Chapter 2
Beast
That voice.Her voice.It does something to me. Sets every nerve ending ablaze. I’m vibrating with fury, adrenaline, and the need to kill.
Abandoning the useless skin sack in front of me, I slowly turn around, keeping the knife tightly gripped in my hand. The blood that was once warm against my skin cools with every passing second, making me itch for something fresher. Maybe hers.
“You.” My voice is an even, low, deadly growl. Her eyes go wide, and for the first time, I see some sort of fear flash in her beautifully deceiving eyes. Good, if she ever had something to fear, it's me. With no warning, I charge at her, but she doesn't move. I stop within an inch from her face, leaving us nose to nose, while my chest heaves, and my heart pounds against my rib cage. I’m so fucking mad at her. I can't let her get away with what she did to me,to him.But fuck... seeing her here, feeling her chest brushing against mine with her erratic, uneven breathing and her choppy breaths caressing my lips; I’m frozen as she looks up at me with dilated pupils, waiting for my next move.
Fuck, that does things to me, and my cock.
A mix of relief and pain mixes with my wrath. I don't know whose emotions are whose at this point.Are they mine or his?
“Hi,” she breathes out. “Long time no see.”
I growl, getting nothing other than a whimper out of her, but it's not solely a sound of fear. No, and the way she licks her lips, drawing my attention to her plump, ruby-red ones along with the fact she can’t stand still, her thighs rubbing together, tells me she’s turned the fuck on right now. It makes my cock twitch at all the naughty things I want to do to her.
Using my free hand, I grab her by the neck, whipping her to the side and slamming her against the wall next to the door. I move in closer, crowding her space, and with our height difference, she has to tilt her head back to look me in the eye. She seems small with me surrounding her like this. I want her to know I mean what I say, but I also know she’s allowing me to do this because otherwise, I would be on my ass right now.
She moans as my grip tightens, and her eyes grow hooded with lust. What a little kinky bitch. I fucking love it.
“You heartless bitch!” I growl while lightly banging her against the wall again. She shudders at my tone. “How dare you? You took one of the few things he cares about and you destroyed him. You ripped his heart out like it was nothing; like he meant nothing to you. You left him. You left without a word. You had to have known what that would do to him yet you did it anyways. He woke up that morning, smiling like a man who was given the sun, the moon, and every fucking star in the damn galaxy. I could finally relax with him completely happy with everything in his life. He was so excited to see the woman he is deeply, soulfully, and utterly in love with only to have his whole world crash and burn when he found out you were gone. Unsure where you went, if you were safe, or if you needed him. It was all too much.” I give her throat a little squeeze while pushing my nose into hers because I’m getting angrier with having to explain this to her.
"He immediately shut down; the pain was too overwhelming for him to handle. He let me take over completely and didn't bother to give me a fight. You’ve punished him for shit he had no control over and he gladly took it becauseyou were back.He was just as fucked up about you leaving back then as Cassius was, and he was the first one to embrace your return. You know, he never felt like he belonged, always feeling like there was something wrong with him because he was different from his cousins, but you were his safe place, the link that made him feel fully connected to his family.” I tighten my grip around her throat because of the callous way she decimated him along with the knowledge of what came next. She can still breathe, my hand is just making it a little harder.
"He never thought he would find someone who could handle his brand of crazy or the depth of his darkness. That's why he left you alone, let Cass have you back when you were just Harlow. Back when you were just a damaged little girl; but somehow you were still pure despite everything that happened to you.” I relax my grip as his disappointment from the past flashes across my face before an evil, mischievous, awestruck grin takes its place and my grip tightens again.
"But when he saw you in the gallery of your showroom, after years of being separated, he knew. It was at that moment that every one of his doubts vanished and all his wishes came true. He instantly knew he found his perfect match. He saw a savageness within you that rivaled me.” I curl my upper lip with a snarl. Her wide eyes are locked on mine as she shifts occasionally from foot to foot as I bare our soul, seeming slightly unsure with what to do about my grand confession.
“He saw someone who wouldn't bat an eye, who wouldn’t judge him or make him feel less than. Even when you made him your fuck toy, he loved every, single, fucking moment of it. He needed it, craved it.Craved you.You don't understand.” I laugh darkly, shaking my head and tightening my hold once more.
“You were the only thing that kept him from destroying himself. You balanced him. Harlow and Neo, Queenie and me. We needed the other to survive, otherwise, we were nothing. And. Then. You. Left.”
“I know.” She struggles to say the words and that’s when I realize her face is turning blue. I loosen my grasp, allowing her to suck in gasps of air. “I know,” she coughs out. “I didn't mean to cause him pain.”
“Bullshit!” I roar, ramming the blade of the knife into the wall only inches from her face. She flinches slightly, her glaring eyes flicking from the knife then back to mine. “You are a selfish woman driven by the demons of your past. You're so fucked in the head that you think every man is out to get you. That every man is evil. And you're kind of right, there's a never-ending supply of putrid scumbags, but not every man is bad. Not every man is evil. Not every fucking man is out to get you.”
“I know that now,” she whispers, almost like she is ashamed, but that can’t be.
Can it?
“You need to get it through your pretty little head that there are four men who would fucking die for you. Bleed for you, bring this whole motherfucking world down for you. So don't let your pride fuck it up. We all know you don't need us, but have you thought for a moment that maybe we need you?”
“Why?” she asks, her voice still soft. “What's so fucking special about me? You could have any woman in the world, so why me? Neo, sure I get that. Like you said, we match each other's crazy, but the others, this isn't the world for them.”
“You don't get to decide that, Harlow. When will you get it through your thick, fucking skull? It’s always been you, and it willalwaysbe you. Harlow or Queenie, it doesn't matter.”
The big, bad bitch that everyone is terrified of isn't here anymore. Right now, all I see is the lost little girl who has only ever known Hell growing up. A little girl who never felt like she was enough, that she deserved better. She’s wrong. She deserves the whole world and so much more.
“Let us in,” I say with a growl, removing all the space between our bodies, pressing in close against her. “Let. Us. In.” I smash my lips to hers, taking charge, not allowing her to hold back anymore. To most people kissing might not be a big deal, but to Harlow, it's the most intimate thing she can offer. She kissed Neo after her last D-Day, but she was so wrapped up in the kill I don't think she realized what she was doing.
Now she has a clear mind.
She hesitates for a moment as I bruise her lips with my kiss before finally giving in and moaning against my lips. She parts hers for me, letting me plunge my tongue into her mouth. We battle for dominance, our teeth clashing, and tongues tangling together. She bites my lip hard, drawing blood, and making me chuckle darkly. “You love to punish Neo when he's been a bad, bad boy, but you’ve been a bad, bad girl, so who's gonna punish you?” I ask, sucking in my lower lip, and groaning at the taste of my blood. Tilting my head to the side, my eyes cast down to her swollen lips, down over her heaving breasts that are practically spilling out of her top, and then back up to her very hooded eyes.
“You?” she scoffs, cocking a brow. She's testing me, baiting me to see how far I’m willing to take this, but she's never dealt with me before. She doesn't know just how much I don't give a single fuck about her rules; this room of dismembered body parts is proof of that.
“You’d like that wouldn't you?” I purr, leaning in to run my nose along her jawline before biting down hard on her earlobe. She lets out a hissed moan. “I bet if I slipped my hands down into your panties, you would be fucking soaked wouldn’t you?”