’s closer than expected, and I stiffen, feeling the leather of his gloved fingers running down my arm. The warmth of his breath at my neck makes me shudder.
“I…What are…?” I start, but something tickles the back of my neck, scratches the mark there. It makes my breath catch.
I swallow, my throat dry, a croaking sound coming when I try to speak and tell him to stop.
His hand slides down my side and over my thigh.
“What are you doing?” I ask, voice small as I look down at his big hand, the black glove working, fisting the fabric of the dress. “What are you doing?” I ask again, this time more forcefully. He hasn’t touched me more than he’s needed to since I’ve been here. What’s changed?
But it was only a matter of time, wasn’t it?
I just keep watching as my legs are exposed, my thighs, and I tug against the rope needing my arms to fight him when the fingers of that gloved hand brush against my clit.
“Oh god. Please don’t. Please.”
“No?”
I freeze. Even my tears seem to come to a halt.
He draws his arm around my middle and tugs me backward into his body with a jerk. He’s hard and warm and familiar, and my heart beats wildly as a thousand butterflies take wing inside my stomach.
I turn my head just a little, but he clucks his tongue, and I stop. I lick my lips.
“Santiago?”
Something cold and heavy drops over my head then, and I gasp, looking down at the rosary, the cross dangling between my breasts and over his arm, my feet off the floor as he takes my weight.
“Who else?”
I laugh. Almost. I mean, it’s the closest thing to a laugh. It sounds insane, and I feel fresh tears of relief. He’s come for me. He’s alive, and he’s come for me!
“Santiago! I was so scared.” I’m sobbing, trying to turn to him, but his arm is too tight, hurting me. I hear the tearing of fabric and feel the tugging of the dress at my neck before his other hand closes over my buttock and squeezes so hard that I cry out.
He rubs his chin against my face, his rough with scruff, mine unwashed and dirty and tearstained.
“Were you?” he asks.
I nod, my eyes wide in the darkness because this is not going as I expect. He’s not taking me down. He’s not wrapping me in his arms like he has before.
Of course he’s not.
He thinks I poisoned him. He thinks I tried to kill him.
“I didn’t—”
He lifts me a little higher, arm crushing my ribs which still feel bruised from when the other man took me. With his other hand on my butt, he pulls me open. And then I feel him, his hardness, and some part of me, some sick part of me wants this. Wants him.
He brushes his cheek against my cheek, and I can just see the shadow of his face, his dark eyes black in this night. He drags his lips along my cheekbone, then closer to my ear, not quite kissing me. This is something else.
“You didn’t what?” he asks.
I swallow because what I hear in his voice is not any different than the contempt I heard in the other man’s voice. In the voices of The Councilors when they spoke, condemning me before my trial even began.
Contempt.
Hate.
The only one at The Tribunal who seemed conflicted was Mercedes. It surprised me. Although conflict wasn’t what The Councilors heard. They heard fact. And maybe I’m grasping at straws because Mercedes has no love for me.
“What’s the matter, sweet, Poison Ivy?” he asks, then bends his head to lick my neck, to close his lips over my beating pulse and suck, his mouth wet and hot and his cock when he thrusts inside me unforgiving.
I gasp, the breath forced out of me.
“Tell me,” he says low and quiet, but not quite a whisper.
“I didn’t…” I grunt with his next thrust. He’s released my bottom and has got my jaw in his hand now, fingers digging into soft flesh.
“Tell. Me.” It’s a command. Voice loud. Firm. Angry.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.” I say it wrong. It comes out all wrong. It’s not what I meant. I meant…but it doesn’t matter. Santiago laughs. He just laughs this dark, ugly laugh and shifts his grip to my hips and draws back, lifting me, bending me to fuck me. To hurt me.
And he does.
This is a punishment fuck. The first of many punishments. I know it. I feel it. And as my legs quake and my insides go raw, I realize how stupid I’ve been. How naïve I’d been thinking he’d come for me, come to rescue me.
When did I forget that he was the devil?
And what will he do to me now that he thinks I tried to kill him?
His thrusts come harder, his fingers agony on the flesh of my hips, my shoulders aching with his tugs, wrists raw and bleeding.
I don’t come, but that’s the point. He takes me. Takes his pleasure from me. Lays claim to me. And even as he comes, I feel his rage. I feel his hate.
And I know that now, not like before, I am finished. I know that how it was before will be a thousand times preferable to what I have coming. To what he’ll do to me now.
He pulls me close with his final thrust, and I feel him throb and shudder, releasing inside me. I hear his breath, his groan, and I think about what it is between us. What it is that binds us.
Because we are bound.
And he will keep his promise. He will kill me. But not before I am begging for it, begging for mercy in death.
One gloved hand comes to my face, and I wonder if he can feel
