Chapter 3: Hell's Aftercare
Her muscles were liquid, her bones replaced with warm sand. The grand piano’s surface was slick with sweat and other fluids, cool against her feverish skin. Edgar’s weight was a grounding pressure, his breathing a low, steady rhythm against her neck. The only other sound was Chris’s broken weeping, a pathetic, wet counterpoint to the rain now sheeting down the window wall.
Edgar moved first. He pulled out of her slowly, and Mia winced at the sudden, empty sensation, followed by the embarrassing trickle of his release down her inner thigh. He stood, adjusting his clothes with an unsettling casualness, as if he’d just finished a business call, not a public, brutal claiming.
He looked down at her, sprawled and wrecked on the piano. His expression was unreadable, the hellfire in his eyes banked to smoldering embers. “Get up.”
The command brooked no argument. Mia pushed herself up on trembling arms, her legs feeling like they wouldn’t support her. Her torn jeans were around her ankles. She kicked them off, not caring as they landed near Chris. Standing naked before him, before Edgar, in the echoing chamber, she felt a surreal kind of power. She was exposed, used, but she was also the axis around which this entire nightmare had spun.
Edgar’s gaze swept over her, possessive and assessing. He nodded, almost to himself. Then he bent, hooked an arm behind her knees and another around her back, and lifted her against his chest as if she weighed nothing.
“Where are you taking her?” Chris’s voice was a shredded remnant.
“To wash my property,” Edgar said without looking back, carrying Mia through a seamless archway into a short, darkened hall. “The silver will hold until I return. Think about your next words very carefully, cousin. They may be your last.”
The bathroom was a shock of sterile light and geometric precision after the organic shadows of the main chamber. Everything was black marble veined with gold, and burnished brass. A walk-in shower big enough for ten took up one entire wall, its glass enclosure fogged from the steam rising within.
Edgar shouldered the door open and stepped inside, still holding her. The hot spray hit them instantly, a cascade that plastered his shirt to his torso and sluiced over Mia’s skin. He let her legs down but kept one arm locked around her waist, pressing her front against the cold, wet marble of the shower wall.
The water was almost scalding. It poured over her hair, her shoulders, running in rivulets between her breasts, washing away the sweat, the blood from his bite, and the sticky evidence of their coupling from her thighs. She shuddered, her senses overwhelmed.
Edgar’s free hand smoothed over her hip, then slid between her legs from behind. His fingers found her swollen flesh, parting her, and she gasped as the water hit her directly there. He rubbed his palm over her clit, a rough, circular motion that had her biting her lip.
“See?” he murmured into her ear, his voice barely audible over the drumming water. “Clean enough to get dirty again.”
He pushed two fingers inside her, stretching her anew. She was impossibly sensitive, and a sharp cry tore from her throat. It wasn’t just the physical intrusion; it was the absolute dominion, the way he handled her body like it was his to explore and use without pause.
“You’re still so fucking tight,” he growled, his fingers curling, searching. “Even after I just wrecked you. You were made for this. Made to take a king.”
He bit her again, not on the neck, but on the soft curve of her shoulder, right over the pulsing mark he’d left earlier. This was different—deeper, more ritualistic. A blinding, white-hot pain lanced through her, followed by a searing heat that seemed to brand her to the bone. She screamed, her body bowing against the marble.
When he pulled his mouth away, the steam cleared for a second in the glass, and she caught their reflection. On her shoulder, glowing faintly against her wet skin, was a new mark. Not a simple bite. An intricate, infernal sigil, lines and whorls burned into her flesh like a brand. The Hell-mark.
He released her shoulder, licking the trace of blood from his lips. His fingers were still working inside her, a relentless, punishing rhythm. “Now everyone will know. Angels, demons, every fucking creature in the shadows. They’ll see my mark and they’ll know you’re claimed. That you belong to the King of Hell.”
Tears mixed with the shower spray on her face. It wasn’t grief. It was a terrifying, exhilarating overload. Her body was clenching around his fingers, that familiar coil of tension building again, despite the pain, because of it.
“Come for me,” he ordered, his voice a dark thrill in her ear. “Come on my fingers while I wear your blood on my tongue. Show me you accept it.”
