Those critters could be out there. Worse, dark fae could be out there.

  I have no group to protect me. No safety in numbers.

  “No!” I dig my heels into the carpet. “Let me go! It’s a trick,” I shout. “You’re tricking me! You’ll hurt me!”

  “Only if you stay.” He turns on me for a beat, then rips the rope completely free of my wrists. It falls to the floor.

  He yanks the door open and shoves me outside.

  I stumble onto the porch for a split moment before I swing around and glare at him.

  He slams his hand against the doorframe to block my way inside. “If it is not me who harms you, it will be more of my kind. And,” he adds, his gravelly voice faltering, “I cannot stand that. So leave now.”

  I blink away fresh tears as I stare at him in disbelief. “Leaving me out here is a death sentence,” I say. “You know that, Cliff.”

  “Isn’t that what you want?” His face darkens and he looks down on me. “To die?”

  I kick out at him. “Fuck you,” I shout, swinging out my hand. It connects with his cheek, hard enough that the striking sound cracks through the darkness. “Fuck you, you dark fae piece of shit!”

  His cheek is turned to me, his eyes closed on his brewing anger.

  Self-preservation leaves me as I lunge at him. I scrape my nails down his cheek, drawing streaks of blood.

  “You want me dead?” I cry at him, my cheeks suddenly wet. “Do it yourself, you fucking coward!”

  A scream catches in my chest as he snatches my neck. His black eyes blaze with fury as he spins me around and throws me back into the cottage.

  I land on the carpet, hard. The door slams shut with enough force to shudder the cottage.

  I make to shift onto my front, but hands grab at me and flip me onto my back. I scream, kicking out at him and flailing my clawed hands at his face.

  With a swipe, he knocks my wrists out of the way and a grunt traps in my throat at the bursts of pain in my bones. Before I can recover, he’s on me, his hand latched onto my neck, fingers digging deep into the sides, leaving kissed-promises of bruises to come.

  Tucked between my kicking legs, he drapes himself over me, bringing his mouth close to mine. His eyes are molten lava, reflecting the firelight blazing in the hearth.

  “Kill me now,” I croak at him, my wet eyes narrowed into furious slits. Weakly, I push at his immovable, heavy chest. “Make it quick.”

  “I cannot,” he growls, his mouth curling against mine. “I can offer you nothing but pain.” His fingers dig further into the sides of my neck, creaking my bones. “But is that not what I intended for you?”

  I blink away the tears that fall down my temples and into my wet hair. Glowering up at him, I bare my teeth with the rage flooding me, the rage that buries deep down in that awful ache between my legs.

  He’s pressed so firmly against me that I can feel his own excitement.

  I hate him, I hate him, I want him to fuck me, I hate him, I want him to kill me, I fucking despise him, kiss me.

  I’m destined for hell.

  He watches me darkly, a battle raging on in his eyes. His body is so tense that his breath shivers as it loosens, and his hatred of me burns brighter than the amber in his irises.

  He’s fighting himself, clashing with his urges.

  That warmth at my core has blazed into an outright fire. Hunger turns my breaths choppy, desperation widening my legs that bit further.

  And the moment shatters like an explosion.

  Suddenly, his grip on the sides of my neck tightens, pinning me in place. I wouldn’t move even if I could. I’m a twisted person, but I want this as much as he does.

  And we both know it’s ugly.

  33

  I’m so fucked up. We both are.

  And yet, we don’t fight our uglier temptations. We cave to them like the weaklings we are, slaves to our urges.

  Tears still sting my eyes. Fear isn’t gone from my desperate body. It only rises as Cliff reaches between our bodies and grabs the edge of my knickers. Nails cutting my skin, he tightens his grip and tugs hard enough to rip the material right off my body.

  My breath shudders, my hands snatching fistfuls of his hair and reeling him down to me. His mouth crashes against mine. Bitterness erupts in my mouth, his dark flavour, as his tongue battles against mine—and it battles.

  There’s nothing sweet or tender or loving about our kiss. It’s fuelled by hatred and rage, enough to have my legs trembling around him.

