Her pulse weakened under his thumbs, once as fast as a butterfly’s wings, now as slow as a dying deer trudging helplessly through molasses. Raphael was caught in a red haze. The crucifix was burning a hole in his pocket. The Brethren. She was somehow connected to the Brethren. Raphael had recognized that “B” embossed on Christ’s chest the minute he held it in his hands. That “B” had been imprinted on his ruined soul. He could never forget it. It had scarred his youth.
This woman, his fantasy made flesh, his biggest temptation, was with the motherfucking Brethren. She flailed under his hands as she fought for life. But his every instinct called for him to end her, to send her to hell where she belonged, along with the other rapists disguised as priests. But as Raphael’s gaze fell to her long hair, hair that hung to below her ass, his hands began to slacken.
Long hair.
Long, thick hair.
Hair that he could wrap around her neck . . . pull tighter and tighter, until . . .
Raphael snarled, the tormented sound immediately swallowed by the padded walls around him.
The woman was perfect, the one he’d been waiting all his life for. Thick, long hair. Strong enough to withstand the pulls, the tugs . . . strong enough to kill her . . . bid her an eternal goodnight. And her neck, a neck his hands fit perfectly around. Fragile perfect bones, just the right length and width. He stared at his fingers on her pale skin, the softness like butter under his palm.
Raphael groaned, heat pulsing in his groin.
He might not get another chance to have this. He finally had her in his hands. The one . . . she was the one.
Decision made, Raphael stepped back, the woman’s small body dropping to the floor. He stared down at her face as he towered over her. Fair skin smothered in makeup that covered its natural paleness. He saw her true skin through the tear marks that had flooded her face as he’d squeezed her perfect throat. Her eyes were crystal blue when they were open. Raphael became hard when he remembered the fear in their depths as he had begun to rid her of life. Eyes that tried to plead with him for mercy.
He could’ve laughed. He didn’t offer mercy, only death.
Sporadic freckles were dusted across her nose and cheeks, making her look younger than she probably was. But that hair . . . her perfect hair . . .
Raphael reached down, ignoring the voice in his head forbidding him from doing what he craved. That voice belonged to Gabriel. Gabriel reciting the Fallen’s Ten Commandments . . . Thou shalt not bring prey back to Eden Manor . . . Thou shalt practice self-restraint . . . Thou shalt kill only the Chosen . . .
But Raphael forced himself to drown out those words with the heavy music outside. He picked up her limp body. Raphael groaned out loud, his cock swelling until it was painfully hard, when her hair draped over his arms and almost touched the floor. He cupped his dick and ran his hand along its caged length. He thought of her hair around it, wrapping around and around, pulling so tightly it hurt.
“Such potential,” he whispered into the silent room as his eyes dropped to the woman. He gazed down at her neck, which was stretched as her head hung over his arm. It was red from his hands. It was the perfect size. He recalled how it had felt to wrap his fingers around her fine bones. It was like nothing he’d ever felt before. She had fit him like a glove. Was made just for him. She was slender and, before his attack, had not one mark on her skin. “It’s her. It has to be her.” He felt his dick throb just imagining being inside her as she smiled up at him, her arms wrapped around his back.
Raphael knew he was never going to get anyone more perfect than her. He didn’t care that she was an innocent. He never cared if any of his kills deserved it or not. They were nothing to him. It was Gabriel who insisted on killing only those who harmed others.
And this woman wasn’t innocent, he reasoned. Any connection to the Brethren made her deserving of a slow and painful death. He was simply protecting his brotherhood. At least that was what he told himself as he fled across the room for the door that led to the exit. He was grateful that the private rooms were equipped with an easy escape route. Sometimes the private sessions were so intense people didn’t want to go back into the club.
