“LOGAN, YOU KNOW I don’t like it when you ignore me.”
Pain filled every single pore in his body. It seeped into muscle. Leeched into bone. It penetrated the calluses on the bottom of his feet. Even his fucking hair ached.
“Look at me when I address you.” The petulant tone in Lilith’s voice was gone; it was now steel that propped up her words. Carefully, Logan glanced toward her, hiding the agony he felt as he gazed into the bluest eyes in existence. Her face was exquisite, the poison it hid legendary.
Logan studied her in silence. It was a cosmic joke, really, that such beauty hid a voracious and sick kind of darkness. Unlike most of the bottom-feeders and midrange demons who populated the underworld, there was no need to glamor her appearance. This visage was the original. The real deal. The woman had two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, same as any other woman, yet she was in a class all her own. Her features aligned perfectly.
Too bad she was toxic. Adam, poor bastard that he was, had never known what hit him.
“Are you ready to eat?” Her voice was a whisper, the notes heavy with compulsion, and it pissed her off to no end that he was immune to her powers of persuasion.
He grunted and said nothing.
Lilith was on her bed, a massive, decadent thing set on top of a large pedestal in the middle of her chambers. Long strips of white, gauzy material floated from the ceiling, surrounding her like wispy tendrils of smoke. She was naked and stretched just so, her generous breasts thrust upward as she arched her back and smiled lazily at him.
Logan watched from the shadows, his body bruised, bloody, damn near broken—and as naked as she was. “Come here, hellhound.”
Her voice changed, the subtle compulsion no longer evident. The floor beneath his feet trembled as she sat up and cocked her head to the side. A slight breeze parted the sheer columns of fabric so she was laid bare to him.
Beside the bed a table overflowed with rotting fruit, their bruised gray-and-black skins nearly liquefied. The incessant buzzing from the flies that were never far from Lilith was like a worm embedded in his brain. It twisted and turned, burrowing deep. It would drive him crazy if he let it.
A long sigh escaped her lips as her hands fell to her breasts. Scarlet-tipped fingernails tweaked pale pink nipples until they pebbled and hardened, as her cerulean eyes gazed at him hungrily.
“Now,” she commanded.
Logan gritted his teeth and slowly moved forward. Each step was pure agony. His muscles had been stretched and pulled to the extreme and his legs felt like they were dead pieces of flesh. As he moved, fresh blood flowed from several long slices into his pectorals, and by the time he reached the bed, a trail of crimson followed him across the cream marble floors.
The pungent odor of pain, blood, and fear clung to everything. It filled the air so that his sensitive nostrils flared in disgust.
He kept his hands loose, though his fingers itched to wrap around the bitch’s neck and squeeze until he stole her last breath. Unfortunately, down here in District Three nothing ever died, and the harlot before him was immortal.
Logan took a moment and centered himself. He kept his mind blank of things she’d be able to probe. He thought of fire and death and pain. They were the things he’d been born into and ones he could easily hide behind.
Hooded eyes gazed up at him as Lilith slowly ran her tongue across full, cherry-red lips. She rose to her knees and spread her legs slightly and he could tell she was irritated that his gaze remained fixed on her eyes instead of traveling downward, seeking the apex of her legs. The corner of her mouth tightened and red flashed in the depths of her eyes.
He held her gaze for several long moments. Long enough to grab hold of a sliver of satisfaction as her anger increased. He’d pay for it later, but it was enough to keep his fire burning. His anger festering.
He would see Kira again. There was no other option.
When he knew he’d pushed Lilith far enough he let his gaze drop. He stared at her as if she were a bug he’d like to crush beneath his feet. Too bad his heels were bare. His kick-ass Docs with their steel-toe ends were long gone but they sure as hell would have done some damage to her pale flesh.
“You will come to me,” she said pleasantly, as if they were friends.
Logan’s gaze returned to hers. “Let’s just get this the fuck over with, all right?” There was nothing friendly about this situation.
“You wound me.” Lilith made a face and gestured into the dark. Immediately a wraithlike creature, tall, slender, merely flesh over bone, appeared with a soft, fluffy, royal-blue robe. She shrugged into it and slid from the bed.