  Tucked between our bodies, his hand shoves up the hem of my dress then moves for his trousers. With a tug of string, he has them unravelling at the front and, in a breath, he’s lining himself up with me.

  I pause, fright capturing me like a fist of ice closing around me.

  And he slams into me, hard, filling me to the brim.

  The jolt jerks me away from him. Arching, my back lifts off the floor and my mouth curves with a breathy gasp.

  With a ‘come back here’ groan, he snatches my waist and brings me back down to him. It fills me whole and a yelp escapes me.

  He drapes back over me, a heavy blanket, hostile and harsh.

  His mouth on mine floods me with poison; this nasty, horrible moment we’ve fashioned for ourselves. Beads of blood from his clawed-at cheek drop onto my face.

  Still, I have my hands buried in his hair, holding his mouth to mine as we clash.

  He slips out of me, long and smooth, before ramming back inside my tensing core with the anger fuelling him. There is no building up; he starts off hard. Hard enough to make me jerk and gasp as I clutch onto fistfuls of his hair and feel the early stings of carpet burn on my back.

  The slap of our skin tangles with the choppy, harsh sounds of our breaths. It creates a wretched song of desperation.

  I turn my cheek, hungry for a fresh breath, but Cliff crashes his mouth back onto mine, pistoning in and out of me hard. He doesn’t kiss me; just presses his snarling mouth against mine with enough pressure to make my teeth ache.

  Escaping his angry kiss, I lean my head back and invite him into my neck. In a heartbeat, his face is buried there—I can feel the frown wrinkle his forehead against my skin.

  Adding power, he pumps into me so hard that I’m starting to ache in a not-so-pleasant way. But I don’t want him to slow down, I want this hateful and gross moment between us to continue. I want this to be a mark of how much we resent each other. And still, each thrust makes my core clench, grows the dampness leaking out of me.

  I angle my hips, feeling his hairless pubic bone rub against that spot, and a groan rumbles in my throat. It builds, fast.

  In just a few hard thrusts that jolt me on the carpet, I’m first to finish. It starts with starbursts behind my eyes and a silent scream that renders me rigid.

  He slams in and out of me once, twice, and thrice—he shouts out his climax with an animalistic groan, and I feel every bit of it warm inside of me.

  The pleasure waves leave us shaken and wasted.

  He slumps over me, his back curved, and rests his forehead on the carpet. Beside my ear, his harsh breaths create a warm bubble.

  Then, he’s pushing off of me, his hands shooting down to his trousers to refasten them. He won’t look at me.

  Hesitantly, I tug down the hem of my dress and sit up. I’ve barely caught my breath when he’s pushing up from the floor and snatching up my rope.

  My eyes widen as he crouches in front of me—and the bastard ties my ankle with the rope.

  “Cliff,” I mutter, breathless still. “You don’t need to do that.”

  “More than ever, I do,” he grunts and draws away from me.

  I watch, stunned, as he loops the rope around the wooden leg of the couch, creating an intricate knot that I would have no clue how to undo.

  Once I’m tied up and secured, he steps over the rope and storms out of the lounge, into the back of the cottage. Faintly, I hear the slam of a door and the faint rattling of windows.

  He doesn’t come back. Not for a long time.

  Like I’m nothing, he leaves me here on the same floor he just fucked me into.

  34

  Must have drifted off at some point, because I’m blinking my eyes open and there’s a glossy haze draped over my sight.

  I’m cold, still. He’s left me back here, fastened between the wall and the couch, hidden away from the heat of the fire.

  Craning my neck, I wander my heavy gaze around the cottage—as much of it that I can see, at least. And I don’t spot him anywhere. He must be on the couch, asleep. Or just lying there, going over all those nasty things we did together but never should have even thought about.

  I roll onto my aching back and turn my cheek to press against the floor. Staring directly beneath the couch, I see the tip of a dagger graze over the floor—one that I recognise to belong to his weapons belt.

  So he is there on the couch, all comfortable, while I’m still tied with the rope to the leg of the couch, cold back here and alone.