Raphael tucked her close to his chest and walked down the stairs. The doorman was occupied with a woman trying to get in uncarded. Raphael took advantage of the distraction to slip into the shadows and open the back door, balancing the unconscious woman in his arms. Sticking to the back alleys, Raphael made his way to his car. He put the woman on the back seat and laid a blanket over her so no one would see. From the glove compartment, he withdrew the mask he kept there and doused it in chloroform. He tied the mask around her head, the chloroform-soaked gauze smothering her mouth, jumped into the driver’s seat, and hit the road. With every mile he made toward the manor, thoughts of how he would take her, how he would seduce and then kill her, were all he could concentrate on.
Seventy minutes later and a mile out, Raphael realized he couldn’t drive up the main driveway. The staff might see him. He decided to enter through the back way they rarely used and slip in through the tunnel that led from the unoccupied garden house to the ground floor of the main house.
Killing his lights, Raphael slowed as he made his way along the back road. The tires of his car crunched on the gravel. He prayed it wasn’t loud enough for any of his brothers to hear. The manor looked to be in darkness. But that didn’t mean anything. He and his brothers existed well in darkness. Even after ten years of being out of Purgatory, they still struggled with the light—in all its forms.
Raphael parked his car behind the garden house. Silently, he retrieved the woman from the back seat and stepped into the barren building. He made his way to the bookcase that would give way to the tunnel and pulled on the copy of Wuthering Heights. The bookcase moved. Raphael kept his eyes forward as he traveled the length of the tunnel. He listened intently at the door at the end. Hearing nothing, he sneaked into the house and quickly climbed the stairs, only stopping when he had entered his private rooms and locked the door.
For the first time since he arrived home, he glanced down at the woman in his hands. The mask kept her unconscious. Looking around his suite, he searched for where to put her. He decided on his walk-in closet. Like everything in the manor, it was huge, more than large enough to keep her. And none of his brothers would go inside. When Michael came into his rooms, he wouldn’t even look in its direction.
He quickly ducked out of the room, locking it behind him, and rushed back through the tunnel and into his car. Pulling back out onto the main road, he switched on his headlights and entered the manor through the usual front entrance. He was back in his rooms in ten minutes flat.
Raphael knew he wasn’t thinking rationally. He knew he was disobeying the commandments, Gabriel, and his brothers. But he wasn’t being led by his head. It was lust and want and his greatest fantasy within arm’s reach that were in control. And he happily surrendered himself to them.
He went into the closet and pulled a box from the top shelf. From it, he took tape and a gag, and he bound the woman with her arms around her back and her ankles tied. He took the mask off her face and propped her up in the corner. As he was about to push the gag into her mouth, Raphael let himself get a good look at the woman. The club had been dark and cast in a red glow. In this closet, with the bright light illuminating her every feature, he sucked in a sharp breath. She was stunning. Pale and fair. Like an English rose. Dark-blond hair that draped the upper half of her body. Raphael closed his eyes and sat back on his haunches. He dug his hands into his muscled thighs.
He pictured her lying on the bed, naked beneath him. Petals were strewn around her head. She would reach out her hand and pull him toward her with a smile on her pink lips. He would crawl over her body until he lowered to kiss her mouth as he slipped inside her. She would moan in his ear. Raphael would keep it slow at first, moving his mouth to her neck and licking her warm skin. He would gather her hair in his hands. He would twist the lengths, twist and twist until her hair had made a rope. With her blue eyes locked on his, her cheeks flushed as he pushed in and out, pleasure infusing her body, he would lift her until she was in his arms, her breasts pressed against his bare chest. And around her neck her hair would go. Raphael would lower her back down on the soft bed, increasing his speed. With every thrust he would pull tight. Tighter and tighter, her cheeks reddening with pleasure. Her eyes would widen and her rosy lips would part. In three more thrusts, he would spill inside her, her final gasp washing over his heated skin.
He would bring her to his chest and wrap his arms around her soft body, keeping her safe. And she would never leave him. She would be that way forever.
Only ever his for the rest of time . . .
Raphael groaned, leaning forward, bracing his palms on the carpet. He gasped for breath, pulse racing in his neck. He opened his eyes and looked down at his dick. Cum had soaked through his jeans, over his groin, and Raphael clenched his jaw as he recalled the vision, so real he felt he’d been there.
