TAINTED LOVE: RIDING WITH THE DEVIL

ARE YOU RUNNING OR STAYING?

ISABELLA REYES

It is morning, and lay curled against his chest, my body deliciously sore and marked. The leather cuffs were gone, but the ghost of them still lingered on my wrists. Rafe’s arm was locked around my waist like a steel band, one large hand possessively cupping my ass as if he might flip me over and start again at any second. His heartbeat was steady and strong under my cheek. Mine was still racing.

The city lights glittered through the floor-to-ceiling windows of his penthouse bedroom, cold and distant. Everything in this place screamed power and money, yet the man holding me felt like raw, barely contained violence wrapped in expensive skin.

“You’re thinking too loud, Bella,” he murmured, voice rough with satisfaction.

His fingers traced the fresh bite mark on my shoulder, pressing just hard enough to make me hiss.

“Regretting staying with the devil already?”

I swallowed.

“A little. You’re… a lot more intense than I expected.” Understatement of the century. “The way you touch me, the way you take control… it’s like you’ve been doing this for years. Breaking women in.”

He let out a low, dark chuckle that vibrated through his chest. His hand slid up to grip my throat again; not choking, just holding. A reminder.

“Not women. You. And yes… I’ve had practice.”

He rolled us suddenly so I was pinned beneath him again, his heavy body settling between my thighs. Even after everything we’d done, his c**k was half-hard against me. His storm-gray eyes bored into mine, dangerous and unreadable.

“You want to know who you let f**k you all night, little girl?” he asked softly. There was a cruel edge of amusement in his voice, but something darker underneath. “You really want to peek behind the curtain?”

I should have said no. Instead, I whispered,

“Yes.”

Rafe stared at me for a long moment, then leaned down and bit my lower lip hard enough to sting before pulling back.

“I wasn’t born Rafael Voss. That name came later... bought and paid for with blood and money. I grew up in the gutters of Nocturne City, south of the river where the cops don’t go after dark. My mother was a junkie who sold herself to feed her habit. My father…” He smiled coldly. “Some asshole biker who beat her to death when I was nine because she couldn’t pay for the drugs he gave her.”

My breath caught. I searched his face, but there was no softness there. Only cold fact.

“I watched him do it,” he continued, voice flat. “Then I watched him turn on me. I spent the next six years on the streets. Fighting, stealing, and killing when I had to. By fifteen I was running with a small crew. By seventeen I put a bullet in my father’s head and smiled while I did it. That was the first time they called me Reaper.”

He shifted his hips, sliding his c**k along my slick folds, teasing my oversensitive c**t. I whimpered, torn between horror at his words and fresh arousal.

“I tore that crew apart from the inside and rebuilt it. The Black Vipers aren’t just bikers, Bella. We own this city’s shadows. Drugs, guns, protection, underground fights… everything that makes the powerful weak. I climbed over piles of corpses; rivals, traitors, even some of my own men when they got greedy. The legitimate Voss empire? That was the mask I built so I could move in boardrooms the same way I move in back alleys. Two faces. One man.”

His hand tightened slightly on my throat as he pushed inside me again, slow, thick, and relentless. I gasped, still sore but helplessly wet for him.

“Everything I have, I took,” he growled, starting a deep, measured rhythm. “Nothing was given. Nothing. People fear me because they should. I don’t trust, I don’t love. I possess. And right now…” He thrust harder, making the bed creak. “I possess you.”

Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes from the overwhelming intensity of fear, lust, pity, and something far more dangerous. This man had murdered his own father. Built an empire on blood. And here I was, legs spread, letting him f**k me while he confessed his sins.

“You’re scared,” he observed, a cruel smile curving his lips as he watched a tear slip down my cheek. He leaned down and licked it away. “Good. Fear keeps you honest. Are you going to run, Bella?”

I moaned as he hit a spot deep inside that made my toes curl. My cuffed wrists earlier had been nothing compared to this... the emotional exposure, the raw power rolling off him in waves.

“I… I don’t know if I can,” I admitted breathlessly. “You’re terrifying. The CEO version of you is intimidating enough, but this… this Reaper side…” God, if you only knew I already work for the CEO version.

He laughed darkly and drove into me harder, one hand pinning my wrist above my head.

“Smart girl. Because even if you tried to run, I’d find you. And when I did…” He kissed me brutally, biting my lip again. “I’d drag you right back to this bed and remind you exactly who you belong to.”

The worst part? Some twisted, broken piece of me thrilled at the threat.

Rafael Voss — the Reaper, had survived hell and become something worse. And last night, willingly or not, I had walked straight into his flames.

He f****d me slower now, deep and possessive, eyes never leaving mine as if he could read every terrified, aroused thought crossing my mind.

“Tell me you understand,” he demanded, voice velvet and steel. “Tell me you know who owns this body now.”

“You do, Reaper,” I whispered, voice shaking.