  I’ve met a lot of men who can be classed as ‘rotten pieces of shit’ but Cliff beats all of them out of the water. He hates me right now, as much as I loathe him. We did something humans and dark fae should never do, especially when they are sworn enemies, destined to always be pitted against each other. And yet, we fell victim to wretched temptations brewing between us.

  More than temptations…

  My heart hurts. It physically aches inside my chest.

  Face twisting, I bury my head in my crossed arms and curl up into a ball. I feel like a skeleton of what I am, all my insides gutted out. I’m almost slipping away into silent tears when something yanks me out of my sorrow—

  I hear a faint ruffle, like the sound of jeans rubbing together, their friction.

  Lifting my head, I look up at the couch. But Cliff is still motionless there, as though he isn’t there at all. Maybe he’s not, and he’s simply left his weapons belt there. But he wouldn’t do that, so I decide that he’s sleeping.

  And then I hear it again. This time, I pinpoint it to the corridor.

  I cut my stare down that way and stop breathing completely.

  A man stands there, his finger pressed to his lips to hush me, and in his other hand he holds a serrated hunter’s knife.

  Swallowing, I quietly push myself up from the floor and watch him. He steps down the corridor slowly, his bare feet silent on the carpet. His gaze cuts between me and the couch with each step he takes closer to me.

  When he reaches an arm’s length from me, he pauses and mouths, ‘Here to help you.’

  Help me…

  I glance at the knife, then at the rope binding me to the couch leg. Binding me to Cliff, the one who fucks me on the floor then leaves me there.

  I nod, sitting up straighter and stretching out my leg closer to him.

  Putting a lot of trust in a stranger. Especially a male one.

  But I don’t plan on going with him. I’ll take the freedom, my shoulder bag, and run off into the dark to overdose.

  I just can’t cope with it all anymore. Too much pain. Too much sadness.

  The man crouches beside my stretched-out foot.

  Gently, he takes the rope in one hand and brings the serrated edge of the knife to it. He manages one cut before a wink of silver suddenly flashes through the air and—

  Oh my fucking god!

  I scurry back from the scene as far as the rope will allow.

  The stranger is pinned to the floor by a long dagger piercing through his cheeks. The gem-embedded hilt glitters in the flickering firelight.

  Cliff storms around the couch, his livid black eyes gleaming with murder as he looks at me, then at the man on the floor.

  I slap my hands to my mouth just as Cliff yanks the dagger out of his cheeks. The hollow scream I cry is muffled by my palms.

  I hide behind my hands as Cliff brings down the dagger a second time. He makes quick work of it. I barely hear a scream before it’s all over and I peel my fingers away from my eyes.

  Still, I don’t look at the bloody blur that I spot out the corner of my eye.

  Cliff advances on me, rage seizing up all of his muscles.

  He says nothing as he snatches my rope and roughly unties it from my ankle. His nails scrape at my skin. I wince, but he doesn’t work with more care as he yanks me up to my feet, then binds my wrist tight enough that my eyes sting with tears.

  I stand at the wall, watching him as he pulls away and gathers all of our stuff. Looping the satchels over his head, then fetching the torch from the fireplace, he marches back over to me.

  On the way, he pauses to snatch the shoulder bag from the floor. Right where we fucked. Right where he left me.

  He throws the bag at me; it knocks me on the head and I scowl, fumbling with it. I catch it and barely have a moment to pull the strap over my head before he’s tying me to his belt.

  He reaches for the door and whips it open.

  And in that split second in time, from outside on the porch, a gunshot blasts through the air and a spray of shells hit all over his chest.

  Cliff staggers back, shock slackening his face—

  Another shotgun blast throws him off his feet.

  That stranger wasn’t alone.

  35

  Everything has slowed down. The adrenaline pumping through my veins has me—and all that’s around me—dragging through time.

  Stunned, I watch as the blast of the shotgun sends Cliff sprawling back through the air. The gun must be close, right at the door.

  In the slow wave of time, his arm reaches down to his weapons belt and his hand grips the engraved hilt of a short knife. He has it raised before he even hits the floor.

