“Are you sure?”
“Let’s just get this over with,” Zane said reluctantly.
Pavel could tell him that he’d mistaken something, something important. Could tell him that this wasn’t just a random thing for him to get his rocks off. That this night wasn’t their end, but their beginning. Yet the determination and fury were so cute on Zane’s face, Pavel couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Once he had him writhing beneath him, truly trapped and forced to acknowledge what Pavel had always known, that was when he’d tell him everything.
That was when he’d make it clear in no uncertain terms exactly who Zane Solace belonged to, and what this night truly signified.
But for now…
“Run, Doctor,” he urged in a silky tone. “Let’s see how far you can get.”
Chapter 6:
This place was a maze.
A maze that was falling apart, but a maze nevertheless.
Zane found himself dangerously traveling up a set of stairs, only the half that connected with the wall on his right still intact. He kept going when no warning shouts came from behind him, not willing to take the time to evaluate why his subconscious was so certain Pavel wouldn’t let him climb to his doom.
The guy had just beenchoking him, after all.
And he hadn’t been able to tell that Zane was lying when he’d said he’d done it before. As far as he was concerned, breath play was out of the question, yet there was no way in hell he was going to stand there and let the other man get even more of a leg up on him.
So he’d fibbed and told him he and Lyra had played around with it, as though Zane would have ever trusted that bitch near his throat.
And when, moments later, Pavel had cut off his oxygen and made him come and it’d been the best rush Zane had ever felt? He’d sort of wished he’d been telling the truth and he really did have experience.
It’d left him wobbly on his feet, and he was actually grateful that Pavel had given him time to recoup before making him do this whole chase scene all over again.
He really was a sadist.
Zane had somehow gotten on the bad side of a sadist.
All these years, he’d been careful to cultivate his relations with the other Devils, happy to let Pavel linger on the sidelines where he seemed to prefer to be. Completely unaware that he was setting up his future self for ambush. Pavel hadn’t seemed like a threat.
How wrong Zane had been.
That was why he was here, following the rules and sticking inside the building—or what was left of it—instead of doing the logical thing and taking his chances. His sense of self-preservation was greater than his ego, and there wasn’t a single part of him that didn’t one hundred percent believe Pavel had meant his threat.
The guy had stared at him far too intensely when he’d delivered it. Zane had only ever seen crazy gazes like that right before Kelevra or Kazimir lost their shit and did something violent and dangerous.
And Pavel’s look had somehow beenworse.
Had he always been this twisted? As he made it to the top of the landing and selected a random direction down one of the hallways that branched forward and side to side, he tried to think back on their interactions in the past. No matter how hard he strained to recall a telling detail, however, he came up blank.
There’d never been any signs that he’d noticed that Pavel had issues. Sure, there’d been the rumored disappearance now and again, someone supposedly having gone missing from the guy’s club, but there wasn’t a Devil of Vitality that hadn’t taken a life or two. Truthfully, out of the lot of them, Pavel had always seemed the most normal.
He ran a successful business, kept to himself, did his duty as a member of the Retinue without fail, and had a pretty stable home life. That night outside of Kaz’s apartment had been the first and only time he’d acted out of character in front of Zane, and even then, Zane had chalked it up to being a fluke. An oddity. Something not even worth remembering, let alone wondering about.
But, man, he really should have.
Also, where the actual fuck was he?
Zane came to a stop and frowned, paying closer attention to his surroundings than he had been. He’d made it to what had obviously once been a greeting hall, open archways set in all directions. There was still some furniture strewn about, but the couch was rotted and the table in the corner was bloated. A hole in the ceiling above showed it was still dark outside, and a crack of thunder gave warning a second before rain began to pour down.
Cursing, he slid back to avoid being hit, his frustration growing tenfold with this new development. The idea to fight returned, but he brushed it aside. It was too late for that now, and not just because he’d misplaced his knife.
