Chapter Fifteen

Razor confused the fuck out of her. Sasha paced in front of her couch, torn on how to even begin to react to what he’d just done. And how he’d left her when she’d been seconds away from getting on her knees and begging for more. Actually begging. The scary part was that she was absolutely shameless about it. He had opened the floodgates, and she wanted him. Bad.

She had obviously expected him to come running to retrieve the bike she’d stolen, but she hadn’t even begun to hope for what actually had happened. She’d pleaded for it, and he’d spanked her. She repeated it through her head as she paced, seeing flashes of his face, so intent on his task. Feeling the warmth across her ass, and the memories of his hand so restrained as it came down on her bare flesh.

Ever since they’d fucked, there was a growing hunger within her, and she wanted to demand more from him. So yeah, maybe she had actually stolen the bike to challenge him. To see what he would do in response. He seemed to be better at reading her than she was at admitting things to herself.

And oh, had he delivered.

The restraint it took for him to walk out when they both so clearly wanted to continue made her feel on edge, annoyed even. She’d never felt like this before, and it made her want to crawl the walls.

That gnawing hunger inside her drove her to want to remove every last piece of his restraint. She wanted him wild. Sasha wanted to strip away that control, piece by piece, to see what lay underneath. And then she wanted to watch as all the puzzle pieces slammed to the ground and flew apart so she could be the one to put him back together.

Oh, how the tables have turned.

The thought made her stop in her tracks. What happened to only getting their kicks and moving on with business? When had this become something more complicated?

Oh, she knew why. That much she could admit. He called to something deep within her, a primal part of her that answered to him and his beast.

Shaking her head, she decided to ignore all the deep and meaningful crap. Deciding it was better to play it cool, she took her phone out of her pocket and went to her text messages. The last thing Razor had texted her was about their investigation. She was about to spice up their conversation history.

She grinned evilly and typed quickly.

Next time you spank me, hit harder.

Her playful grin faded before she hit send. The truth of the statement rang clear. Razor had read her right. She hadn’t just been challenging him when she’d stolen his bike. She’d practically begged him for punishment before she’d even opened her mouth. He was the Judge, the one she could always trust to strictly stick to the rules, to what was fair. She could trust his judgments and punishments. Even though she mocked him for his restraint, she counted on that. Was that what had prompted her to throw down the challenge?

That was a scary thought. He knew what she’d been up to before she consciously realized it. And it wasn’t the simple, lust-only relationship she claimed to want. Yet…it felt good. Right.

A part of her, buried deep, stirred to life within her. She hesitated for another moment, then added another sentence to the text.

When I really need the release of a punishment, it should involve tears.

She stared at the words, now too truthful to be playful, and hit send before she could change her mind. She tossed her phone down without waiting for a response. Just then, she felt the stirrings of a Call to collect a soul somewhere in Sector Five, and she was all too happy to answer it. Changing quickly, she left her apartment to find the soul.

She left her phone on the couch, afraid of what she could be unleashing.

The Call to collect a soul was like claws slicing into her gut. Unpleasant at first, then incredibly painful three seconds later. When a Reaper was called to duty, they didn’t linger.

Sasha had ignored a Call once. It was a mistake she wouldn’t repeat ever again. On so many levels.

When the initial tug of the Call pitched her stomach, so did the name of the soul. Sometimes, they got whispers of information about the soul. Sometimes, they got nothing.

In the back of her mind, she heard the soft breath, words barely audible. “Emma Parishkov. Age three years, two months.”

No.

Ice gathered in her veins.

This was impossible.

The voice lied. The claws in Sasha’s stomach dug deeper, and she fought every instinct in her body. Even when she felt herself start to disappear, she resisted the Reaper gift of appearing next to the soul they needed to collect.

So young. Too young.

Impossible.

Sasha forced air into her lungs, her throat burning as she pushed her tears back down. The claws doubled, tripled, pulling at her from every side. She stumbled backward, feeling the wall at her back. Still, she felt pulled forward, backward, up, down, everywhere and nowhere.

Cold. She was so cold.

Darkness collapsed on her, her vision narrowing. The hallway of the grand castle she stood in turned like a wheel. The ceiling spun around her. The floor swayed in front of her, then dropped.

Still, she would not let herself be taken there.

She smelled the sharp tang of fresh blood before she felt the pain in her nose, the sharp edges of the stone floor pressing into her cheeks. She must have fallen. She didn’t care.

“EMMA PARISHKOV! AGE THREE YEARS, TWO MONTHS!” No longer a whisper, Xavier’s familiar voice thundered through her head. Veins pounded at her temples, and she cried out as the pain shot through every cell in her body.

If her nose hadn’t already been broken and bleeding, the combination of the room rolling over and over around her and the booming voice in her head would have made her nose bleed. Nausea churned in her belly. Tears streamed down her cheeks, the blood mixing with the salty tears and streaking into her hair. Into her ears.

She didn’t notice.

“NO!” She must have screamed the word out loud because she could taste the blood on her tongue now. Her body jolted once, twice, before seizing uncontrollably. She had to hold on.

Just…

a little…

longer…

Maybe she would die. She would welcome the void.

As she felt her throat closing up and her lungs screaming for fresh oxygen, she lost the fight. Just not the way she’d wanted.

Hundreds of sharp claws retracted from her body as she was transported, without her consent, to collect the soul of Emma Parishkov.

Sasha found herself in a different part of the castle she’d been in, kneeling on a bearskin rug, her hands braced on the soft fur. Her fingers curled into the fur, but then she let her body go limp. She didn’t have the strength for this. Her head refused to lift, her bushy hair falling in front of her, the mass of curls shielding her from her nightmare. She couldn’t look.

She knew she wasn’t alone in the room. Two boots found purchase on the floor, and she had the impression of a man standing. A sob caught in her throat. If she was even capable of forming words, she didn’t want to try. There was nothing to say.

What could she say to the man who had just watched his firstborn daughter die?

She didn’t even flinch when his boot stomped on her shoulder hard enough to dislocate it. His boot slammed into her again, and she let the momentum push her onto her back.

“You fucking bitch!” He backhanded her hard enough for her to gasp, more tears streaming from her eyes. Her vision went white for several seconds.

“I-I didn’t…” Words still failed her, and he only hit her again, harder. When that didn’t get him anything, he switched tactics. He punched her so many times she lost count. Still dissatisfied, he kicked her belly hard. She choked on violent sobs, turning quickly to retch out the contents of her stomach. Her mind went blank. Just this morning she’d made the discovery that she was pregnant with their second child.

She welcomed his second and third kicks. She deserved this.

“Ivan—” She croaked out her husband’s name, but it fell on deaf ears.

When he had spilled enough of her blood to mollify him, when she no longer moved, Ivan left the room. Left their house. Left her life.

Minutes—hours? days?—later, Sasha crawled to her daughter’s body, her dry heaves starting all over again at the too-still body. Her sweet baby Emma lay as if she were only sleeping, but the tiny ball of white hovering over Emma’s pink pouting lips didn’t lie.