Lifting his gaze to the woman, he reached out and stroked her cheek. “Soon,” he whispered, the warmth from her skin branding his finger with a promise. A promise that, someday soon, she would welcome him into her bed, of her own accord. Invite him to push inside her . . . and then her hair would wrap around her pretty little throat, and she would give him her life. Because she loved him. Because she wanted to gift him her soul.
Because he was her God.
Raphael stared at her sleeping form. He realized he had lost track of time when the bell rang out in the manor, signaling it was time for breakfast. Raphael quickly attached the gag to her mouth, covering her lips with tape. He didn’t want to mark her skin, but she couldn’t be found.
His brothers couldn’t hear her screams.
Raphael jumped into the shower, rinsing the dried cum from his dick. He didn’t touch himself. The pleasure of this kill would come from the gratification of breaking the woman down, swaying her to attraction, then controlling her every move. He forced himself to dress in jeans and a white shirt, pushing his dark hair from his face. He closed the closet doors tight, locked his bedroom, and made his way downstairs.
When he entered the kitchen, he found all of his brothers already present. Lynn, the cook, was busying herself with the food, pushing his brothers out of the way when they got in her busy path. Sela saw him first, speaking with a piece of toast in his mouth as he leaned against the counter. “Well?” he asked, crumbs spilling onto the floor. Sela’s long hair was still wet from his shower.
Raphael made himself act normal and go straight to the coffee machine. “She’s already obsessed.” Sela smiled and nodded his head in approval.
“You tie her up?” Bara asked from the table. His feet were resting on another seat as he shoveled eggs into his mouth. “Did the bitch scream your name when she came?”
Lynn, not batting an eyelid at Bara’s crude words, placed more food on the table. Raphael dropped to his seat across from Bara and met his green eyes. “Many times.”
“And what name is that?” Diel asked as he brought his coffee to the table and sat beside Raphael.
“Robert,” Raphael replied.
Laughing, Uriel kicked Bara’s feet from his seat and sat down. “Did you cause her pain? Did you make the whore hurt?” His gray eyes were lit with excitement. No one liked inflicting pain as much as Uriel. His victims were the worst off out of them all when it came to pain.
“Leather straps. Wooden canes, and the strappado.”
Uriel’s nostrils flared as he nodded in approval.
“When will she die? This a long game, or short and sweet?” Sela asked. Michael took a seat beside Raphael and stirred his coffee, his eyes focused on the table.
“Soon.” Raphael shifted in his seat. He saw Bara frown and knew his brothers would question why he was being so vague when he normally explained and relived every single detail.
“Morning.” Gabriel entered the room. He was dressed in his usual black shirt, white dog collar in place. He wore black jeans, and his blond curly hair fell over his forehead. His brothers began talking among themselves. Gabriel sat down at the head of the table with his usual morning meal of toast and coffee.
“Raphael,” Gabriel said, smiling when he saw Raphael watching him. Raphael wondered what Gabriel would do if he knew he had a woman tied and bound in his closet. A woman he intended to kill on Fallen territory. Raphael tried to muster up some shame, a feeling of guilt. But he had none.
No one was getting in the way of his kill.
Needing a distraction, something to occupy his brothers’—and especially Gabriel’s—minds, Raphael reached into his pocket. He pulled out the rosary and dropped it in the center of the table. With the sound of metal hitting the wooden surface, his brothers stopped eating and drinking, and all talking stopped.
“Lynn, can you please give us a moment?” Gabriel asked and smiled at the cook. She left immediately. The minute she was gone, Gabriel’s smile dropped. Bara reached forward and took the rosary in his hands.
“Bastards,” he hissed and passed it to Uriel. When each of his brothers had studied the red beads and “B” emblazoned crucifix, it finally landed in Gabriel’s hands. Gabriel’s face was neutral as he studied the artifact.
“Where did you find it?”
“In the club. Last night.”
Gabriel’s blue eyes snapped up. They widened, and Raphael watched something like panic flash across Gabriel’s face. “Did you see any of them? Did they see you?”
