Emperor of Rage: Chapter 10

His hands roam over my body, leaving marks all over me as I writhe under his touch.

I can feel the heat of him, the weight of his body pressing me into the mattress as his fingers trail over my skin, rough and possessive. His breath is hot on my neck, and the sharp bite of his teeth into my tender flesh has me moaning eagerly as my back arches against him.

Instantly he’s flipping me over, grabbing a fistful of my hair and pinning me down. His other hand grabs the back of my panties, yanking them down before his fingers thrust roughly between my legs, feeling my traitorous wetness.

The masculine leather and sandalwood scent of him fills the air. Surrounding me. Suffocating me. My pulse quickens, my breath coming in shallow gasps as I arch into him, craving more, needing more.

He growls low in his throat, the sound vibrating through my body, sending a shiver down my spine. His lips brush against my ear, soft at first, then more insistently, teeth grazing my skin in a way that should terrify me but doesn’t. Instead it ignites something deep inside, something I’ve been trying to bury for so long.

“Say it,” Mal whispers, his voice thick. “Say you belong to me.”

I gasp, my body trembling beneath him, my core clenching around his thick fingers as he mercilessly pounds them into me from behind. His palm slaps my ass hard, making me squeal into the sheets as they twist between my teeth.

My mind is caught between fear that’s been gnawing at me since the first moment I saw him and dark, shameful desire I can’t seem to shake. My lips part, the words hovering there, waiting to be spoken.

I belong to you.

I open my mouth but the words don’t come. Instead, I reach back for him, my fingers curling around his wrist, trying to pull him closer and deeper, to feel more of him. His grip tightens in my hair, his hand spanking my ass before those fingers ram back into me, knocking the air from my lungs.

He’s everywhere—his hands, his breath, his body pressing into me like he’s claiming every part of me.

I should push him away. But I don’t.

I can’t.

My body is betraying me, moving with his, craving his touch, needing his control. There’s a darkness in me that matches the one in him, and no matter how I try to deny it, I want this. I want him.

I feel his lips against mine, fierce and demanding, and I let myself fall into the kiss, into the heat of him, into the way he makes everything else disappear. Nothing else exists when he’s near. It’s just him and me and the magnetic, dangerous pull between us that I can’t fight anymore.

“I fucking own you,” Mal growls, his voice commanding. “Never forget that.”

I shouldn’t want this. I shouldn’t need this. But it’s too late. I’m already lost, already his.

And yet something isn’t right.

The room is too still, too quiet. There’s a strange haze around the edges of my vision, and for a moment its feels like I’m sinking. I try to focus, to ground myself, but everything is slipping away.

Mal’s grip loosens. His presence fades.

And just like that, I’m alone.

I jerk awake, my heart pounding as I sit up in bed, gasping for breath. My hand flies to my chest, my fingers digging into the fabric of my shirt, as if the pressure can somehow calm the erratic beat of my heart. The sheets are twisted around my legs, damp with sweat and…other things.

The room is silent.

It was a dream.

Just a dream.

I press the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to shake off the lingering sensation of Mal’s touch. It felt so real. The way his voice echoed in my ears, dark and commanding and possessive, like he was right here in the room with me.

I glance around, my breath still coming in shallow bursts. The soft glow of the city lights filters through the curtains, casting long shadows across the floor. Everything is quiet. Calm. But the knot of fear in my stomach refuses to go away.

I collapse back against the pillows, my body trembling as the wave of adrenaline slowly recedes, leaving only exhaustion in its wake. I can still feel the ghost of Mal’s touch on my skin, the pressure of his hands, his lips.

It felt so real.

I close my eyes, willing myself to calm down, but my mind won’t stop racing. The dream was perhaps a warning, a reminder of just how dangerous he is and how easily he could consume me.

You want him to.

I shudder as the thought slithers through my psyche. It’s beyond fucked up, but the thought that won’t leave, no matter how much I try to will it away.

Mal is a dangerous monster. That much is abundantly obvious. I’ve watched him casually spill blood, maim and kill, all without flinching or showing one iota of emotion.

Plus, he knows the darkest, most dangerous secret I have.

…And yet here I am, having very, very vivid sex dreams about him.

This one is hardly the first since the night he came into my room. And each time they come, they get more and more deviant and fucked up. More wrong. Like my secretive, twisted desires and kinks are feeling more and more comfortable coming up to the surface to dance with dream Mal.

