from our orphanage. Mistress immediately saw the bond we had. She’s a sick twisted whore who knew she could control me using Inessa’s safety—and she has; she still does.”
Valentin’s hands were shaking. I knew it was in fury, not fear. Shuffling closer, I ran the pad of my thumb over the racing pulse in his wrist and said, “Shh, calm. Take your time.”
Valentin, to my surprise, leaned forward and pressed a kiss on my cheek. Heat ghosted over my skin at the gesture. I saw his top lip curl, which melted my heart.
“She’d torture me. She separated me from the other boys from age twelve. She had a male there for a time, a male she was screwing. I hated him about as much as I hated her. He had a couple of boys caged in the room, too, his own personal playthings, whom he would torture and exploit. But Mistress still took me in her chamber every day, and ‘demonstrated’ how to torture a captive. The first year was pain.” Valentin ducked his head and said, “What I did to you.” He swallowed and said, “Fuck, Zoya, how can you forgive me for that?”
I shivered, remembering the prod and the pain that spouted from its tip. But I kept my composure. “Perspective,” I replied. “My life has been one of hardship. When you too have walked through a thunderstorm you understand, through perspective, how another soaked by familiar gray skies can feel desperate, too. Desperate people do desperate things.”
I drank in her soft skin and beautiful face. I asked, “Are you real?”
Zoya dipped her eyes in embarrassment, then huffed a laugh. “That depends on who you ask. Zoya Kostava is a myth, the famed daughter of the Kostava Clan whose body was never found. It seems I am more of a ghost than flesh and blood, if you are minded to ask the people of Georgia about my name.”
Valentin dragged the hand that was on my face down over my neck to skirt over my waist and said, “You’re real to me.”
I sobered. I felt static energy crackle between us. The tension was high, but both of us were sore and fragile. This was close enough.
For now.
“Tell me more,” I said, to continue the conversation.
“She hurt me. She taught me pain. Then she turned the training on its head and I became the one to administer pain. I was happy at first. I got to torture the Georgian bitch who had ruined my life. But as I administered the torture the bitch loved it, stealing any pleasure I could take from those messed-up days.”
Valentin reached up and pushed his hand through his hair. “Then, when I was fourteen, I began a new form of torture training. Sexual torture.” Valentin’s face paled. “I won’t go into it, but that fucking bitch raped me. She took everything from my body. She must be at least twenty years older than me; she just lapped it up.” His skin turned a sickly shade of green when he explained, “Then, just like with the pain, she flipped the lesson. She made me touch her. Made me make her come, over and over. Made me stick my dick in her dirty fucking mouth. Then she made me fuck her. Fuck her until I couldn’t stand.”
“Shh. Calm down,” I soothed. Valentin’s body tensed so much on replaying these memories that the holes in his neck began to erupt. But he gripped on to my wrists. “She still makes me take her like that. She triggers the serum in the collar until I’m not myself, then orders me to fuck her. But when the serum fades, I still remember everything she forces me to do.” Valentin’s eyes squeezed shut. “And I hate it. She tears off another piece of my soul every time she makes me fuck her.”
I could see that Valentin was about to lose it, so I pushed him onto his back and straddled his waist. His hands instinctively landed on the backs of my thighs, and drifted upward until they stopped on my behind. Valentin gasped as I shifted to lie over his chest, my flesh to his flesh.
I felt him harden underneath me, and heat pooled between my thighs. Valentin sucked in a sharp breath. “Zoya,” he moaned as I laid my cheek on his chest.
My arms wrapped around his thick and toned waist, and I listened for minutes as his heartbeat decelerated from fast to slow. When he had calmed, his hand