I was pathetic. Depraved and unhinged.
“You don’t cry for him,” he whispered against my ear, thrusting slower now, but deeper. “You cry for me. Say it. Let the grave hear it.”
I choked, swallowed the sob, and moaned instead. A sound, obscene, and unholy.
“Say it.”
“I cry for you,” I gasped.
“And moan for me too, Dolcezza. Say my fucking name when you come.”
“Zagreus!” I whimpered.
He grinned like the devil tasting sin for the first time. “That’s it. Bleed my name from your lips like a psalm. Like the only god you’ll ever need.”
“Stop!” I trembled, coming all over his thick cock, tearing into me. Splitting me open in two.
“Make me,” he moaned into my throat, pinching my breasts. He gripped my jaw, forcing my eyes back to the name on the stone. “Look at him when I come inside you.”
I whimpered. And he groaned, lowly and viciously as he spilled into me, thrusting deeper and staying there as he dropped his forehead against mine.
“Mine,” he said. “Even the dead know it now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Cipher
Some wounds whisper louder than screams.
He picked me up like I weighed nothing. Like I was a song he’d already memorised, even if every note of me was a broken melody. I let him, because I couldn’t move. Couldn’t lift a finger or remember what it felt like to be untouched.
He was right.
Even the dead knew it now, including Adrian.
I was sore in places I didn’t want to name.
I thought I might be bleeding down there. I thought I might be cracked open down there. Still dripping, raw and filled with him. His cum slid down the inside of my bruised thighs as hecarried me to the car, like proof of his victory. He was calm now. But still brutal.
Like he didn’t ruin me on someone else’s grave. Like he hadn’t just made me forget the only man I ever loved.
The car door opened, and I didn’t look at the driver. He settled in the backseat, keeping me on his lap like a child, like a possession, like something he owned before I ever belonged to myself.
He didn’t speak, didn’t demand anything more. Just wrapped his arms around me, his hand sliding through my hair with infuriating gentleness. His lips brushed the slope of my shoulder, feather-light kisses pressing into skin he had bitten minutes ago.
And I cried harder.
Because this tenderness… it was a lie.
A fucking illusion.
I punched him. Once and then again. My fists were weak, trembling, and pathetically vulnerable. “I hate you,” I whispered. “I hate you. I hate you.I hate you…”
His arms only tightened like he knew the rhythm of my rage, as if he had done this before with others. Or maybe just me. In some past life, I didn’t remember consenting to.
“I hate you…” I said again. But it came out cracked, wrecked.
I cried into the fabric of his coat, into the scent of him… smoke, sin, and the grave… and I sobbed until the words lost their meaning.