I’m having mind-blowing, kink-tastic, filthy dream sex with the single most dangerous person to my health and well-being.

What is wrong with me?

I’ve been asking myself that question ever since the night I first saw him standing over those bodies with blood on his hands and a cold, calculating look in his eyes, but there’s no answer.

I should be terrified of him. I am terrified of him.

But I’m also drawn to him in a way that scares me even more.

I sit up again, shoving the sweat-soaked sheets aside as I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. I shiver when the cool air hits my skin, though I’m not sure if it’s from the cold or the lingering effects of the dream.

I need to get out of here.

But I can’t.

It’s barely noon, which is like two in the morning for me. Annika and I have been moved to Kir’s penthouse in the city, still in lockdown after the rooftop shooting at the engagement party.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep again anytime soon. So I stand, grabbing the robe that’s draped over the chair in the corner of the room. The fabric is soft and luxurious but too heavy right now, like it’s suffocating me. I shrug it on anyway, belting it tight as I make my way to the window.

One of the modifications Kir made to this place to turn it into Annika’s and my personal Fort Knox was to have the windows coated in a UV-blocking film. So even through it’s light out, I can still press my forehead against the glass and look out over the city.

I swear, I don’t deserve this found family.

I close my eyes as I try to steady my breathing and push the dream from my mind. But the image of Mal, the feel of his hands, the sound of his voice—it’s all still there, lurking just beneath the surface.

I can’t escape him.

And the real problem is, I don’t even know if I want to.

A soft knock at the door startles me and I turn, my heart leaping into my throat. I half expect to see Mal standing in the doorway, just like he was in the dream.

But he’s not.

It’s Annika.

Her red hair is loose around her shoulders, and she’s wearing an oversized Rangers hoodie that I recognize as Damian’s.

This penthouse is a frequent crash spot for him—when he’s not in a medically induced coma fighting for his life, that is.

I smile wryly at the way the hoodie hangs off Annika like a blanket, or a hilarious poncho. She looks tired, her face drawn, her eyes heavy with exhaustion.

“Couldn’t sleep?” she asks softly.

I shake my head, pulling the robe tighter around me. “Not really.”

Annika steps into the room, closing the door quietly behind her. She moves toward the bed, sitting on the edge of it with a sigh. “I keep thinking about the other night. The shooting, all of it.”

“Hey, we’ve dealt with worse when it was just us against the world on the streets, right?”

She smirks, lifting her face to eye me. “Is this the start of another trademark Freya pep talk?”

“The grass is, uh…always greener?”

She snickers.

“You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?”

She giggles, eyeing me again. “Thank you.”

“Any time,” I grin back. “Hey, if I can’t help with actual advice, I can at least make you laugh enough to forget what’s bothering you, right?”

She smiles wryly at me, but her face is still worried.

And I know why.

I wish she felt she could talk to me about it.

In hindsight, it’s amazing that Anni and I even survived those years on the streets. We were two young girls, alone, and the world is full of monsters who like to prey on those. I know Annika had her own brushes with horror and danger, same as me.

And then we met a different kind of monster. One with patience and nice words. One with presents and shiny trinkets to lure us deeper.

His name was Valon Leka, head of The Brotherhood, an Armenian crime syndicate. Annika and I first crossed his path when he hired us to do a job. At the time, it had been our biggest heist yet, and after we did what we’d been tasked with doing, Valon let us keep half of what we’d stolen.

After that, he owned us.

The next job, again, he gave us half the take instead of the ten percent he’d promised us. The next one we basically kept everything. He heaped us with praise, gifts, cars, fancy clothes, jewelry…you name it.

I was taken in by his charm and his favors.

Annika got consumed by them.

Looking back, I realize that what my friend went through is called grooming now. Anni was twenty-two and literally homeless, with no family or safety net aside from me, who was also homeless and without family or safety net.

Valon, meanwhile, was forty-five, charming, rich, powerful, and fairly handsome.

Annika never stood a chance.

We were part of Valon’s orbit for three years. I will never, ever lose the guilt I have for letting my best friend in the world remain in that prison for so long.

He didn’t keep Annika locked in a cage or tied to a wall or anything, of course. Her prison was one made from glittery gifts and lavish vacations. Built on fancy apartments and luxury cars. He kept us both happy and distracted enough to use her for three fucking years, until one day, we thankfully woke up.

We left, and we never looked back. And that would have been the final page of that chapter. Except that a few months ago, we kinda fucked up.

