Page 31 of Filthy Little Fix
The crack echoes. My head snaps to the side, and I hadn't even registered his hand approaching my face. I only understand because a piercing pain runs across my cheek. It stings. It hurts.
I bring my hand to my cheek. It must be red, with the exact outline of his hand. It burns.
He hit me out of nowhere after all his talk about "no perversions"?
"Why did you…," I start, looking at him, confused, and the second slap hits me before I can finish.
This one is harder, sharper. My head whips to the other side, and a metallic taste blooms in my mouth—my cracked molar throbbing with a pain that mirrors across my gum.
Before I can process the shock, his hand clamps around my hair. He pulls my head back, forcing my face up, exposing my throat, making me look directly into his enraged eyes. The roughpull on my scalp is a delightful pain that masks my jaw for a second.
I moan. It's involuntary, just like the heat that begins to spread through my groin, flooding my pants. Everything blurs, everything that isn't his face, his furious gaze, and his hand entangled in my hair.
"That's what I thought," Dante murmurs. His grip tightens. "How long?" he growls. "How long will it take,Nyx?"
My vision swims, fixated on his mouth. I drink him in. "As long as you want," I whisper. I can't hide how much this turns me on. "However long you want."
He gives me an almost imperceptible smile. Satisfied. "There you are," he says. The desire is there before he can mask it with more seething rage, and his grip in my hair tightens further.
His thumb drags across my swollen lower lip, exposing my blood-stained teeth. It smears onto his skin. He watches it, fascinated.
"You have twenty-four hours," he snarls. "Twenty-four hours to shut down every single one of their access points, stop the bleeding, and give me a full report. Understood?"
There's nothing I can say but, "Yes, sir…"
He releases my hair with a harsh shove. My body sags on the chair as I grip the armrests, and it's hard to breathe. I watch him turn his back on me, unaltered; watch him leave and lock the door from the outside. I revere him in silence.
Twenty-four hours.
His voice, that look… they're all it takes.
I'll twist everything to his will. Anything. Everything.
In twenty-four hours.
TWELVE
DANTE
I don't thinkI'll ever understand Nyx.
I thought he desired this. My attention. Being confined in this house on my terms sounded like a victory for him, almost a defeated testament to me, but just as he was enraged at beingfreedfrom a kidnapping, all he showed wasfrustrationat being placed here.
I looked for Nyx in what seemed like a tired, clumsy version of him. The same appearance and voice, the same bruises and features. A wrong doppelganger. I looked for Nyx in the way he looked at me. The reverence, the submission. The inherent obscenity of those pupils that dilated when they saw me. And there was only tiredness. Disinterest.
I'm not proud of having pulled him to the surface. Nyx truly only appears at the sign of pain. A slap, a tug of the hair, and he would moan for me again.My bodywould react to him again.
Nyx. I don't understand you.
The twenty-four-hour deadline is absurd. Sal's team took weeks to gather all the leak data, and I only suggested it to see him fail.
Of course, it would be great if everything was resolved in twenty-four hours. Unrealistic and utopian. My siblings called at all times, reporting casualties or seeking updates. With Nyx working with us, Dmitry is more confident. Svetlana, on the other hand, only operates by seeing practical results.
I try to focus on my obligations. Failing to do so leads me to my best whiskey and my best cigars. My body, despite my best efforts, still responds to the violence that had brought Nyx back to life, back tome. The memory repeats itself against my will. It's a disgusting cocktail of repulsion and raw, animalistic arousal that I can't purge. I hate it. I hatehimfor making me feel it.
The clock in my office had just struck the twenty-four-hour mark. I don't bother with pleasantries. I don't send Luca. This ismyproblem,myaberration.
I walk through the polished marble corridor of the mansion. I half expect to find him slumped over the keyboard, asleep, defeated by the task. Orworse, to find him having sabotaged something else, just to piss me off. I don't know what to expect from him, not really, and that's what makes me most nervous.