  Breath trapped in his chest, the rope tying us together jerks my wrists forward as Cliff lands with a roll backwards until he’s crouched on the floor—and he spears the knife through the air.

  It connects—I hear its landing, sinking into flesh and the surprised grunt of a man out on the porch. There’s a moment’s silence before the clatter of a gun then the crumple of a body to the porch.

  The rope has me spilling over the floor, wrists stretched out in front of me. My face twists with a grimace as I smack down on the carpet.

  I roll onto my side, eyes alert and restless, darting between Cliff and the porch.

  It’s dark out there, but in the shadows I spot a limp body at the mouth of the door, and another shifting behind it. Someone is leaning over the corpse for the shotgun.

  Cliff doesn’t buy them any time.

  In a blink, he’s lunging to his feet and running at the silhouette. Before the rope can yank my wrist bones into breakage, I scramble to my feet and race after him.

  I slam into the doorframe just as Cliff barrels into the shadow. The dark clears with orange light rising and I can make out that the last survivor is a woman. Her brown hair lashes around her like a whip as she staggers back and holds up her hands—

  Cliff shows no hesitation, no pity. His hands are around her neck before she can utter a pleading word and, crrnncchhhh, he snaps it so hard that her face does a 360-spin.

  Leaning against the doorframe, I slump, a breath sagging me. For a moment, I think it’s all over and the early snares of nausea are starting to settle in, climbing up my throat with that familiar acidic taste.

  The orange hues are clawing their way up the walls with a hunger to devour. Frowning, I look over my shoulder at the dropped torch—and my veins flood with ice. It fell onto the carpet and now, a fearsome fire has caught, starting its blaze mere metres from me.

  I should snatch up the torch and race out of here now, but Cliff is blocking my way out of the cottage and the rope is too tight for me to reach the torch.

  Then an awful, foreboding creak comes from the porch.

  Heart clenching, I crane my neck and, around Cliff’s shoulder, trace the sound to the steps where the darkness lurks. From there, a bulky man steps out of the shadows, a sharpened samurai sword in his hand.

  He’s no samurai with his pale sawdust hair, but he sure has kept up with the body-building in the middle of the apocalypse. His muscles bulge against his grey t-shirt, his jeans cinched at the waist with a thick, over-worn belt, and he rises up from the steps, sizing up Cliff.

  Cliff is an immovable statue. He simply watches the new survivor with a glint of curiosity in his tarry eyes and, slowly, he lifts his hands away from his weapons belt. A small smirk ghosts over his mouth.

  He wants this. Of course he does, it’s in his blood, his bones. It’s who he is. But it’s more than that. I suspect it’s got more to do with unleashing his fury about what happened between us onto someone.

  The moment shatters and, with a roar from samurai-guy, they go running at each other. Cliff ducks before the blade cuts through the air above him. He smacks into the man’s chest—the impact sends the guy flying back through the air.

  Cliff doesn’t follow him to finish the job. He stands tall, taking two silent steps back, and lets the man get to his feet.

  Samurai isn’t playing around. He stumbles to a stand, staggering only for a second before he’s sprinting at Cliff again.

  The fae spins out of the way with brutal elegance just as the man brings down the winking blade on the doorway. The sword cuts the air at my nose and, with a squeal, I drop to the floor to avoid it.

  Cliff’s eyes blaze suddenly, looking wild and savage. He looks from me on the floor to the fire growing behind me, as though just now really grasping that I’m here, tethered to him.

  Amber hues crack through his black eyes like spears of realisation. He can’t draw this out, not with me trapped between a sword and a fire.

  Cliff ends it, fast. So fast that I realise this man was never a challenge to him, even with all his muscles and determination, he was nothing to a dark fae, because in a mere blink, the man is collapsing to the porch—missing his jaw.

  Cliff stands over him, holding that missing piece in his bloody hand.

  The man’s screams are distorted by a sagging tongue and that’s all it takes before I’m crouched over on the floor, cringed against the brutality of it all.