Page 70 of Beautifully Deranged

“No one talks to you like that,” he growls. “No one. You want justice, baby? You get it. But let me get mine, too.”

He turns toward the barely breathing form of my father on the floor and picks up where I left off.

My father—still conscious, barely. Moaning low, gurgling through the slick warmth pooling in his mouth. His eyes are wide, pupils blown, flickering between terror and disbelief.

“I’m going to make you regret every word that came out of your filthy throat,” Mikhail growls.

He grabs a fistful of what’s left of my father’s shirt and jerks him up by it. He groans, breath rattling, struggling for words. He angles the blade beneath the jawline, where the skin stretches soft and vulnerable. Presses hard, slicing through the platysma first. The shallow muscle splits open. Blood spills out in thick, steady waves. My father gags, twitches, fists curling.

Mikhail doesn't stop. He drags the blade through the trachea, splitting cartilage, vessels, and the vocal cords with a wet, gritty crunch. The moment they sever, the sound stops. The gurgling, the pathetic moans, they go silent. His windpipe is open now. A fluttering mess of pink tissue and cartilage. My father’s mouth opens again, lips trembling around nothing. No scream. No voice. Just a red, wet gape.

After he's done, Mikhail crouches beside me. He smells like metal and sweat and fury. His breathing is heavy, but controlled, always controlled. Unlike me, he doesn’t lose himself in the storm.

He is the storm. He wipes blood off my cheek with the back of his hand, smearing it more. “No one touches you. No one gets to break you but me. And I won’t even let that happen.”

“I didn’t mean to lose control,” I whisper, shame crawling into my chest. I don’t give a shit that my father is dead, but thefact that Mikhail saw this part of me—raw, unfiltered—makes something burn under my skin.

“You didn’t lose anything,” he says. “You got your justice. You were brilliant.”

I shake my head. “You saw what I did. What I’m capable of. Aren’t you disgusted?”

He holds my gaze, then shifts slightly, unzipping his pants and pulling them down. His cock strains, red-tipped, veins bulging. “Does this look like disgust to you?” he asks.

My lips part. Something dark and satisfied curls in my stomach. We are both too far gone to be saved. His words settle something in me I didn’t even know needed calming. I glance at my father’s body, disgust rising. His head lies twisted at an unnatural angle, mouth frozen mid-snarl. I shove it aside with my foot.

“He’s ruining the mood,” I mutter.

Mikhail laughs and slides closer until our knees touch. “You’re the most perfect woman I’ve ever known. There is no line you could cross that would make me turn away. You are mine. In the blood, in the violence, in the silence after.”

His mouth brushes my ear. “Tell me to stop, and I will. But if you don’t—if you want to let go—I’ll make you feel worshipped. Filthy, and worshipped.”

He reaches for the buttons of his bloodstained shirt clinging to my skin, but I beat him to it. I grab the bloody knife still lying beside my father’s corpse and slice the shirt clean off. “Take me,” I whisper. “Right here. With him there. You said I was perfect? Prove it.”

I don’t know where my skin ends and his begins. There’s blood on both of us, my father’s blood, dried in sticky streaks. My thighs are streaked with it. So is his chest. But none of it matters. Mikhail comes down on me like a man starved. His mouth trails my neck, teeth scraping, tongue tasting the ruin ofmy rage. His hands shove my legs apart, and he thrusts in with no warning. I’m wet and ready.

“Look at you… Look what you do to me… Fuck, Lola…”

I arch into him, dragging my nails down his back. He hisses but doesn’t stop. The knife I held rests just inches from my hip, still warm from my grip. That only makes him harder.

“This is what you are,” he says, voice dark and gravel thick. “Not crazy. Not broken. Just mine.”

“Say it again,” I breathe.

“You’re mine. My girl. My fucking queen. And if the world wants to call you insane, I’ll burn it down for you.”

I wrap my legs around his waist, dragging him deeper. I use him the same way he uses me. There’s no romance in it. It’s war. Every grind of his hips saysI’m yours. Every moan I let out screamsI want more. We move like we’re trying to carve our names into each other’s bones.

My hand finds the knife again. I press the cool blade to the back of his neck.

His hips stutter. “Lola…”

Mikhail looks at me like I’m holy and godless all at once. “Are you scared?” I ask, my voice steady but laced with the weight of my fear. “That this insane girl might do to you what she did to her father?”

His hands slide to my waist, careful, like I’m porcelain. But we both know I’m anything but. “No. I know you’d never hurt me. I know you want to protect me as much as I want to protect you,” he murmurs. “But even if I didn’t, my soul is already yours. If you ever decide to be my grim reaper… I’ll die smiling.”

That’s all I need. I throw the knife aside. The clatter as it hits the floor doesn’t even register, not over the noise between us. He goes wild. It’s filthy. Feral. His thrusts become brutal, desperate. We fuck like we’re trying to erase everyone whoever doubted us. My father’s body lies just feet away, forgotten. Irrelevant. He never saw me. Never understood.

But Mikhail?

---