“There’s always room for improvement,” I say, but my heart isn’t in it, because my entire body is still buzzing with latent ecstasy.
In those last few minutes, he took me to another plane of existence, and this ugly room might as well be a gothic cathedral after dark, lit up with candles and colors dancing in the stained glass.
The used condom lands on the floor with a wet slap, bringing me back to reality in which I am a well-fucked mess, struggling to regain composure.
Dalton helps himself tomycigarette offmydesk and lights it withmylighter. He does look pretty glorious with the black cig, I’ve got to give him that. Eyes half-lidded, satisfied smile, and wearing nothing but his ink. I can practically smell the dark particles forming the patterns on his flesh, char, and the sourness of blood.
He’s so damn beautiful I wish to compose a hymn for him, which I would then play on my violin while he smokes.
“Good enough for that antidote I hope?”
The antidote.
Right.
I shoot up, trying my best to appear graceful, but the mattress calls to me, and I stumble onto it like a calf learning to walk.
I smell our spunk, but while I know the scent of mine so well, his stands out, salty as seawater on a tropical island where I could spend the rest of my life getting fucked by him.
I’m losing my mind. All because of what? A fuck? It’s like a virus overtaking every cell in my body. I grab the vial with the antidote out of the drawer and load it into a syringe with trembling fingers. I need him out of here as soon as possible.
“I appreciate the view,” he murmurs behind me like there’s still reason to flirt.
“Good, maybe that’s something to motivate you tomorrow,” I say with a little slur. I feel drunk, as if the self-control I pride myself on is slipping. As if he’s infected me with the selfishness and recklessness that landed him with life-ending debt.
A syringe. What else do I need? Needle.
I collapse into my leather chair as I open the sterile package and assemble everything needed to give Dalton the slightest chance at survival.
He’s just sitting there on the mattress, smoking as if his life isn’t coming to an end tomorrow.
At least he’s got no smartass comeback when I approach him and stick the needle into his flesh.
As I watch the antidote enter him, I can’t help but think back on how he pushed into me, how for a while, we were like one body, and I wasn’t alone. How nothing else but the two of us chasing the same orgasm mattered. Did he spread his pheromones inside me despite the condom? Because it really feels like he’s still under my skin.
One thing is clear.
I canneverdo this again.
Chapter 5
Corvus
Iwantnothingmorethan for Dalton to split me open again.
And I hate myself for it.
It’s Christmas morning. The hunt is scheduled to start after lunch, and all I can think of is Dalton’s face when he inhaled the smoke from the stolen cigarette, naked, smelling of our combined sweat and cum, at peace despite knowing he was to play prey in less than a day. So veryalive, so hopeful that the antidote would give him a real shot at survival in the vast wilderness surrounding our family estate. I gave him hope when there was none, and it’s weighing on my heart, ever heavier.
Unbelievably, after all I put him through, my one-time-lover still tried to kiss me before I locked him back in his cell. Maybe he thought he could win himself more favors that way. After I purged the evidence of our coupling off my body, sleep just wouldn’t come, which left me to toss and turn in sweaty sheets until it was too early to get up yet too late to take sleeping pills.
What was meant as a one-time experiment to convince me that I wasn’t missing out on much now feels like treason, as though I have betrayed the family legacy I’ve sworn to protect.
What would my great-great-grandfather think if he saw me now, agonizing over the fate of a man meant to entertain our family on Christmas? He stares down at me from the large portrait in a gilded frame. He’s on a horse, crossbow in hand, and the Van der Horn manor looms in the background like a reminder of the legacy I spat at when I took Dalton out of that cell.
Charles Van der Horn was likely a product of his time. He worked hard to build his invisible empire of racketeering, bribes, and murder, and he expected all his descendants to follow the same path with pride. And I try. I live and breathe the family legacy.
My father prepared me for my role from very early on, instilling knowledge of poisons and all the ways the human body could be broken. I was to be like him—the paragon of masculine virtues that never feared anything, and never cried—and no matter how much I rebelled against it, he had won.
