PROLOGUE
Blood tasted like copper and cheap vodka.
I could taste it before I even opened my eyes.
A thick warmth that flowed from the corner of my lip,mixed with the sweat on my chin, and then dripped, drop by drop, onto the bare skin of my stomach.
I was on all fours on a bed that reeked of sex and strangers.
The sheets were crumpled,soaked, torn where my nails had clawed for purchase.
My throat burned.Not just from the screams I’d let out. From his hand, which had squeezed too hard, for too long, right as I came so violently I thought my heart would explode.
Him.
He was still there.
I could feel him behind me—his ragged breath,his fingers slowly tracing the red mark he’d just left on my hip.
I couldn’t see his face.I had never really seen it.
Just dark eyes,too dark, that had swallowed me whole in that sordid bar three hours earlier.
"Say it again,"he murmured against the nape of my neck.
His voice…deep, rough, as if he’d smoked too many cigarettes and screamed too many secrets.
I clenched my teeth.
I didn’t even know his first name.
I didn’t want to know.
That was the rule:one night, no names, no tomorrow.
But I obeyed.
Because my body was still trembling.
Because I was silently crying and I no longer knew if it was from pain or something else.
"Kill me if you love me,"I whispered.
He laughed.
A low,animal laugh that sent a shiver to my bones.
Then he turned me over in one abrupt motion,pinned me to the mattress, and buried his face in my neck.
His teeth found the vein that was beating like crazy.
"I’m not going to kill you,baby," he growled against my skin. "I’m going to keep you alive long enough for you to beg me to do it."
I didn’t have time to answer.
He kissed me.
A dirty,violent kiss, full of blood and tears.
And I came again.
Again.
Again.
Until everything turned black.
When I woke up,he was gone.
The bed was cold where he had been.
Only a bite mark on my shoulder,deep, already purple, and the scent of him on my skin that refused to leave, even under the scalding shower.
I told myself it was over.
That I would never see him again.
That it was just one overly dark night in a life already too dark.
I was wrong.
Ten days later,I was walking home at 2:17 AM, with broken heels and hair plastered by the rain.
I felt a presence before I saw anything.
A shiver.
As if someone was breathing on my neck without being there.
I sped up.
The alley.The keys shaking. The door to my building.
And then a hand.
Large.Warm.
Over my mouth.
A whisper against my ear,the same ragged breath that had made me come until I blacked out:
"You told me to kill you if I loved you.
I prefer to take you with me."
A pinch in my neck.
A syringe.
The world tilting.
The last thing I saw before the darkness were his eyes.
The same dark eyes.
But this time,they were smiling.
And they were saying:
You are mine now.
Forever.
I didn’t know yet that"forever" would smell like blood, sex, and handcuffs.
I didn’t know yet that I would end up loving him more than I wanted to kill him.
I didn’t know his name yet.
But him…
He already knew everything about me.
Including the thing I had been hiding for ten years.
The thing he had already killed for,once.
For me.
