Page 131 of Villainous Intent

She leaned into the touch, her body pliant against mine. “It hurt.”

“I know. It was supposed to.” I kissed her forehead. “You did good, Sparks.” I murmured against her skin. “You gave me everything I asked for. You didn’t hide.”

The nickname had slipped out before I could filter it, but it was only another verbal collar I was snapping around her neck to make sure she remembered exactly who she belonged to.

I felt the tension drain out of her shoulders at the praise. She needed this. After the cruelty, after the degradation of being bent over and used, she needed to know that the hand that held the crop was the same one that stroked her hair, or she’d eventually associate me only with the pain and not the relief. I needed her addicted to both.

It was a psychological hook, and I was sinking it deep.

I looked down at her, curled against my chest, her breathing finally leveling out. My hand rested on the swell of her hip, right over the angry red mark I’d left as my signature the night before.

I’d told her there would be no strings between us, but there were. I was weaving them right now. I was wrapping them around her throat, her wrists, her ankles. I wanted her so tangled in me that she’d never be able to cut herself free. I didn’t want a fuck buddy. I wanted a possession. I wanted to calibrate her body so thoroughly that anyone else who touched her would feel wrong. I wanted to ruin her for every mediocre man who tried to claim her after me.

The thought of her with someone else, some boring man who asked for permission before he touched her, made a violence flare in my veins. No. I was going to wreck her so completely that she’d crave the bite of my hand and the weight of my control until the day she died.

Fuck, I was spiraling. I could feel the obsession clouding everything when I needed to remember this wasn’t forever. It couldn’t be.

I was a creature of intellect. I solved problems. I cracked codes. Annie Bishop was a vault of sealed files and repressed desires, a fascinating puzzle wrapped in a Keeper’s uniform. But every puzzle, no matter how complex, eventually got solved.

Eventually, I would know everything. I’d strip the secrets from her mind just like I stripped the clothes from her body and once the mystery was gone, the fascination would die. It always did. That was the natural decay of my interest.

I would get bored. I would discard her.

The thought felt hollow, ringing false against the thud of my heart, but I clung to it.

She was a temporary fixation. A bright, burning thing to enjoy before the inevitable burnout. I would use her to scratch this itch, to extract the data I needed, and then I would let her go back to her little life. Broken, maybe. Changed, definitely. But gone.

For now, though, she was mine to break.

CHAPTER 26

ANNIE

The violet lighting of Eclipse cast everyone in shades of sin. The pulsing bass vibrated through the soles of my stilettos and settled somewhere deep in my chest like a second heartbeat.

Cipher’s hand rested possessively on the small of my back, the heat of his palm searing through the whisper-thin material of my dress. The hem barely covered the curve of my ass, a fact I was painfully aware of each time I moved. He’d selected it himself, watching with those unreadable silver eyes as I’d slipped it on, his only comment a satisfied “perfect” before he’d guided me out the door.

Just one week with Cipher, and somehow my entire existence had reoriented around him.

“See anyone interesting?” he asked low in my ear.

I shook my head, trying to concentrate on the task at hand rather than the distracting press of his body against mine but I couldn’t focus.

“We’ll do a circuit,” he said. “Stay close.”

As if I had any choice. As if I wanted one.

That was the problem, wasn’t it? The routine we’d fallen into over the past week had become alarmingly comfortable. When he wasn’t fucking me into oblivion or making me scream in the Playroom, he brought me to his lab, explaining complex theories while I perched on a stool, watching his hands move over holographic interfaces.

And we talked about everything. We’d started at League politics and the absurdity of Hero-Villain dynamics but the conversations had morphed into other subjects quickly. He seemed ravenous to learn my thoughts on whatever he could, listening intently whenever I spoke and asking thought provoking questions.

Things would have been easier if he were cruel all the time, if he were just the monster who bound me to the bench and struck me until I cried out for mercy. But he wasn’t. He was brilliant, darkly funny, and devastatingly attentive. It made it hard to remember that this whole arrangement was supposed to be about fucking and nothing more.

My phone weighed heavy in the hidden pocket of my dress. He’d given it back three days ago, watching me with those calculating eyes.

“Call Havoc if you want,” he’d said, tossing it onto the bed beside me. “Tell him where you are. What I’ve done to you.”

He knew I wouldn’t because I’d invited the monster in. I’d asked him for his violence and control. I’d asked him to take me and he’d done just that. Calling Havoc to tell him to come save me from something I’d begged for felt like the worst form of humiliation.