“They used me for two years,” he told her matter-of-factly, and she closed her eyes. Not him. Not him too. Yet, knowing he’d been through some of the same thing she had made her feel more seen, more connected to him. And knowing that, seeing how powerful he had become, it gave her hope for herself, that maybe she could break the shackles of her past and find power for herself too.
“She was the only girl living in the boys home, and only because they kept using her to control me. And she saw that. She knew I was a killer, and she kept begging me to kill her when the pain got too much. But I don’t kill kids, not now, not back then.”
She waited, her heart getting heavier with each word.
“So, one night when no one was watching, she killed herself.”
Her breath hitched, her eyes squeezing shut, the pain for a soul lost heavy in the air. “What was her name?”
She felt his shrug. “I don’t know. They called her 5057. I’m guessing wherever she’d been before didn’t give the girls names like they did us.”
That was sad, so fucking sad.
Engrossed in the tale, she moved, trying to turn around, and this time, he let her. She settled, fully facing him, seeing those mismatched eyes of his that had made him a demon child to the monsters. He was more. He was the devil and he was hers.
She placed her hand on his jaw, rubbing his scruff with her thumb, their eyes locked. “Then?”
“Then,” he said, his voice a low rumble that rolled over her, his arms around her waist. “They let me go.”
She blinked, surprised. “What?”
“They let me go,” he repeated. “They knew with her gone they couldn’t control me again, and I was already twelve, getting older, more dangerous. So they decided it was better to let me go than to keep me and risk everything.”
She drew in a sharp breath. “Where did you go?”
“Nowhere, everywhere.” His fingers traced her naked back under his t-shirt. “They left me on the streets, and I stayed there for some time, stealing what I had to. I squatted in a school for a while, pretending to be one of their students, using their resources. The school was some kind of specialized one, and they had a martial arts class they gave to kids after hours. That interested me, so I got in there too. Then I squatted in one of the empty houses in the rich neighborhood when the owners had been away somewhere.”
That sounded wild to her, and absolutely terrifying. To be that young and be out in the world. “And nobody suspected anything?” she asked, both awed and scared at the thought that he’d lived through all that.
She saw his lips twitch, one of his hands coming to her jaw, thumb over her lips. “Just because I’m real with you doesn’t mean I’m like this everyone, little flamma,” he told her almost affectionately. “I fool people. It’s second nature to me. Even back then, I knew exactly what to fake into charming everyone into believing me, and they ate out of my hands. Boys wanted to befriend me, and I used them. Girls wanted to fuck me, and I used them.”
Oh, the danger of him.
She wondered what it would have been like, in another reality, if she had been in that school with him. Would he even have taken a second look at her? Would he have manipulated her into believing he liked her when he just wanted something else all along? Was he manipulating her now?
The longer she looked at him, the more his lips curved in a smile, the tighter his grip got on her jaw. “Second thoughts?”
“If I had been a girl there,” she worded her question but then left it, not wanting to know.
He rolled her under his body, his mouth inches from hers. “If you had been there, I would have fucked you. Then, I would have stalked you, and I would have made you mine. There is no reality where you and I exist that we don’t end up exactly where we are now. None.”
Inhaling deeply, she let her tight muscles relax as he kissed her, his tongue claiming her mouth, his hands claiming her body, his breaths claiming her heartbeats.
“What if I hadn’t wanted to be yours?” she provoked him, because god she loved it when his eyes flashed the way they were.
“Let’s not go there, Lyla.”
The soft warning of his words did something to her. His nose brushed hers, his grip on her jaw firm.
She knew what he meant. He would’ve had her, by hook or by crook, with or without her initial consent to be his. For some twisted reason, the thought of that didn’t fill her with dread as it should have. No. She had never felt more desired, more wanted, more powerful as she did when he told her this. And she didn’t know if he said it just to manipulate her, or because he genuinely meant it, but given the last six years he had spent doing exactly that, there was little reason to doubt him.