Richer Than God - Amelia Wilde Page 0,48

for me and my iron grip on her dress. But the dress is not enough. It’s her hair I want, and I get it on the landing. Brigit makes a wounded sound, and if I were not my father’s son, it would make me drop her right then and back away.

Unfortunately for her, I am the closest thing my foster father ever had to a son. Hades was his disappointment. I was the replacement. And he made me in his image. All the safeguards I’ve put into place to keep that part of me under control are gone.

It’s replicating, like a cancer.

Caring.

Fuck it.

Brigit’s scratching at my hands when we get to my rooms, and it makes no difference. What’s the use in feeling such a small pain when the rest of me is on fire with need? The only thing that’s going to bring me back to any semblance of balance is taking her.

All of her.

The begging starts when I throw her on the bed. No one has been in to make it yet, so she lands face first in rumpled sheets and tries to crawl away. A laugh tears itself out of me. Then her dress. Such a soft dress. Such a soft body. The dress comes apart in my hands, resisting against her skin. The pull of the fabric is better than whiskey. It’s better than money. Destruction is the way to feel alive, isn’t it?

Brigit’s next.

She can’t get away, not bent over the edge of the bed like she is. She gets a toehold in the mattress and tries her very best, but I knock her legs apart and lock an arm over the small of her back. This way, she can struggle all she wants.

And she does want.

The cascade of “please, don’t” and “please, stop” and “you hurt her, you’re awful” is a sweet fiction. What a good girl in a cardigan would say. But my fingers between her legs find different evidence.

“I hated it,” she pants.

“You’re such a pretty liar,” I tell her. “Lie some more.” I stroke my fingers through the evidence of her desire.

“Why don’t you throw her out?”

“Throw her out?” I laugh to cover the cold freeze at the center of me. Demeter got to Savannah somehow, which means she is in the city, which means she is up to something. Better to keep Savannah here to use as bait. “She took her punishment. She learned her lesson. Now it’s your turn. Amuse me some more.”

“No—”

I push three fingers inside her and twist, drawing a sound out of her that’s between a whimper and a scream, layered in something dirty and wanting. Her cunt holds my fingers tight. Brigit is a consummate whore—she doesn’t want to let go of me until she’s bled me dry. She obviously doesn’t know it’s impossible. That my ruined heart will keep beating no matter what she, or anyone else, does to it. My fingers are slick when I pull them out, and she mewls, hands balled in the blankets.

Her body is at war with itself, and I take it in for a heartbeat. The rock of her hips. The scramble of her toes on the floor. The glistening between her legs.

“Oh, no,” she whispers, clenching on my fingers. “Oh, no.” I stroke against the rough patch inside that reduces her words to an embarrassed moan.

I’m not putting her on the floor; I’m not selling her at auction until I’ve broken the part of her that made her help her own enemy. Until she knows what it is to be merciless. Until she’s given an example. I’ll take everything from her. The anticipation sparks in my chest, a series of lights turning on and on until it’s blinding.

She freezes at my touch on her ass, her head lifted off the blankets, mouth open. “What are you doing?”

“Completing your training.”

“That’s—that’s not what I’m selling.”

“You’re not spare parts,” I snap at her. “You’re a package deal. The man who buys you will expect complete access.”

Her cheeks brighten with shame. “Shouldn’t you leave something for them?” A shiver down through her legs, all the way down to the floor. She twists her toes against the wood. “Shouldn’t you?”

“Fuck no.” My blood surges, beating its fists on my veins. I move her up onto the bed like the doll she is and push her head down, angling her hips up so she’s exposed to me. Brigit’s breathing fast and light, like the air has gone thin, and it has. She’s winding