Originally on Kindle Vella! If she couldn’t catch him with honey…Violence will have to do. Power, Money and Beauty; Ira Dante had it all. She was the woman of his dreams. All Tristan had to do was say “yes” and she would give him anything he could dream of. But all that money came from trafficked drugs, stolen weapons, and mountains of bloodied corpses. All that power lead to sadistic rages and nightmarish madness. Underneath her beauty was a monster that threatened to rip him apart.
Simply put: Ira was batshit insane.
So Tristan refused; their relationship was built on pretty little lies hiding the hideous truth and as a vigilante, he spent years working against criminal empires like the Dante Family. Unfortunately, Ira was a woman who never took ‘no’ for an answer and she has long learned that all is fair in love and war.
He kept hold of that thought. Those words kept him away from the fog of sensation.
Or the lack of thereof.
His cheeks and ears burned, tears falling as he remembered the humiliation. His neck was so heavy and his nerves kept firing jolts through him, again and again.
After he had spilled himself all over Ira’s hand and the floor, the heaven he had tasted was quickly replaced with hell.
The shock of his own body betraying him had revealed the extent of his mutilation.
He begged for her to touch him.
Begged for her to hurt him.
“You ruined me…”
He bit his bottom lip, breaking the skin again, chewing on the wound while sobs vomited from his mouth. His hands, freed from the shackles, moving to touch his side and the mottled scar tissue that was left. He had burnt charred marks all over his body from the electric shocks, deep primal welts on his chest and shoulder.
He sniffled his choking gasps, “I… I’ve been mauled by a lion. A lion who… who is the biggest bitch in the world.” His gasps and chuckles devolved into a laugh, hands moving to the floor. An airy laugh that heaved out of his maimed chest, his lungs working overtime to suck in breath, “Wh-what a fucking story this will be! When I get-get out of here…” His laughter slowed, eyes heavy, tears still dripping from sticky, clumped lashes, “If… if I get out of here.”
“Perfect. You are perfect… my precious Tristan.”
“Biggest, most psychotic bitch in the whole fucking world…” His brow furrowed and he run his nails against the floor, leaving shallow indents. He took in a heaving breath, trying to focus in on the anger from his humiliation, from her disfigurement of him.
Yet underneath that anger, that embarrassment, was a deep sorrow. A sinking despair came forth from one simple thought.
“… Wasn’t I perfect before?”
… stop.
“Wasn’t I good enough?”
Stop.
His knuckles rapped onto the floor, doubt and panic overtaking his mind, his anger devolving into an old anxiety. The darkness of the cell, only a bit of light sneaking in from the narrow slit under the heavy doors, fed into the ravenous despair that filled his head, “Wasn’t I beautiful enough?” His knuckled kept tapping against the floor, skin scraping off. “Didn’t I please you enough?”
“All I want is you.”
Blood and peeled flesh trailed after his knuckles. The skin rubbed raw. The burn ran up from his fingers and sent sparks alight. Even this small amount of pain made him moan, eyes rolling back slightly. “Wasn’t hurt-hurting me enough?”
STOP.
He couldn’t stop.
How her skin felt when they first touched. Warm, kissed by the daylight. How her head pressed against his shoulder, just under his chin. Those curls coiling around him, wrapped around his fingers.
“Wasn’t my touch enough?”
His lips pressed against hers, softly at first, then deeper, his tongue caressing hers, her hand stroking his cheek before her fingers curled in his locks, pulling him close.
“My kisses… weren’t they enough?”
He turned to his stomach, his forehead pressed against the ground, his bleeding, raw knuckles pressed hard against as he pushed his weight up on them, “What more did you want from me?!”
Coda Languez is a Software Engineer by day and an Artist/Author by night. She is lover of all things anime, horror, and comic related, making her a true geek in all aspects. Heavily influenced by the works of Satoshi Kon, Kouta Hirano, Francesca Lia Block, and Clive Barker, Coda mixes black comedy, horror, magic realism, and dark romance into her works, creating an ‘it’s complicated’ relationship between readers and her anti-heroic, even villainous protagonists.
When she is not programming in her day job or writing psychological terrifying romances and dark action comedies in the night hours, Coda often binges on anime, fantasy, and sci-fi sagas and indulges in competition reality tv (a guilty pleasure). She is the mother of an adorable toddler and his Pembroke Welsh Corgi brothers, and wife to an awesome and often exasperated husband.
