There Is No Devil (Sinners Duet, #2)(32)

Only this satisfies: biting, clawing, scratching, struggling. Cole and I fuck on the couch, on the floor. He slams me up against the wall, bodily lifting me off the ground.

I need to experience his strength, his power, his ruthlessness, because that’s what I need in a man. It’s the only way I feel safe. He has to terrify me so I know he’ll terrify everyone else. I’ve never met a real hero, I don’t think they exist. Only a monster can protect me.

We’re fucking in the dark so we can unleash the demons inside of us.

Anguished sounds come out of me: sometimes sobbing, sometimes begging for more.

Our clothes are all gone now, torn to ribbons on the floor. Cole’s back is a mass of scratches as if he’s been whipped, his skin under my nails. His teeth marks print my shoulders and my breasts.

Still I moan in his ear, “Don’t stop. I need more …”

“You fucking lunatic, I’ll kill you,” Cole snarls. “You don’t know what I have in me …”

“Show me. You promised to show me.”

He throws me down on the floor, so hard that all the air slams out of me and I see stars on his ceiling.

He climbs on top of me, our bodies slick with sweat. It’s dripping down from the inky tips of his hair, from the sharp planes of his jaw. It splashes on my face and my breasts. I open my mouth to taste the salt on my tongue, I lick it off his throat. I want his sweat and his cum all over me. I want to be filthy.

He rams his cock inside me. The harder he fucks me, the harder he gets. His cock is on fire, I feel it burning all the way up inside me. My wetness could be pussy or blood. I don’t fucking care anymore.

I look up into his face and I see the naked Cole, that real, true creature. The devil himself. Eyes as black as pits, always burning. Face as beautiful as sin. Mouth forever hungry, swallowing me whole.

This is Cole unleashed. Full of fury and passion and hunger. His control was always an illusion. The real Cole takes what he wants.

He’s taking me here and now. Pounding me into this floor. Fucking me mercilessly.

And still he wants more. I can see it in those eyes. He wants something from me that I still haven’t given.

His hands close around my throat.

At first I think he’ll only squeeze for a moment, the way he’s done before: cutting off blood flow so my head spins and my pussy throbs. Turning sex into delirium.

This time he doesn’t stop. He only squeezes harder.

“Stop,” I gasp. Then, more frantic, “Stop!”

The word comes out in a croak. My throat is too constricted for speech. No air, no blood can get through.

Still he chokes me.

He’s looking down into my face, his eyes dark and pitiless.

I try to knock his arms away, but they might as well be iron bars welded in place. His hands close relentlessly, real pressure now, real weight.

Black moths flutter into view: first one, then two, then dozens. Blocking out my sight.

I’m hitting at his arms, scratching at them, clawing. Trying to tear his fingers off my throat.

I’m too weak and he’s too strong. I’m helpless in his grasp, floating, slamming back into my body, floating up again.

Now Cole speaks and I can’t see his lips moving, but I hear that low, insistent voice burying into my brain:

“This is what it will feel like if you wait for Shaw to finish the job. This is what it will feel like when he’s on top of you. This is what it will feel like to die as a victim.”

“Stop it! Stop fucking around!”

The words are a rasp, a whisper.

It doesn’t matter if he hears them or not: Cole isn’t fucking around. He’s never been more serious.

He chokes me harder. Fucks me harder. Holds me there while he beats the lesson into me.

“This is your way, isn’t it? Hoping for mercy? Never fighting back? Trying to do the right thing? You want to be a good person … good people die every day, Mara. Goodness never saved them.”

I’m clawing at his arms, desperate and dying. Black moths carry me away …

He’s looking down into my face, as cruel as Shaw as he taunts me. “Do you want to be a victim, or you want to be a fighter? I thought you were a fighter, Mara?”

I am fighting, I’m hitting him with all my strength but it’s not enough, I’m only a girl, a skinny girl, it will never be enough against a man …

I hate that I’m small. I hate that I’m weak.

The anger, the hurt, the goddamn fucking unfairness wells up inside of me. I’m the volcano now, I’m the fucking lava.

It all bursts out of me in a howl so raw, so animalistic that I don’t even realize that Cole has let go of my throat. I’m screaming right in his face:

“I HATE HIM! I HATE HIM! I HATE THEM ALL! I WANT THEM ALL FUCKING DEAD!!!!”

I’m sitting up now, I don’t know when that happened.

My throat is raw, my shrieks still echoing through the house.

I finally fucking snapped.

Cole watches me, calm and satisfied.

He got what he wanted.

I wait for the guilt and shame to wash over me, but I feel nothing. Only the hot throbbing of my throat with every frantic heartbeat.

Cole lays his hand on my head, gently stroking my hair.

“It’s alright, Mara,” he says. “It’s always better to tell the truth. Lie to the world, but not to yourself.”