Page 24 of Pretty Savage: Defy

Two women and a man lie naked in bed. My stomach curdles when I see the whip marks on the women’s backs and the red, raw skin at their wrists and ankles. The woman nearest me has a bruise darkening around one hip, shaped too much like the heel of a foot.

Then I notice the knife on the table.

It’s ordinary. A black handle. A narrow silver blade with blood drying along the edge.

Corresponding cuts mark both women, shallow but numerous, concentrated across their breasts, stomachs, and thighs. None are deep enough to cause serious damage. That almost makes it more awful. Jackson took his time. Chose every place he wanted the blade to open their skin while he fucked them.

My disgust deepens. Jackson has always been vicious, but I didn’t realize how badly he needed cruelty to become part of everything he touched. Even sex.

Maybe I shouldn’t feel so sick. This is Sinners, and people pay for pain here as readily as pleasure. The club requires every act to be negotiated before a client enters the room. The women agreed to the restraints, the whip, the knife. They’ll be paid more because of the marks.

That doesn’t make the blood on the blade any easier to look at.

They chose what happened to their bodies.

Jackson chose to make hurting them the center of his pleasure.

Seeing them makes me think of Rose, a half-sister who’s more rumor than fact. Real or not, one of my greatest fears is that she’s somewhere within reach of a man like Jackson. No one stirs as I move closer and bend over each woman. I have no idea what Rose looks like, but I have to believe she’d resemble me at least a little.

Neither woman does. Still, there’s an unsettling familiarity to them, and it fills me with a deep homicidal rage. They both have slim shoulders, long brown hair, and delicate freckles across their noses and cheeks.

They look like Laurel.

Not exact copies, but Jackson chose enough familiar pieces to build a fantasy around them.

Of all the bad decisions Jackson has made, this may be the one that finally kills him.

I crouch beside the first woman. Up close, she looks younger than I initially thought, although the drugs could be softening her features. I touch her shoulder and gently shake her awake.

Her eyelids lift slowly.

I press one finger to my lips before she can speak. “Get dressed and leave.”

Fear clears some of the haze from her face. She woke to a stranger looming over her while Jackson lies unconscious in the bed. She has no reason to trust me.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

How many men have said the same thing to her before proving otherwise?

She glances toward Jackson. “Did we do something wrong?”

“No. You’ll still be paid. This is between him and me.”

She nudges the other woman awake. They gather their clothes from the floor without speaking. One pulls on a dress. The other doesn’t bother with underwear before fastening her skirt. Neither asks what I intend to do to Jackson before they slip out the door.

He’s larger than I am and may be stronger when sober, but Devil’s Dust has reduced him to dead weight. I roll him onto his back and secure his wrists and ankles to the metal hooks built into the bedframe.

I could kill him now.

The thought is simple and appealing. One clean cut across his throat would end the threat he poses to Laurel. The Beaumonts would protest, Jack would demand an inquiry, and my father would complain about the inconvenience, but no one could honestly claim Jackson hadn’t given me just cause.

He touched my Bonded.

That's enough.

But death is generous. It ends fear, pain, and anticipation in the same instant, and I have no desire to give Jackson relief from any of them. I want him awake. I want him to know why this is happening. Most of all, I want him to remember it the next time Laurel enters a room.

I set my supplies on the table beside the bed. My favorite dagger with its smooth black resin handle. Pliers. A compact blowtorch. Several syringes. The healing spray developed by Dr. Wainwright, Thomson’s father.