Viktor doesn’t look up. He’s obsessed. He uses his thumbs to pry me open, exposing every inch of my vulnerability to the freezing air and his sweltering mouth. He begins to feast, his tongue flicking against my clit with a rhythmic, punishing precision that makes my breath hitch in a way that feels like a betrayal of my very soul.
“Look at the iron, Wendy,” he mumbles against my wet skin, his breath hot and damp. “Watch the heat. Feel the hunger.”
He sucks me into his mouth, his teeth grazing the sensitive peak, and I let out a shattered, guttural moan that I want to choke on.
I hate this. I hate him. I hate my own body for responding,I think, my head thrashing against the weeping wall.How can it feel like this? How can it feel like lightning while my heart is breaking?Every time his tongue swirls around me, a jagged spark of pleasure lances through the terror. It’s a sickening, visceral conflict. My mind is screaming for death, but my pussy is clenching, weeping, pulsing against his lips in a desperate, primal rhythm. It’s the ultimate violation—he’s stealing my pleasure, turning my own biology into a weapon against me.
The man with the iron steps closer. The heat from the glowing metal starts to radiate against the skin of my shoulder, a blistering promise of the agony to come.
“Now,” Viktor growls, his voice muffled by my flesh.
He doesn’t stop. As the glowing tip of the iron descends toward my collarbone, Viktorincreases the pace. His tongue becomes a blur of friction, his fingers sliding back inside me, stretching me, filling me, while his mouth devours me.
The iron hits.
SSSSSSST.
The sound of my own skin searing is a high-pitched hiss that drowns out the world. The pain is a white-hot explosion, a supernova of agony that rips through my chest and radiates down my arm. I scream until my lungs feel like they’re going to collapse, my body convulsing, my heels drumming a frantic, dying beat against the concrete.
And in that moment of peak agony, the pleasure Viktor is forcing upon me snaps.
My walls collapse inward, a violent, jagged orgasm tearing through me at the exact same second the brand marks me. I am cumming and dying all at once, a shattered mess of lust and torture. I hate myself. I feel the hot, sticky release of my own climax coating Viktor’s face while I sob from the sheer, soul-destroying pain of the burn.
“Good girl,” Viktor murmurs, pulling back, my wetness gleaming on his chin like a trophy under the swinging bulb. “You see? Even in pain, you belong to the one who takes you.”
I hang there, limp, the smell of my own burnt flesh filling my nostrils, my body still trembling from a climax that felt like a sin. I am broken. I am branded. And I am utterly, hopelesslylost.
Viktor stands up, his shadow stretching long and jagged across the blood-slicked floor. He doesn’t look at the iron. He looks at me—at the way I’m shaking, at the fresh, blistering mark on my shoulder that smells of charred skin and ruined innocence.
“Out,” he barks, his voice a low, vibrating snap of authority. “All of you. Fuori! Cazzo, andatevene prima che vi ammazzi tutti!”
The men don’t hesitate. They scramble toward the stairs, the heavy steel door groaning shut behind them with a final, echoing thud that seals me into the dark with the devil.
Viktor reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, obsidian-handled stiletto. The blade flickers open with a sharp, lethal snick. He doesn’t look like a businessman anymore; he looks like a butcher about to carve his masterpiece.
“Peter Hale thought he could keep you whole,” he whispers, the blade’s edge tracing the curve of my jaw, drawing a thin, beaded line of crimson. “He thought he could protect the nectar. But I am going to drink it until you are a husk.”
He moves behind me. I feel the cold steel of the blade slide beneath the gold chain of my shackles. With one violent, practiced jerk, he doesn’t cut the chain—he cuts me. The blade bites into the meat of my wrists, theblood slicking the gold, making it slide easier against the iron rings. I let out a broken, jagged sob as he moves the knife down, lower, until the tip is resting against the soft, trembling skin of my inner thigh.
“Please,” I whimper, my head lolling. “Please, just kill me.”
“Death is a mercy you haven’t earned, piccola fiamma,” he growls.
He presses the blade in. Not deep enough to kill, but enough to mark. He carves a slow, shallow line down the length of my thigh, the blood blooming behind the steel like a red ribbon. And then, he leans down. He licks the wound. His tongue is heavy, abrasive, drinking the copper heat of me while his hand reaches around to the front.
He isn’t gentle. He shoves his hand back between my legs, his fingers slick with my own blood and the remains of the climax he forced out of me. He begins to stretch me, his knuckles rubbing raw against my sensitive skin, forcing me open until I feel like I’m going to split.
“You are so tight,” he rasps, his voice a guttural hum against my ear. “It’s a pity. I’m going to ruin this for him. He’ll never be able to touch you without feeling my shadow inside you.”
He stands, his hands going to his belt. I hear the heavy leather slide through the loops, the clink of the buckle sounding like a gunshot in the silence of the cellar. He drops his trousers, and for the first time, I see the weapon he’s going to use to finish what the iron started.
His cock is massive, a thick, vein-corded pillar of dark meat that looks far too large for my body. It’s angry,pulsing with a rhythmic, violent heat. He doesn’t use any oil. He doesn’t give me a moment to breathe.
He seizes my hips, his fingers bruising the bone, and aligns himself.
“Look at the door, Wendy,” he commands, his breath hot and smelling of the salt he’s drinking off me. “Look at the door and imagine Peter is on the other side, listening to what I’m about to do to you.”
He drives in.
