A Ruthless Kind of Love

The Velvet Trap

The air reeked with the smell of iron and rain.

Piers jutted out over black water, unbroken and silver in the sulfurous glow of a half-hidden moon. In the distance, a foghorn from some ship that sailed wailed over the mist, long and mournful.

Elena, her arms crossed over her chest, stood at the pier end, shaking. River wind whipped through her thin jacket and stung her skin. The smoke and salt was bitter in her mouth.

She didn't want to be here. She'd pleaded with Damien not to bring her here—to this death-tainted, God-damned death death hole of death and secrets.

But when Damien had gazed at her, his face stubborn and unyielding, that kind of look that required no words.

And it was sufficient.

Because when Damien had spoken with fiat, Elena had complied.

And now she stood alongside him, shoved between the warmth of him and the chill of night.

The river seethed beneath, churning and black.

And upon its surface drifted—bodies.

Three men, their faces hidden behind the tide, their suits dark and wet. One tapped gently on a wooden post, the sound hollow and wet. Another moved cautiously along, flared for an instant in the brightness of a security light before continuing into blackness.

Elena was ill. She lifted a trembling hand to her lips, her breath caught.

"Oh God."

"Don't."

Damien's voice sliced through the blackness. Harsh. Sour. Dominating.

Elena stood still.

"Don't look away," he ordered again, but now quietly, no less insistently.

She turned back to him, her eyes enormous. "Damien, please…"

He looked at her—his expression calm, his cigarette hanging from his fingers. The little orange fire-dance danced in his eyes, and his eyes looked almost Other.

"If you want to be mine," he said to her, "you don't get to wince at what I am."

Lightning tore the air in jagged line, and the entire dock blazed for a moment—the water, bodies, blood. Elena shuddering away from herself.

But she didn't turn away.

His hand raked the small of her back, firm and possessive, pinning her down—or imprisoning her. She couldn't say which. The smell of his coat enveloped her—leather, smoke, and something deeper in, something hazed dark like hazard scented.

"They tried to steal from me," he announced, sounding as if he were reporting on the weather. "And more—treasonously assuming they would be able to resell information to the Morettis."

His voice dropped further. "I do not tolerate betrayal."

He had pointed to one of his men. A skinny man came forward, eyes empty, and produced a gun. On the far end of the dock, a fourth soldier cowered—alive, quivering, bound behind his back. His tunic was torn, his cheek swollen. His mouth was stuffed with a ball of cloth, his sobs muffled by it.

The rain started again, slow and persistent, drumming on the wooden decking.

Elena's heart racing. She took a step forward, and then she saw that she had. "Damien, no. Please. He's just a man—"

Damien's eyes never wavered. "He made a choice."

"Everybody makes mistakes!"

He exhaled smoke, the cigarette burning red like embers. "Not in my world."

The kneeling man let out a defeated moan, the gag material muffling it. He tried to speak—to beg—but the gun was already at his head.

"Don't, Damien!" Elena screamed out. Her hand rested across his arm like a lifeline. "You don't have to do that!"

He moved his gaze to hers, hard and unyielding. His voice was as smooth as silk. "Look at me, Elena."

She did. She wished she hadn't.

His eyes were bottomless—black as the river, cold as the night. "This is who I am," he said.

The gun bellowed.

The man's body launched forward of him, somersaulting into the river in a gorgous splash that echoed through the fog. Ripples on the surface, and gone.

Silence. The sort of silence that flattens everything in it.

Elena was gasping in little, rasping breaths. She had a bitter taste in her mouth. "You. you killed him," she managed to mutter.

Damien didn't respond. He discarded his cigarette in the water and it hissed and dissolved. Then he smiled at her, serenely.

"He was already dead," he said gently. "He just didn't know it yet."

She burst into sobs. She shook her head. "You are a monster."

His gaze flickered, the faintest shadow of something—pain, maybe—crossing his face. But it was gone in an instant. He took a step closer, then another, until she could feel his body heat against her cold skin.

“Maybe,” he said quietly. “But you’re still here.”

His words landed like a strike.

Because they were true. She was still there. She hadn’t run. She couldn’t.

His hand moved up over the curve of her spine, onto the side of her neck, onto the dip of her shoulder. He turned her head to face him. The storm had deviled his black hair across his brow.

"You think you can love me and not know what love is?" he said. "You think you can touch me and not touch the blood that made me?"

She shivered. "I didn't ask for this."

He stepped closer, his breath on the rim of her ear. "You didn't have to."

The words stuck to her, icy and heavy.

When finally they walked away from the river, Elena trembled still. Rain hit the pavement behind them back to the idling car on the curb. Damien swung open the car door. She slid in, numb, her thoughts reeling at what she'd witnessed.

He caught up to her a minute later, shutting the door behind them. The rain and river patter were dampened, drowned out in the rumble of the engine.

Through the car window, the world pulled in, grew blacker—so much so that the air itself was choking them.

No one spoke at first. The crouched quiet between them was oppressive and dense. Elena's hands were shaking in her lap.

Finally, Damien extended his hand and grasped her wrist. His hold was firm but not savage.

"You're cold," he panted.

"Because you just killed someone."

He clenched his jaw muscles. He did not glance at her. "Because I had to."

She moved back to stand before him, anger and sadness entwining in her words. "No, Damien. You chose to."

He gazed into her eyes finally, and for an instant she glimpsed something shatter—something human. But it vanished before she could give it a name.

"Elena," he snarled, "mercy murders more men in my world than guns."

She cried openly. "Then perhaps your world should not exist."

He did not speak. There was only the patter of the rain falling softly down upon the glass.

And then, suddenly, he reached out for her.

His lips clamped on hers, hard and demanding. The flavor of him—whiskey and smoke and danger—stole her brains. She fought, attempted to push him away, but his arms locked around her waist and drew her over the back of the seat so that she was pressed into him.

The kiss was brutal, hard, and desperate. His lips smacked into hers, his tongue tracing the outline of her mouth, insisting on surrender.

She hated him. She wished to hit him.

Her fingers were actually gripping at his coat, clinging to it for all she was worth like he was the only lifeline to sanity.

When he finally let her go, they both gasped.

Damien's eyes burned into hers. "Now you know what it's like to be mine."

He snarled.

Elena cried and her head shook. "Damien. you're frightening me."

His thumb brushed over her trembling lips. His voice was almost inaudible.

"Good," he told her. "It makes you obedient."

Her breath caught.

"But you'll leave me feeling something else," he gasped. "Desire and fear—these are one flame." His lips inches from hers. "And I will reduce you to ash on both."

Again, he kissed her, this time slower—less fury, more hunger. His fingers outline the shape of her spine, through the thinness of her coat. She could sense the thudding of his heart, savage and merciless both.

When finally he allowed the kiss to fade, he pushed deeply into her, his voice a whispered vow.

"You'll hate me," he whispered. "But you'll never forget me."

Elena's eyes closed. Her voice was a whisper. "You've already seen to that."

Thunder boomed overhead outside, and the rain pounded harder, slamming the car like applause for some malign thing.

Inside, the universe folded in upon two people—one too dangerous to be loved, a

nd one too lost to stop.

And as the storm raged around her, Elena realized that she wasn't sure if she was trapped in Damien's darkness—

or of her own heart.