Chapter Nineteen

When I push open the door of my bedroom, it’s not locked. And the weight of that freedom, of that small and insignificant choice, opens something inside my heart.

When I walk into the lounge, for lack of a better word, I find Rhodes alone.

The last rays of sunset are pouring through the high arch windows and in the distance, the snow-capped mountains are glimmering in paints of gold and pink.

Rhodes is at the bar in the corner, shaking a martini glass. His fitted, black collared shirt is completely unbuttoned and all of his sharp muscles and tattoos are moving in a way that’s almost mesmerizing.

He’s clearly the bartender of the house, even though his movements are cat-like. Battle scars mark his chest and arms and in the all-black room, silhouetted by twilight, he looks like a god of war. A broken, unyielding dark god of steel and stone.

“Morning,” he says, still shaking the sweet smelling concoction.

“I believe it’s night?”

“That’s morning to us,” he winks to me, brushing aside a lock of his half shaved, jet black hair. He looks so much like Kallias, except for his hair.

“What are you making?” I ask.

“A pomegranate martini.”

“Sounds yummy.”

“As is everything I make.”
I slide onto one of the red leather stools before the bar. “You’re pretty confident in yourself, aren’t you?”

Rhodes laughs in a way that embarrasses me. “If you don't find yourself captivating, you're simply not paying enough attention."

“Some would refer to such as self-absorption.”

Rhodes sets the shaker down, pinning me with those violet eyes. “If you can't captivate yourself, how do you expect to captivate anyone else?”

Captivated? He says. Tonight I have plans for that and more.

I reach over the bar separating us and take the shaker from where he set it down. It’s cold, and when I lift it to my lips, the blood-red drink smokes from the cold.

“Careful,” Rhodes warns, though his eyes reveal nothing of a threat, or warning, “didn’t you learn last night what I do to bad little girls who don’t do what they're told?”

I shift in my seat at the memory, feeling now, more than ever, the sweet pain of the bruises he left on me.

His gaze darkens, and my thighs clench as his gaze dips below my breasts, to my waist, as if he can see right through my dress and at the way he marked me.

This is not a safe man to be alone with in a room, teasing. This is dangerous.

But it’s my choice.

Rhodes takes the shaker back from me. I watch him silently as he pours it into a martini glass, then he reaches across the bar, lifts it to my lips, and tells me, “open.”

Fuck. I’ve flirted with men at court before, played games with them, but never with someone so powerful as Rhodes, someone immortal.

Rhodes doesn’t look at me like the men from my father’s court. He looks at me like a conquest, like a toy.

And it’s my choice.
I lift myself from the barstool and lean closer to the spymaster. His eyes dip to my breasts, then to my lips again, which I dutifully, submissively, open.

Rhodes groans. I hold his stare as I run my lips against the glass, and bat my eyelashes slowly as he tips it back, and I innocently begin to swallow.

The drink is blood red, but sweet, and strong. It tastes of vodka, pomegranate, and something floral that I can’t quite place.

He tilts the glass too quickly, and a small drop escapes from the corner of my lip. My heartbeat gallops as Rhodes removes the glass, towering over me and staring at the liquid that I make no move to clean.

“Fuck, love,” he breathes, watching the drink travel onto my throat, and my breasts, “you’re going to be the death of me.”

I lift myself onto my tippy toes, leaning forward to give him better access. He visibly trembles, his hand rising to meet my skin, so fucking slowly.

Touch me, I want to say, lick the drink from my throat, but I wait, like a good girl I wait, and forbid myself from arching into his fingers.

Then Rhodes smirks at me and bares his fangs. Never have I been so close to a vampire, never have I been so unafraid.

“Do you trust me?” he whispers, and I nod. I nod because, with Rhodes, there is no saying no.

The fangs glint in the moonlight, and we’re a heartbeat away from making a bad decision, before cold, familiar terror, slithers up my spine like a snake.

Footsteps sound, and Rhodes pulls back.

I don’t need to look behind me to know that the male who entered is Xaden.

My spine feels like it’s cracking, and for some, asshole reason, when I crumble from the barstool, Rhodes rolls his eyes and makes no effort to catch me.

Neither does Xaden.

Sometimes I forget what type of men these are, that they’re vampires, rogues, but Xaden’s look of sick amusement while I crumble to the floor in a panic, reminds me good and well.

“Don’t be a fucking asshole, Xaden,” Rhodes mumbles from somewhere behind the bar. The writhing terror rises, and I scream out a plea for help, then Xaden and Kallias exchange an amused glance from across the room, and finally, the terror falls.

Xaden’s red eyes meet mine, glinting menacingly from behind the half-steel mask. It’s a skeleton, I notice, half of an exposed, silver, skull.

“Says the spymaster about to break his King’s rule,” he says, plopping himself down on the couch.

From my place on the floor, I find my voice. “Kieran was all over me last night.”

If the Demon Hunter heard me, he makes no indication of such.

“Settle a debate for me, darling,” he begins, lighting a cigarette. He wears black boots and crosses one leg over the other.

