He growls a curse, wipes the blood off across my face, then shifts his grip to my arm and hauls me roughly to my feet.
“Deformed?” he starts, controlled, voice low, rage just there, just beneath.
“Let go of me.” I try to pull at his hand as he marches me to the door, ignoring my protests as he walks me to the stairs and down, picking me up and throwing me over his shoulder when I slip. I’m sure his grip is adding more bruises.
“Did you enjoy that?” he asks as he walks into his office and slams the door. “Had you been waiting to play your little trick all day? Practiced what you’d say. What insults you’d hurl?”
He plants me roughly into a chair in front of the desk.
I immediately move to stand, but he pushes me down. “Stay.”
“You need a dog, not a wife.”
“A dog would be more loyal than my wife, that is certain.” He takes the sheet of paper on the desk, turns it so it’s facing me, and slams it back down.
I look at it, and I gasp. I lift off my seat a little to peer closer as Santiago leans back to let me.
“Wh…what is this?” My mouth has gone dry, the blood draining from my head, a sudden cold leaving me shuddering.
“Pretty, don’t you think?” He picks up the sheet.
I look up at him, mouth open, not believing my eyes.
“Just remember when you look upon yourself next week, loathing your own reflection in the mirror, you only have yourself to blame.”
“What is it?” I demand although I know. My voice rises with panic. I wrap my hands around the seat of the chair, or I’ll bolt, and I don’t know what he’ll do if I try to run.
“It’s you. Don’t you recognize yourself?” he asks with a false laugh, an ugly, unhinged sort of sound.
“Santiago—” My voice breaks, cracking on his name, my throat too dry to speak as my gaze is drawn to that thing. That hideous drawing.
Because what it is is unimaginable. A tattoo. Like his. Just like his.
He wasn’t looking at my eye earlier. He wasn’t studying the strange pupil. That’s nothing next to what he’s got planned for me. He was looking at the canvas of his next work. A skull to match his.
He must know that I understand. I wonder if this is how he’d planned to tell me or if I’d instigated it. Taunted him. Poked the devil. Either way, when I stand, he doesn’t stop me. And when I topple the chair behind me and stumble, he simply watches grinning that grin, that wicked, evil grin.
“This will be your punishment, Ivy,” he says, more sober when he speaks.
“For the poison,” I manage, my voice sounding so frail next to his.
He nods once.
“You’re a monster!” I explode at him, clawing at the drawing wanting to tear it from him, wanting to rip it to shreds as if that would stop it from happening.
He laughs, catching me easily. Lifting me off my feet, he carries me the few steps back to his desk. With a sweep of his arm, he clears it, sending papers fluttering to the carpet as he lays me on it. Pushing me backward, he forces my legs apart and takes his place between them. As he undoes his belt, his trousers, that ink on his face makes him appear to be grinning as he leans over me even though he’s not. Not at all. His eyes are dark, almost black, and I see sorrow and resignation along with betrayal and pain, especially pain, inside them. When he pushes into me, all I can do is grunt, reach up to hold his shoulders, and take his thrusts as tears stream down the sides of my face.
“Look at it,” he says, forcing me to turn my head.
“No!” I fight him, reach up to claw his face.
He captures my wrists, and I pull against him, hauling myself up with his cock still inside me.
“Please, Santiago,” I start as I hear his breath grow more ragged and see the sheen of sweat on his forehead. He releases my wrists and cups my ass to pull me to the edge of the desk. I push his hair back from his face. Our eyes are locked, and I study him as I take him and, cupping the back of his head, I draw him to me and kiss him. I kiss his face, kiss the skull side, feel the scars beneath the ink. I kiss the corner of his mouth, remembering how he bit my lip the last time, how he’d drawn blood, but I only kiss him. Kiss him full on the mouth as he leans us both back down not pulling away from my kiss, not biting.
“Ivy,” he mutters against my lips, then kisses me back, thrusting harder, faster.
“Make me come,” I say, my hands on his face to make him look at me. See me. “Make me come.”
He shifts one hand between us, and the touch of his fingers to my clit makes me come as he watches me. I arch my back and push against him, then pull his face to mine again, making him kiss me again, taking his final thrusts, swallowing his moan as his release comes, body rigid, every muscle tight, cock throbbing.
When his eyes come back into focus, and he eases his grip, a drop of sweat falls from his forehead to my cheek.
He looks at me. We’re so close. Closer than ever.
“Why?” he asks, voice broken, desperate. “Why, Ivy?”
I brush back sweat-slicked hair. “I swear to you, I swear on my life, I didn’t. I did not do what you’re accusing me of.”
“Your life is no longer yours to swear upon.” He draws back, almost sobering as he does. He exhales a short puff of air and pulls out of me, and we both look at the bloody mess on him, on me. Not bothering to wipe it off, he tucks himself back into his briefs, his pants.
I sit up. “I swear, Santiago. Please don’t do this to me. Please don’t tattoo me.” My god. Saying the words out loud makes it sound even more terrifying.
“Don’t make you look like me, you mean? Deformed,” he emphasizes the word, and my face heats as I regret the word I’d used. I hadn’t meant to. I swear I hadn’t meant to. I knew that would wound him.
“That’s not…I shouldn’t have said that.”
“How repentant you are now when there is something for you to lose.” He touches my cheek with the knuckles of his hand. “Your beauty.”
I shake my head.
“Did you think you’d seduce me? You think me that weak? One kiss and I’d give in to you?”
“No. No, I wanted to kiss you. I needed to.”
He grows rigid, ice cold. “You’re a liar, Ivy,” he says slowly. “A cold, manipulative liar.”
My stomach turns. “No, Santiago, it’s not like that. It wasn’t—”
“Get out,” he says, turning away.
“I didn’t do it. I couldn’t. I was locked in that bathroom. I couldn’t get the door open. I—”
“No? You couldn’t get the door open?” he asks, moving swiftly behind his desk to pull out a keyboard and push a couple of buttons. As soon as he does, the monitors all light up. I watch the blurred lines come into focus, and I hear the sounds I remember from that night. Loud talking. Glasses clinking in toasts. Jazz music. The gong. I see Colette laughing with someone, a man. Her husband, I guess. And then I see him. Santiago. And I watch as from the corner of the screen a woman enters.
And my throat goes dry. “What is this?”
He doesn’t have to answer, though. I can see. Anyone with eyes can see. It’s me in my black and gold dress and my butterfly mask. Except it’s not. And I—she—walks straight up to my husband, and he seems momentarily surprised when I—she wraps her arms around his neck, but he takes her in his arms too, and when she kisses him, he kisses her back, and then the scene blacks out.