Part of Kir bringing us into his world was that we now worked for him. He appreciated our talents for theft, but he had bigger, grander plans for those skills. Instead of ripping off rich assholes, skimming credit cards, and boosting cars, Anni and I started using our talents for bigger-picture stuff.

Rather than hacking into checking accounts, I was digging up dirt to use against Kir’s enemies. Annika pivoted from social engineering her way into situations to crushing people in the boardroom. She’s now the bad-ass bitch who walks into a meeting with serious big dick energy and makes sure Kir gets what he came for.

Honestly, it’s way more fun than stealing credit cards.

But a few months ago, the old itch needed scratching. We talked to The Broker—a neutral, anonymous party who connects people like us to jobs that need people like us—and found ourselves talking to a particularly nasty motherfucker named Ulkan Gacaferi.

On the surface, Ulkan’s job was a breeze. All we had to do was steal a brand-new, neon yellow Lamborghini from the parking garage of an ultra-exclusive condo in midtown. He told us he was playing a practical joke on a friend of his. And he was willing to pay a shitload for it: three hundred and fifty grand for the car itself, plus another hundred grand for our talents.

Needless to say, we took the job. I think we even told each other that we’d spend a bunch of the money on something nice for Kir.

Then things went bad.

We stole the car no problem, and were driving it to the drop-off point when we took a sharp turn and heard something heavy fall over in the trunk. And, like morons, we went to have a look.

Like I said, we fucked up.

Inside the trunk we found close to a hundred and fifty pounds of cocaine, something like two million in cash, and a couple of not-very-legal-looking machine guns.

They weren’t just anyone’s drugs, cash, and guns, either.

…They belonged to Valon.

Yeah. Insert sad trombone sound effect here.

We ditched the car by the Lincoln Tunnel, wiped it for prints, and walked the fuck away. And now we’ve got two devils after us, and neither one is happy. Ulkan is pissed because we bailed on the job. And Valon is pissed because…well, because of the obvious.

He knows it was us. I mean I’m not positive, but I’m also not stupid. Annika hasn’t said a word to me, but I know what I saw at her engagement party. Valon was there, and she was talking to him with a pale, stricken face.

Part of me is angry that she hasn’t told me about it, but the other part of me totally understands. She might want to shove it out of her mind.

However, us avoiding the subject doesn’t mean the threat—or threats—aren’t out there.

Yeah, maybe—probably—the shooting the other night was one of Kir’s enemies, or Sota’s, or Kenzo’s, or…whoever’s.

But maybe it’s one of the two very dangerous men who have a huge bone to pick with us.

“What the fuck are we going to do, Frey?” She makes a face. “What if the other night was Ulkan, or something?”

Something like Valon, Anni?

I hold off on putting that out there. She’ll talk to me about her monster when she’s ready.

“I think for now, we just wait and see, okay?” I say quietly, squeezing her hand. “I mean it’s a total snooze-fest here, but you know we’re safe.”

There are like ten of Kir’s guys guarding the lobby, the roof, patrolling the hallways, and standing guard outside the door. Even the fucking windows are bullet-proof.

“Let’s just see what sort of rocks Kir and the Mori family kick over while they’re out there checking this out, okay?”

She nods glumly.

“You should also try to get some more rest,” I grin. “After all, you do have your speeecccial daaaay coming up.”

Anni laughs and flips me off for my wedding crack. Then she hugs me.

“Why does it sometimes still feel like we’re running?”

“You wanna try standing still for once?”

She blows out a breath as she stands. “Sounds amazing. Sign me the fuck up.”

She walks back to the door and then glances at me over her shoulder. “Hey—speaking of sleep, you should get some too sometime.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Wanna binge the Ocean’s Eleven movies later?”

I snort. “Obviously.”

She flashes me a smile as she opens the door. “OK. Get some sleep, Frey.”

But sleep is the last thing on my mind. I make my way back to the window, my heart still racing as I remember the unsettling, deviant, dark dreams involving Mal.

I press my palms to the glass and gaze out at the city beneath me.

The dream felt so real. His touch, his voice—it feels real even now, in the cold light of day, locked safely away from the world.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand, startling me. I grab it, glancing at the screen to see an incoming text from an unknown number.

Unknown

You belong to me now.

Something cold rakes its claws down my back. At the same time, something horribly warm floods my core.

I should delete the text. I should block his number, flee the country, do everything to get away from him.

But I won’t.

Because deep down, I know the horrible truth.

He’s right.