exit. “Depends on how many pieces of clothing you want ruined, Isabelle. Your choice.” The easy charm is gone again, leaving a simmering anger I recognize down to my very soul. Another similarity I don’t want to share with this man.
I lean back against the seat and look at her. Even out of her depth and looking like she’s just been fucked within an inch of her life, Isabelle is a study in perfection. She’s always been beautiful, but it’s the intelligence in those brown eyes that draws me in again and again despite myself. My position in Carver City would have been a lot more secure if I’d been able to resist that spark. Her father, Orsino, didn’t exactly disapprove of our dating her, but that man would have taken the moon right out of the sky for his youngest daughter, though, so he never said a word edgewise. He wasn’t exactly thrilled with it, though.
Fuck, but I miss him.
Angry at the loss of another person I cared about, angry at myself, I rake my gaze over her. “What the big man isn’t saying is that your pussy is ours for the next two weeks and we won’t tolerate anything limiting access.”
She jerks back, staring at me as if she’s never seen me before. “Have you always talked like this?”
Not to her. Never to her. I bound myself up in love until I couldn’t breathe, just so I could be worthy of this woman. All for nothing. All of it was for no goddamn reason. I lean forward and give her a cold look. “Only to the people I fuck.”
An important distinction, and one she picks up immediately. “I see.” She narrows her eyes. “So you’re going to fuck me, Beast? Take all that aggression and anger out on me?” She lifts her chin, a clear sign that she’s stepping to the line drawn in the sand between us. “Bring it on.”
“Isabelle,” Gaeton rumbles. “Playing the brat isn’t going to make him stick his cock into you out of spite. He’s got better control than that.”
I’m glad one of us is sure of it. Right now, it’s everything I can do not to fall on her and fuck her until she begs for mercy. Until I can get rid of the tight feeling of my skin being too small. No matter what I did for this woman, it wasn’t good enough, and when Gaeton finally called it quits and she should have been mine by right, she left me in the dust. And I still don’t know why.
I turn away from her and stare out the window. We are only a block from Gaeton’s, which feels like a block too far at this point. The icy calm I had in the Underworld is unraveling too fast to stop. I don’t know what will happen when it’s completely gone.
We arrive before I find an answer.
Gaeton’s place is like most of the other buildings in the neutral territory ruled by Hades. It’s a mishmash of businesses on the lower floors and apartments on the upper two-thirds. We are all silent as we take the elevator up to the twentieth. Not the top, but damn near it.
I raise my eyebrows at Gaeton. He smirks. “Don’t tell me—you got some cheap-ass apartment the size of a matchbox.”
He’s not wrong. We made good money under Orsino Belmonte, known as the Man in Black to everyone else, but with the future so uncertain, I chose not to blow more of it than necessary on rent. Over the years, I’ve learned the hard way that nothing is for certain and having a financial nest egg can make the difference between surviving and ending up six feet under. If I wasn’t so paranoid, I wouldn’t have made it out of Sabine Valley alive.
I wish I could have ensured the same survival for Cohen.
I push the thought away. I don’t want to think about the past right now. I don’t want to think about anything but extracting every bit of pleasure from Isabelle’s tight little body in retribution. It’s enough. It has to be enough.
Gaeton opens his door—one of only four on the floor—and steps aside to let us precede him. There’s no way the apartment was furnished when he moved in. Current trends lean towards the modern look and fragile-as-fuck furniture. The massive couch and chairs dominating the living room look like they could hold three men of Gaeton’s size without a problem. He’s put down a