I close my eyes and press my lips onto his, forcing the memory of Grey into the forefront of my mind to keep myself steady. But with every passing second, the image fades and makes place for the guy with the parted black hair and the scorpion tattoo, whose stinger is injecting toxic venom straight into my lips, which feel swollen, wet, and desperate for the small amount of affection his stone-cold mouth returns. It’s as if he doesn’t even try to kiss me back. Like he wants me to know I’m never, ever going to convince him that I’m smitten.
Like he knows if he truly kissed me back, I would never, ever want for anything else.
I suck in a breath through my teeth as my mouth leaves his, but a decrepit smile forms on his face. “Pathetic.”
I slap him.
There’s no mark. No pain. No nothing, because that damn mask is in the way, and all I can see is the devilish smirk growing and growing on his fucking face, making me want to scream.
“Aw, hear that?” Apollo says. “You don’t even kiss her right.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I tell Apollo without even looking at him.
Apollo snorts. “I can teach you.”
I briefly glance behind me as Apollo grips Grey’s chin and makes him look at him. “For a price.”
Despite being bound with both arms, Grey still sticks up his middle finger, and Apollo laughs.
“Thought so. But we’re not here to negotiate, Ghost-boy.”
Ghost-boy?
My breath falters, my skin crawling at the idea that it could still be Grey.
“Uh-oh …” Apollo’s gun slides down Grey’s chest. “Is that what I think it is?”
He stops on his pants, where a bulge is clearly growing.
Apollo laughs. “He clearly liked seeing you two kiss.”
“What—”
Levi grabs my neck, forcing me to turn my head and look at him.
“Kneel.”
I gulp against his strong grip, my veins pulsating as I slowly drop to my knees in front of him.
“Watch closely,” Apollo says to Grey behind me.
When my knees hit the grass, I gaze up into Levi’s hollow eyes, fraught with indignation.
“Pull down my zipper.”
It’s not a question, but a demand from a zealot intent on teaching the meaning of degradation.
This isn’t for pleasure or for pain.
He means to punish Grey and the only way to do that is to turn me into a whore … right in front of him.
Still, I do what he tells me to, because I don’t want to lose my only tether to reality.
“Take out my cock, Aspen.” His voice is raspy, unhinged.
And when I lean in to pull on his boxers, his huge bulge briefly pulses. He stands still, carefully assessing my reaction as my fingers hook underneath the band and pull down far enough until his length springs loose.
And I nearly choke on my tongue.