A rock settles in my stomach. This is not good.

Xaden pulls a thick hit from the cigarette, then blows the smoke upwards. “Who’s the bigger asshole, me for interfering, or Rhodes here for making you drink blood.”

My hands go to my throat, the pomegranate drink…was it…blood?!

I rise from my feet instantly, ready to run, and bolt, but Xaden’s magic traps me.

He stares right at me, where I’ve crumbled into a crying mess on the cold stone floor, then reaches across to the shaker that Rhodes was using and dumps the entirety of the drink onto my hair and clothes.

Fury and humiliation writhe up in my spine. I’ve never been one to be violent, to fight another person, but Xaden is pushing me pretty fucking close.

But that’s what the Demon Hunter wants, isn’t it? To enter a room and use terror and degradation to make me break? Make me choke?

They all want a rise out of me, in one way or another.

And it’s my job to keep them all from getting what they want, at least for now.

Taking a deep breath, I look up at Xaden and raise my right palm. Spilled red drink coats my skin, and all while holding his blood-red eyes, I pick up my hand and lick the back of my hand like a cat.

From my seat on the floor, I see The Demon Slayer’s hand twitch.

I shift to my knees before him, the same as I did for Rhodes the night before, and begin licking my fingers clean one by one.

At my middle finger, Xaden explodes.

I try to crawl away, but I’m not fast enough.

Xaden catches me in a heartbeat by the back of the neck. His palm digs into my hair, and he forces me to stand, then he presses my cheek into the cool stone of the bar, forcing me to bend.

“Xaden,” Rhodes says, with enough bite in his voice to truly scare me.

The Demon Slayer only presses my face into the stone with his palm. “Was last night not enough for the girl to learn her lesson?”

A sob escapes my throat as Xaden’s hand runs over my dress, over the bruises on my ass from Rhodes.

“Xaden, I swear to–”

A sharp, rough spank, cuts Rhodes’s second warning off. And the pain of it, combined with the bruises, and the mind control of the Demon Slayer, makes me fight against Xaden.

There is no mercy in the movement, no control or restraint. And it terrifies me, how different he is from Rhodes, how he doesn’t care at all about my pain.

But another thing is happening to me, something just as dark and twisted as Xaden himself. A bodily reaction I’m not quite ready to admit to anyone, let alone myself.

But Xaden, of all the males in this house, notices.

Perhaps like calls to like.

Xaden leans over my body, pressing his hips into me. He’s twice the size of me, and his hand can cover my whole face. “You were right, Rhodes,” he laughs wickedly, one hand pushing my face into the island, the other easily reaching for my dress and pulling the fabric up.

I squirm beneath him as he lifts it, mortified at what he might discover.

“P-please, no–” I choke out.

But Xaden’s fingertips skim my panties, my soaking wet, dripping panties.

I can practically feel his smirk on my shoulder. “I break dumb little girls like you,” he growls, then presses into my clit.

The heat between my legs soars. The Demon Slayer has never been calmer.

“Say you’re dumb,” he orders, and at his words, I release another sob. His hand flicks at my clit, rubbing it in fast circles. “Say you’re a dumb little whore.”

I’m not sure what is up and what is down. Left or right. East or West.

“I’m-I’m dumb–”

Xaden shifts his hand at my mouth so that two of his fingers hook in my mouth, and I begin to pant out my breaths.

Never have I felt like this before, with another person, or alone. In fact, up until this moment, I don’t think I’ve ever come.

But this time, I’m certain, because Xaden knows what he’s doing. Xaden is certain.

“I-I think I’m going to–”

A heartbeat before my orgasm, Xaden pulls completely away.

The pleasure, and the terror, all recede like an ocean tide, and I collapse like a mess. I don’t know if it’s the guilt of the bruises or his psychopathic chosen brother, but Rhodes is around the island in a heartbeat and catching me before I hit the floor.

I can barely see, barely breathe.

Rhodes scoops me up in his arms like I weigh nothing and shields me from Xaden’s form. My body is still on fire, and desire still writhes in my stomach. My clothes are ruined now.

From behind Rhodes' arms, I look up at Xaden. His eyes are still glowing red, and I think I know his face well enough now to know that the expression is…pride. Amusement.

The look of a demon playing with his prey.

I think he expects me to cry, or scream, or maybe even beg for him to take me. Any reaction that proves to him that he broke me, that he won the game.

So I won’t let him.

That’s a choice I have.

“Will you help me bathe?” Both the males in the room know who I’m referring to.

Rhodes laughs aloud.

Xaden simmers.

Even if he’s more powerful than me, even if he invades my mind and makes me cry, it’s my choice if I break.

He will not break me.

He gives me one more snarl and then turns from the room and walks away.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Rhodes says, carrying me like a feather from the lounge room and back to my bedroom.

When he sets me down before the door to the bathroom, I linger.

“I can’t believe you served me blood.”

Rhodes laughs, then begins to walk away. At the door frame, he says, “It was crushed rose, Remi darling,” a wink, “not blood.”