An invisible piece of lint on the cuff of her robe claimed her attention for a few seconds and then she sighed, head cocked slightly, brow arched. Slowly a smile crept over her mouth and she licked the generous lips salaciously.
“So,” she began, doe-eyed … dangerous. “Here we are again, hellhound.”
Logan said nothing. He just watched and waited.
Lilith held out her perfectly manicured fingers and studied them. “You’re not going to tell me why you were in the gray realm, are you?” Logan stared straight ahead, expression blank.
She giggled, then stopped abruptly, like the tinkling of a bell that had been squashed.
“Who’s the girl?”
His hands fisted in spite of himself and his heart sped up. It was only a second, but her eyes narrowed.
“It’s always about a girl with you men.” Her hands fell to her sides, the perfectly manicured nails now grown into long, daggerlike talons. Her eyes were now as cold as the arctic.
“Who’s the girl?” she asked once more, though she didn’t wait for an answer as she glanced behind him and nodded ever so slightly. She knew one was never coming.
“Oh, Logan, you are a tough nut to crack, but—” She shrugged, eyes round like an innocent child. “It’s so much fun trying, and let’s face it,” she said with a wink, “what else is there for me to indulge in other than pleasure and”—her tongue flicked out from between even, white teeth—“pain.”
Hot breath fell along his back and Logan someone was there. He glared at the woman with such hatred burning in his depths he was surprised she didn’t flinch. But then why would she? The woman dined on torture and ate fear for dessert.
Searing pain shot along his left shoulder as a charmed dagger cut through his flesh.
Lilith grinned and sat on the edge of the chair, a plump cherry in her mouth, a hard glint in her eye. “Dagos,” she addressed the demon behind him. “Our hellhound is still misbehaving. I think you’re going to have to kick it up a notch, no?” She sucked the cherry into her mouth and began to chew it slowly.
The demon behind him grunted, and it took everything inside Logan to keep quiet, to hold in the scream of pain as the beast jerked the dagger deeper into his flesh. Blood spurted from the wound. It trickled down his waist, over his ass, and slid along thighs and calves before pooling upon an already blood-soaked floor.
Three more demons just like the one at his back appeared from thin air and slowly advanced toward him. Their hands curled into fists, their eyes eager.
“Let’s show Logan what happens to bad doggies when they don’t listen to their master.”
Logan growled fiercely and spoke for the first time. “You are not my master.”
Lilith licked her lips and spit out the remnants of the cherry. The pit rolled across the floor until it rested against his toe. She stood, stretched, and then settled her hands onto her hips.
“No,” she said softly.
The demon to his right plowed a heavy fist into his jaw and Logan’s necked cracked from the force of the blow.
“I suppose I’m not,” she continued. “But no one knows you’re here, so what does it matter?”
Logan didn’t have time to catch his breath or even to think of an appropriately snarky reply. The three demons attacked him full on and it was all he could do to keep his sanity—to stay conscious. But eventually even that failed, and hours later he was tossed like a bag of garbage onto Lilith’s bed.
When her demons left, the statuesque blonde cuddled up to Logan’s beaten, bloody, and broken body and slowly began to lick the blood from his skin. She curled into his side like she belonged there, like she had every right to touch him. It gave her perverse pleasure, the act of breaking something as magnificent as Logan Winters.
So much so, that she wasn’t even all that interested in why he’d been in the gray realm. Or who the woman he’d supposedly taken was. Not anymore. Her focus had shifted. She would break him. Maybe keep him as a pet for a while. At least he wasn’t boring like the pathetic creatures she’d collected of late.
And the hellhound had staying power, which meant she had hours of torture to look forward to. In a world where the monotony of her existence was getting to be just a little too much, that was priceless.
Lilith hummed a tune and twisted her fingers in the thick hair that waved and matted against her neck. She rested her head on his chest. Listened to the slow, steady beat of his heart. She hoped he would recover soon, so they could play again. She wondered what it would feel like when he eventually broke—when he eventually fucked her like all the others she’d had. Her insides quivered at the thought.
And deep within the recesses of his mind, Logan slipped away to a place that would help him heal. A magical place no one could enter save he and his mate.
Thank God for fucking miracles.