The Annihilator (Dark Verse #5)(47)

Dainn had been tracking Hector since the day he’d taken Lyla, terrorizing him until the other man peed his pants and ran away to hide like the spineless coward that he was. He had resurfaced, and this time, the Shadow Man would pay him a visit.
“You know where he is?” she asked, rage bleaching into her words.
“Better, flamma,” he palmed her ass softly. “I have him strung up in a very good place. He’s bleeding out, one drop at a time as I play with your pussy.” She spread her legs for his fingers, wet for him already as she always was.
“Is he hurting?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“More than you ever hurt,” he promised and saw her spine relax. Good.
“I want to see that,” she said softly to the counter. “I want to see him bleed. When do we go?”
Dainn heard her vengeful words, and slowly rubbed her back in a gesture he knew soothed her. Yeah, she was ready, at least for the first step.

Chapter twenty-oneLyla


She wasn’t ready to leave the house. Over the weeks, it had become a haven, the only home she had ever known, the only heaven in her life of hell. And she wasn’t ready to let it go, unsure if she would ever return, the part of her that still questioned herself constantly wondering if he would leave her in the city. She would miss the house, the deck, the routine. She would miss cooking and being herself, meeting Dr. Manson everyday and taking walks around the garden with Bessie. She would miss it all.
She shook her head and snapped the hair tie she’d put around her wrist. Dr. Manson had suggested tying a hair tie around her wrist and snapping it whenever a bad, baseless thought entered her mind. When she'd looked up an article on the same, it said that it trained the brain to feel punished for bad thoughts and so eventually, it became more manageable.
It had been a few weeks and she could attest that it did work for her. Training her brain into different thought patterns was something she had been working on actively. Some things she did on her own, like the hair tie, like the daily tasks, like writing something good about every day. Some things she needed help with, and the man who was a nightmare to so many people helped her.
Like she had told him how going into the bathtub reminded her of all the times she had tried to drown herself under the water, and he had simply started drawing her a bath every night. He picked her up and carried her in arms, sitting down on one end and making her sit on him, with her back to his front and him inside her, not moving, not fucking, just still, so she began to associate the tub and baths with him.
Another time, she’d told him about how in the past having her asshole touched made her feel sick and dirty, how the thought of it still made her stomach turn. And he, deviant, dominant he, had tied her ankles to her wrists until she was obscenely exposed, and put a vibrator on her clit, his cock in her pussy, and his thumb in her rosebud until she had forgotten it had even been there, lost in the sensations. The next morning, before he left, he had turned her over the couch and spanked her ass, lubing her up with her own juices, and put a small plug in her backside, telling her not to take it out, not to touch herself, not to do a thing to it until he returned. The entire day, the weight of the object in one hole and the emptiness of the object in another had messed with her nerves until she had been on the deck, naked, her legs spread over the arms of the chair just to let the cool breeze give her overheated skin some relief. That was how he’d found her, and he’d caged her on the chair, leaning over, and pushed himself inside her, double penetrating her in a way that had made her mindless with sensations, her screams echoing over the mountains until she passed out.
But it wasn’t just her sexual hang-ups he was helping her work through. It was emotional too.
She’d confessed to him how insecure she felt, how she feared he would leave her one day and she didn’t know if she could handle that. The next morning, he had taken her to the closet, and stood behind her. Brining up his hands, he had told her to close her eyes. She had, and immediately something cold, metallic had touched the skin around her neck, making her breath hitch. She had opened her eyes to see a gold, thin choker around her neck, the metal warming to her body temperature.
“Just like your hair tie,” he’d murmured with his lips against her neck. “When you feel that insecurity, touch this, remind yourself who claimed you, remind yourself of the last six years and how I never let you go once, and ask yourself if you ever think I’d let you go now. The world could tilt on its axis, flamma, and I’d still be the most certain thing in your life.” A soft kiss. “You’re the oxygen that feeds my flames—without you, my existence is questionable.”
She touched the gold chain around her neck as he locked the door, taking her toward the helicopter in the early morning light. As she walked to the waiting ride, a thrill of excitement shot up her spine. She’d been fascinated with the thing since she had seen it on her first morning. She got to the side of the black helicopter and she turned around to look at the house, a gray and black sleek marvel of architecture half on the cliff and a little under.
Looking at the house, she remembered the day she’d confessed in the dark of the night that she didn’t know where she would go if she ever had to be alone, that she had nothing on the outside. He had listened intently with his arms around her, and the next day, he'd taken her to the safe in the study.

***
“Sit,” he told her, and she took a seat. He sat down next to her, turning his whole body toward her, handing her a manila envelope.
“What’s this?” she asked, curious about the content as she pulled it out. She looked over a bunch of legal jargon, most of it flying over her head, and turned questioning eyes to him.