relishing the savage foreplay, their slow dance to a bloody death.
Then the hooded rival spun, turning in to his chest, and sliced the knife over his shirt. Diel looked down; the fabric of his shirt was ripped in two, his Fallen brand instantly on show. The skin on his torso had been sliced open, but not deep enough to do any damage—he wouldn’t have cared if it had. The monster’s grin didn’t fall. Instead, Diel’s excitement doubled as he ripped the shirt from his chest and dropped it to the floor. The still-wet blood from his previous kills had stained his chest, but his black brand was still prominent.
Diel heard the priest struggling on the bed. Diel remembered that piece of shit on the now soiled mattress who was staring at him with wide eyes. He remembered his ugly face from the torture room in Purgatory. He’d pulled Diel’s rack lever once. Diel couldn’t wait to dislocate his shoulders in revenge.
The hooded person in front of him stilled, eyes locked on his chest. Diel reached forward and grabbed them by the hood, slamming their head into the wall. The person dropped to the floor at the impact, and the hood fell from their head, revealing a riot of pale pink hair. The scarf dropped from their face, and Diel froze at the sight of the face staring back at him, dark eyes dazed as they tried to focus on him.
She was female.
Diel heard the priest again, and, needing to feel someone’s hot, wet blood coating his skin, he climbed on the bed and took out one of his knives. Red mist took hold of his urges once more, and he began to stab. He stabbed and stabbed until he felt the spray of blood freckling his face, the hardness of bone shattering under the blade, until the priest lost any fight and became a slice of rotten meat beneath him. A creak on the floorboard behind him made him turn, and he saw the woman again. The one with the pink hair was on her feet, her wide, unreadable eyes locked on his. Her gaze dropped to his neck, and then the brand on his chest.
Diel leaped from the bed, ready for more. The monster paced inside him as it studied the woman. It snarled and hissed, but it wouldn’t look away from her.
It was fixated.
She held up her hands. “Wait,” she dared to say, but he charged at her and crushed her against the wall with his wide, naked chest. With his hands on her upper arms, Diel lifted her off the floor, hissing at the feel of her fragile body in his grip. As he glared into her deep brown eyes, her stare drifted to the bed, then turned back on him. Diel still tasted the slain priest’s blood on his tongue.
He smiled.
Diel moved one of his hands to the woman’s neck, feeling her pulse throbbing fast beneath his fingers. He leaned in and inhaled. She smelled of lavender and some kind of sweet musk.
Goosebumps broke out over his body when she quickly lifted her arm between them and wrapped her hand around his throat too, above his collar. His cock punched against his jeans as she squeezed, as her fingers moved over his deep, rough scars. He growled, his monster snarling but suddenly obsessed with ending the woman who dared to fucking touch him. Diel began to squeeze, and the woman’s skin flushed, her lips parting as oxygen failed to reach her lungs.
But then she dropped her attention to his chest again, to his brand, and something flickered in her gaze, something he didn’t understand. And that was all it took. That split second of distraction was all it took for the apparently no longer unconscious hooded person behind him to get off the floor and press a taser just below his jaw. Hundreds of electric volts pounded through his body. Diel squeezed the throat of the pink-haired woman harder and harder, trying to kill just one more, before black spots invaded his vision and his muscles began to weaken.
But the one with the pink hair didn’t take her eyes off him. Even as his knees buckled and he dropped to the ground from another shot of the taser to his ruined neck, she watched him, her hand still around his throat too as he dragged them both to the floor. He yanked her on top of him, her face hovering above his. He could feel her