She’s got a stick of deep, bruised red lipstick, and she isn’t applying it—she’s stabbing her face with it. She’s dragging the grease across her mouth, up her cheek, over the bridge of her nose in thick, jagged strokes.
She looks like a car crash in a goddamn sunset.
My blood is humming. It’s that low, vibrating itch in the base of my skull that tells me I’m about to do something I can’t take back. I watch the way her shoulder blades move under that shredded hospital gown. Theylook like wings that got clipped and cauterised. I want to put my teeth on them. I want to bite down until I taste the copper of her skin and the salt of her rage.
“You’re making a fucking mess,” I rasp. My voice sounds like it’s been dragged through gravel.
She doesn’t stop. She grabs a pot of black kohl and digs her fingers into it, smearing the gunk over her eyes until she looks like she’s bleeding shadows.
“Good,” she spits. She doesn’t look at me. She looks at the version of herself in the glass—the version I created when I pulled her out of that padded cell. “I want them to see it. I want the old man to see what he paid for. I want him to see the filth he left in the dark.”
I drop the cigarette and grind it out with the heel of my boot. I’m across the room before she can blink. I grab her by the hair, yanking her head back until she’s forced to look at me in the reflection.
She doesn’t flinch. She just stares at me with those wide, haunted eyes, the black grease running down her face.
“You think this is about him?” I growl, leaning down until my mouth is an inch from her ear. I can smell the iron in her sweat and the chemical sting of the makeup. “You think I brought you here to be some fucking political statement? You’re not a message, Hallow. You’re the weapon. And right now, you’re acting like a goddamn child with a crayon.”
I reach around, my hand sliding down the front of her gown, my palm flat against the heat of her stomach. She’s shaking, a fine, electric tremor that makes my vision go dark at the edges. I want to rip that gown off her andsee every single mark Aris left on her. I want to map her out with my tongue and then set the whole map on fire.
“I remember the way you used to cry,” I whisper, my hand moving lower, my fingers hooking into the waistband of the thin fabric. “Before they turned the lights off. You were so fucking soft. So easy to break.”
I see her pupils dilate in the mirror. She grabs my wrist, her fingernails digging into my skin, drawing blood.
“I’m not soft anymore,” she snarls.
“No,” I mutter, my grip on her hair tightening until she gasps. “You’re a fucking razor blade. And I want to see you bleed.”
The air in the room is thick, heavy with the smell of old dust and the sudden, suffocating heat between us. I’m not thinking about the Mayor. I’m not thinking about the “Choir” waiting in the wings. I’m thinking about the way her skin feels under my calloused hands and the fact that we’re both too far gone to care about things like “sanity” or “sin.”
She turns in my grip, her face a mask of red and black war paint, and she lunges at me. She isn’t trying to escape. She’s trying to consume. She slams her mouth against mine, the taste of that greasy lipstick and her bitter spit exploding on my tongue.
It’s not a kiss. It’s a fucking assault.
I heave her up, her legs locking around my waist, and slam her back onto the vanity. The glass under her moans, perfume bottles shattering and spilling their cloying scent everywhere. I don’t give a fuck about the mess. I don’t give a fuck about the ghosts.
“Tell me,” I growl into her throat, my hands tearing at the fabric of her gown until it’s nothing but rags. “Tell me you want to see it all burn.”
“Light the match,” she screams, her hands clawing at my back, her teeth finding the vein in my neck.
I shove her back across the vanity, the wood groaning and snapping under her weight. Bottles of cheap, cloying perfume shatter, soaking into the moth-eaten velvet of her gown, mixing with the scent of her skin—a sharp, feral musk of old sweat, hospital soap, and the metallic tang of the blood still drying on her knuckles.
She’s a goddamn mess, and I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.
I rip the front of that pathetic gown open. The fabric screams as it gives way, exposing her. She’s too thin, her ribs standing out like the bars of the cage I pulled her from, her skin a map of violet bruises and the faint, silvery white lines where the needles went in. Her breasts are small, the nipples dark and hard as pebbles in the cold air of the funhouse, shaking with every jagged breath she draws.
“Look at you,” I growl, my voice a thick, ugly sound in the back of my throat.
I move my hand down, my palm dragging over the gooseflesh of her stomach, down to the tangled hair between her thighs. She’s soaking wet, the scent of her rising up to meet me—heavy, dark, and raw. I hook my fingers into her, finding the heat of her pussy, and she lets out a sound that’s half-sob, half-snarl. She’s tight, her muscles clenching around me like she’s trying to pull me inside her and hide me there.
I don’t go fast. I want her to feel every fucking inch of the violation. I want her to remember that this isn’t a rescue; it’s an occupation.
“You’re shaking, Hallow,” I mutter, leaning down to lick a streak of black kohl off her cheek. She tastes like salt and chemical fire. “Is it the cold? Or are you finally realising that I’m the only thing in this world that’s ever going to touch you and mean it?”
I slide another finger in, stretching her, watching her face contort in the mirror behind her head. Her eyes are blown out, all pupil, reflecting the red flickering light of the clown head above us. She looks like a saint being unmade on an altar of trash.
I reach for my belt, the leather creaking in the silence. I’m not going to give her the release she’s begging for. I’m going to keep her right on the edge of the blade, where the pain and the pleasure are the same fucking thing.
“Please,” she gasps, her head tossing back, hitting the glass with a dull thud. Her hands are in my hair, pulling, her nails digging into my scalp until I feel the blood start to trickle. “Jex, please…”
