Page 22

He looked at the small smear on the sheet, and something in him went far away. His eyes lost me. He was looking at the blood, but he wasn’t seeing me anymore. He was somewhere else.

“No,” he muttered. No, no, no.”

“It’s okay,” I said quickly. “It’s normal. I can clean it. I’ll clean it.”

His eyes snapped to mine. “You make messes and then you say you’ll clean them. You think saying sorry makes it go away?”

“You’re not making any sense, Malakar. Just calm down, please.”

He ripped the blanket from my hands. I grabbed for it, but he yanked it away and threw it across the room. He grabbed my ankle and dragged me down the mattress. Pain sparked through my spine and settled in my ribs.

“Please,” I gasped. “I don’t feel good tonight.”

Malakar climbed over me, caging me in with his body. His face hovered above mine. He tore my underwear off. The fabric scraped my skin. I reached down, tried to cover myself, but he pinned my wrist to the mattress. His other hand knotted in my hair, yanking my head back. I felt the ache in my neck ripple down my whole spine.

He used his thigh to wedge my shaking legs apart. The dark between my legs felt enormous. Exposed. So much blood, pooling now, running messy. I wanted to curl up and vanish into nothing. I wanted to take the shame with me.

I didn’t want this. Not tonight. The cold ache of blood leaking down my thighs. Exhaustion eating through muscle and bone. It was too much. I was stretched thin. Already unraveling.

He stared, mesmerized by the mess I’d made. My shame. My body’s failure.

His fingers slid through the blood, rubbing it up and down. Smeared period blood all over my cunt. Rubbed it over my clit, grinding in tight little circles. There was nothing gentle about it. No patience. Just violence, disgust, hunger.

“Look at how filthy you are, bluebird,” he hissed. His breath stung my cheek. “You can’t even control yourself. You make a mess everywhere you go. How do you expect me to love you if you ruin everything?”

The humiliation went deeper than pain. There was nothing but heat under my skin.

He pressed his fingers to my cunt. I jerked, tried to buck away, but his weight kept me locked in place.

“You think you can escape? You think you can bleed for me and I won’t want you?” He shoved two fingers inside me. The pain was so immense. It was unbearable, it was torture.

He ground his palm against my mound, the pads of his fingers aching cruelly as he twisted them deeper, mixing pain and liquid heat, using my own blood like I wasn’t even human.

“Stop,” I gasped. Weak-sounding.

“Why should I stop,” his voice was low and hungry, “when bad girls need punishment? You try to make the bed a crime scene, I’ll show you what a real mess is.”

His cock slid against my cunt. He liked it. He fucking loved the way it looked. I saw it on his face, that sick awe when he thrust into me, using the crimson mess as lube. He split me open. Shoved deep, deep, so hard I saw stars.

There was nothing soft left in me. Just pain, white and hollow.

He set a ruthless pace. Each slam of his hips burned. The chain at the base of my ankle snapped tight every time he thrust, so I couldn’t move, not even a little.

I sobbed into the pillow, but he grabbed my hair and yanked my head up. “Let me hear you, bluebird. Let yourself scream. You want to be a whore, act like it.”

Monster, monster, monster.

He stopped for a second and reached down. I was dizzy with terror. I couldn’t see what he was doing. I just kept staring at the cracks in the paint, counting them. One. Two. Three⁠—

Something ice-cold pressed to my cunt. I jolted. My legs tried to close, but he pried them apart.

It was an ice cube.

He rolled it around my clit. The cold went straight to my spine. My hips jerked, desperate to get away, but he held me open, rubbing the ice until my nerves went numb and everything stung.

He grinned. I could see the pleasure in his face. As if tormenting me like this was the only thing anchoring him to the world.

The cold was a shock to my flesh. It stung and it burned. I cried out in pain. The friction was too much. I couldn’t take it, could barely breathe through it.