His smile was pure dark satisfaction as he claimed me all over again.

And the scariest truth of all was that I wasn’t sure I wanted him to stop.

Rafe’s storm-gray eyes darkened with raw satisfaction as he kept moving inside me slow, deep rolls of his hips that made my oversensitive body tremble beneath him. He still had one of my wrists pinned above my head, his other hand wrapped loosely around my throat like a living collar. Every thrust reminded me who held all the power here.

He leaned down, brushing his lips against mine in something almost like a kiss, before biting my bottom lip hard enough to draw a whimper.

“Good girl,” he growled. “But knowing who owns you isn’t enough. You need to understand what you’ve walked into.”

He suddenly pulled out of me, leaving me empty and aching. With terrifying ease, he flipped me onto my stomach again and yanked my hips up. I instinctively tried to push up on my forearms, but he pressed a heavy hand between my shoulder blades, forcing my chest down into the silk sheets while keeping my ass raised high.

“Stay,” he commanded. The dominant tone left no room for argument.

I felt him shift behind me. Then the thick head of his c**k was pushing back inside my soaked, abused p***y in one possessive thrust. I moaned loudly into the mattress as he bottomed out.

“f**k… Rafe—”

“Listen while I f**k you,” he ordered, starting a hard, punishing rhythm. Each thrust rocked my entire body forward. “The Black Vipers don’t rule this city alone. There’s a pack of rabid dogs trying to take what’s mine.”

He gripped my hips with bruising force, pulling me back onto his c**k as he drove forward. The wet slap of skin on skin filled the luxurious bedroom.

“They call themselves the Iron Fangs,” he continued, voice rough with exertion and old hatred. “Led by a piece of s**t named Viktor Kane. We used to run together when I was young and stupid. He thinks the city should be split. I think it should kneel to one king.”

Another sharp thrust made me cry out. He reached around and rubbed my c**t with rough circles, keeping me teetering on the edge.

“They’re vicious, Bella. Not like us. The Fangs deal in the filthiest s**t; human trafficking, dirty drugs that kill kids on the street, extortion that bleeds the weak dry. Two weeks ago they tried burning one of our warehouses. Last night they hit the East docks and stole a shipment worth millions.” His voice dropped into something truly terrifying. “They killed three of my men. Slit their throats and left them for the rats.”

I shuddered, both from his words and the relentless way he was f*****g me. Fear and arousal twisted together so tightly I couldn’t tell them apart anymore.

Rafe suddenly fisted my hair and yanked my head back, arching my spine painfully as he leaned over me. His chest pressed against my back, his mouth right at my ear.

“They want war,” he snarled, snapping his hips harder. “And if they find out there’s a beautiful new weakness in my bed…” He bit the side of my neck hard enough to make me scream. “They’ll try to take you. Hurt you. Use you to get to me.”

The threat should have made me want to run. Instead, it sent a fresh gush of wetness around his thrusting c**k. He felt it and laughed darkly.

“f**k, you’re dripping even more. My innocent little Bella gets wet when I tell her how dangerous her new owner is.” He released my hair only to wrap his hand around my throat from behind, squeezing just enough to make my head spin. “You like knowing you’re in the middle of a war now, don’t you?”

“I-I shouldn’t,” I gasped, tears of overwhelming pleasure and fear leaking from my eyes. “This is insane… you’re insane. I should leave before—”

“Before what?” He slammed into me so deep I saw stars. “Before the Reaper decides he’s keeping you? Too late, baby.”

He f****d me harder, the power dynamics absolute. I was caged by his body, pinned by his dominance, drowning in the dark reality of who he was. The billionaire CEO I feared at work was terrifying. The Reaper currently ruining me was something else entirely — a man forged in blood who now saw me as his possession in the middle of a gang war.

“Say it,” he demanded, tightening his grip on my throat while his fingers worked my c**t mercilessly. “Tell me who protects you now. Tell me who will burn this city before he lets the Iron Fangs touch what’s his.”

“You,” I sobbed, the orgasm crashing over me violently. “You do, Reaper... oh God—”

My entire body convulsed around him. Rafe roared his release seconds later, burying himself deep and flooding me with hot pulses as he claimed me through both our orgasms.

He collapsed over me, still buried inside, his heavy weight pressing me into the mattress. His lips brushed my ear as we both panted.

“The Iron Fangs are coming for blood,” he murmured, voice low and dangerous. “But they don’t know I’ve just found something worth painting the streets red for.”

He finally pulled out and rolled me into his arms, holding me tight against his tattooed chest. His hand stroked possessively down my marked body; bruises on my hips, bite marks on my neck and breasts, redness around my throat.

I should have been horrified. Instead, I pressed my face into his neck, terrified of how safe I felt in the arms of the most dangerous man in Barcelona … while a rival gang called the Iron Fangs sharpened their knives in the shadows, waiting for any sign of weakness.

And I had just become that weakness.