His thumb found her clit, pressing hard. The combined assault—his fingers pounding inside her, the sharp pressure, the throbbing burn of the fresh brand—tipped her over the edge. Her orgasm was a silent, seismic event that locked her muscles and stole the air from her lungs. She shook against him, a violent, helpless tremor, her cries muffled by the steam and water.
He held her through it, his body a solid wall behind her. When the last spasms faded, he slowly withdrew his fingers. He turned her around to face him. Her back was against the wall now, the marble cool through the steam.
Water streamed down his face, his darkened hair plastered to his forehead. He looked more demon than man, his honey-brown eyes holding galaxies of dark intent. He unfastened his pants again, freeing his cock, which was already hard, angry and ready.
“I’m not finished,” he said, his voice low.
He grabbed her thigh, hitching her leg high around his hip. He guided himself to her entrance, the head nudging against her sensitized flesh. “This time, you look at me. You watch who owns you.”
He thrust upward, burying himself in one smooth, deep stroke. Mia’s head thumped back against the marble, a moan ripped from her throat. It felt even more intense than before, her body hyper-aware of every inch of him.
He set a relentless, driving pace, his hips pistonning against hers, the wet slap of skin echoing in the tiled chamber. He kept her leg hooked high, opening her to him, his grip on her thigh bruisingly tight. His eyes never left hers.
“Tell me who you belong to,” he gritted out, his breath coming in harsh grunts.
Her mind was a blank of sensation. She could only stare into those hellfire eyes.
“Say it, Mia.”
“You,” she gasped, the word torn from her.
“Louder.”
“I belong to you!” The confession was a scream, lost in the steam.
A grim, victorious smile touched his lips. “Damn right you do.”
His pace became frantic, losing its brutal control, giving way to raw, urgent need. His fingers dug into her flesh, his forehead dropping to her shoulder beside the new, glowing mark. She felt the moment he broke, a guttural roar against her skin as he came, pumping his release deep inside her with pulse after hot pulse.
He stayed there, pinned against her, both of them breathing in ragged sync, supported by the wall and the water. Slowly, he lowered her leg. He pulled out, and this time she felt the fullness of his claim leaking from her.
He reached past her and turned off the water. The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by their slowing breaths and the drip of water from the showerhead.
Edgar stepped back, running a hand through his wet hair. He looked at her, really looked, his gaze taking in the bite on her neck, the fresh brand on her shoulder, her bruised lips and wide, shocked eyes. He nodded, once.
He grabbed a thick, black towel from a heated rack and wrapped it around her. Then he took one for himself, tying it around his waist. He opened the shower door.
The cooler air of the bathroom made her shiver. He led her out, not with force, but with a firm hand on the small of her back. In the misty mirror, she caught a glimpse of herself—a stranger with wild, dark eyes and a sinister, beautiful mark etched into her skin.
Back in the main chamber, the scene was unchanged. Chris still knelt, head bowed, his strength clearly sapped. The silver chains glowed dully. He didn’t look up as they passed.
Edgar guided Mia to a large, low sofa of black leather near the windows. He pressed her down onto it. “Sit.”
He walked to a cabinet, poured two glasses of something dark, and brought one to her. “Drink. It will steady you.”
She took the glass. The liquor was smoky, complex, and it burned a warm path down her throat. She watched as Edgar, still wearing only the towel, walked over to Chris. He stood before his cousin, a king surveying a defeated enemy.
“My queen is washed and marked,” Edgar stated, his voice echoing with formal power. “Your sentence is now my queen’s to decide. Her word is law. What would you have me do with this treasonous worm, Mia? Should I let him burn? Or would you like to do it yourself?”
Chris’s head snapped up, his eyes desperate, fixing on Mia. “Please. Mia, for all we had… for any love you ever felt… please.”
Mia took another slow sip of the burning liquor. She felt the weight of the Hell-mark on her shoulder, a constant, searing reminder. She felt the ache between her legs, the ghost of Edgar’s possession. She looked from Chris’s broken face to Edgar’s patiently waiting, expectant one.
The game had changed. The rules were his. And she was no longer just a player.
She was the prize, the judge, and the executioner.
She set her glass down on the black stone table with a soft, definitive click.