“I found it in one of the private rooms. I never saw any of them. I don’t know if they saw me.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. The woman upstairs was associated with the Brethren somehow, but she wasn’t one of them, this Raphael knew. They refused entry to women. They believed them inferior and easily swayed to the side of evil. Weak and pathetic, and unable to be as spiritually pure as men. Women bled once a month, making them spiritually unclean. And in the Brethren’s eyes, they were the root cause of all evil. Eve and the Fall plunged mankind from paradise and out of God’s embrace.
Raphael didn’t know how they got her to do their bidding, but he knew one thing—they wouldn’t care if she died.
His little captive upstairs was perfectly disposable.
“You don’t go back there.” Gabriel dropped the rosary into his pocket. “This is the first time in ten years we’ve come this close to being discovered. We can’t allow it to happen.” He turned his blue eyes on Raphael. “Did anyone follow you? Tail you to the manor?”
“No.” That was true. He had kept his eyes on the road. He had been trained well in the early years by the experts Gabriel had employed to keep them all safe. He had mastered disappearing from plain sight. Sinking into the shadows that always welcomed him home. He’d been extra vigilant that night. He’d had precious cargo in his back seat. He’d made sure they’d got away unseen.
“I need times and locations of where you were. If the Brethren have somehow figured out where we are, we have to be diligent. The last thing we need is to have them back in our lives, coming for our blood.”
“Maybe we should let them,” Diel said. All of the brothers focused on him. He rolled his neck, the bones clicking under the heavy weight of his electric collar. “Maybe it’s time to face them. To show them who we are now.”
“I agree,” Sela said. Sela would always agree with Diel. He and Sela were best friends. Just like Bara and Uriel were, Raphael and Michael the same. It was only Gabriel who sat on the fringes of their group. He was their older brother. But he kept to himself or in the company of John Miller, the lawyer who used to work for Gabriel’s grandfather. The grandfather who was a killer too.
“We’re stronger than them now. We can fight them and win. If they’ve found us or at least are looking again after all this time, maybe it’s a sign we finally need to face them,” Diel argued. His neck tensed under his collar. His head twitched as the collar hummed, reacting to his quickening pulse.
“It could be a sign from your beloved God, Angel,” Bara added, smirking at Gabriel. “Maybe he’s returned to his Old Testament wrathful self and craves a bit of good old-fashioned violence.” Bara gestured around the table. “We’d all be his willing soldiers if it meant bringing down those Brethren cunts.”
Gabriel got to his feet, ignoring Bara. “I’m getting surveillance on that club. I want to know who exactly is looking for us. Once we know that, we’ll make plans.” Gabriel sighed and faced Raphael. He looked tired. He always looked tired. “Raphael, the kill is off. For now, at least.” Gabriel braced himself, body tense, clearly waiting for Raphael’s wrath. But Raphael just nodded. Gabriel’s eyebrows pulled down in confusion. Then, without another word, he left the room.
Uriel was staring at Raphael like he was looking at a stranger. Even Michael had looked up from his black coffee. “Why aren’t you more pissed? He’s taken away your kill,” Uriel asked.
“I’ll get it back.”
“Are you insane?” Sela asked.
“Or, in our case, have you found your sanity?” Bara laughed darkly at his joke and put his hand on his chest. “Raphael . . . have you found God too?”
His brothers smirked at the redhead.
“The whore was rancid. There was nothing exciting about being inside her overused pussy, even if it meant I got to snap her neck at the same time.” Raphael shrugged. “She held no appeal to me. She was a bad target. Nowhere near my type. When I go back, it’ll be a quick and unsatisfying death for the slut.” Raphael stood up. “I’m going to sleep.” He left the room and walked up the stairs. Michael never turned up to hang out until dark fell and dinner was done. He had time with the woman. Hours where he wouldn’t be disturbed.
Back in his suite, he made sure every lock on his door was bolted and headed straight for the closet. When he walked in and switched on the light, it was to find two huge blue eyes fixed on his.
A slow smile broke out on his face. “Hello, again.”