For information on Coda’s latest works, visit codemonkeyarts.com or connect with her on social media via @codemonkeyarts.
For weeks, he stood by my side, twisting his words into pretty half-truths. He enraptured me with his smooth temptation, leaving no corner of my being untouched. He consumed my mind and my body, then finally claimed my heart for himself. But Caelum’s true identity is terrifying enough to bring me to my knees.
Then, I discovered the truth of who he is.
Caldris is whispered in the Nothrek wind. The legend we only speak of with hushed words, in shuttered rooms, for fear of drawing his wrath once again. His intentions are a mystery, his desires impure, and he seeks to shackle me to his side for all eternity. With the Wild Hunt as our guard, he points us back to where it all began: the village of Mistfell and the boundary where the Veil once shimmered in the wind.
Now, another secret crouches, poised to change everything.
The Mist Guard have been sworn to keep us from crossing into Alfheimr, and from treading Faerie soil, even if innocents must pay with their lives. They have orders to resurrect Mistfell’s shimmering barrier, but, once again, there’s a greater cost than what has been revealed. Once, the people of Northrek blamed me when the Veil fell.
Soon, they’ll want me to pay the price the magic requires.
Adelaide Forrest is a USA Today & Amazon Top 40 Bestselling author of dark and gritty romance, such as the Bellandi Crime Syndicate and Beauty in Lies series. Adelaide fell in love with books at a young age and quickly discovered her love for writing soon after. She wrote short stories and then delved into full-length fiction at ten-years-old. Since then, she’s created over 350 book ideas and hoarded them over the years.
When she isn’t writing, she can be found spending time with her two young children, dog, and cat. She enjoys traveling, chocolate, chai tea, and most importantly, being with her family.
I’m not too proud to admit that finding Mr. Right involves swiping right. Right? Welcome to dating in avocado toastland.
Here I am, on my first blind date, ever, courtesy of a smartphone app and my two annoying best friends.
So what is Chris “Fletch” Fletcher doing, walking across the room, looking at his phone like he’s pattern matching a picture to find a real person he’s never met before?
Oh.
Oh, no.
The guy I drop-kicked in seventh grade cannot be my blind date. The guy who earned me this infernal nickname.
It was supposed to be simple. Graduate, get a job to keep my mom from drowning in mountains of medical debt, and maybe score a scholarship to a decent college.
All of that changed in a single breath. Because it turns out I’m not human. And I just knocked out the power on an entire city block.
In a split second, all of my carefully-laid plans go up in smoke. There’s no chance for college because I’m being hauled off to Kingwood Academy. They say it’s for my own protection and those around me. But I know one thing for sure…
I’m not welcome here.
The mean girls don’t stop at insults and tripping you in the halls. They’re wielding magic that could cost me my life. And the rest of the school sees me as either a halfling that should be cast out or a powerhouse to be brought down.
Everyone except them.
The charmer. The gentle giant. The psychopath. And maybe even the cruel prince.
The royals of Kingwood Academy have taken me under their wing and I can’t help but notice how my skin hums when they touch me. I shouldn’t be dreaming about a single one of them, let alone all four. But I can’t seem to stop myself.
Only someone doesn’t like the attention the royals are showing me. And when the attacks start, the princes will do anything to protect me. But they don’t know the true evil we face. The kind who will do whatever it takes to seize our power, even if that means stealing the very last breath from our lungs…
“I was in a fire.” I blurted it out in the hopes it might distract those two from coming to blows. But I had no idea what came after that fact.
Atlas turned back to me. “When?”
“I was eight. We still don’t know exactly how it started.”
Kai let one hand drop away but left the other on my neck, his thumb stroking back and forth. “But you got out.”
“I almost didn’t.” The words were barely a whisper. “I got trapped in my bedroom. The window was too high to jump out of. The fire was outside my door. I hid in the closet. The floor beneath me collapsed and I fell through to the basement, and a beam landed on top of me. Thought I was going to die.” I rubbed at the raised skin on the inside of my arm.
Phoenix stalked forward, grabbing my arm. He let out a string of curses. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrugged. “I told you I didn’t like fire.”
“But not that you’d been burned. I wouldn’t have pushed so hard if I’d known you’d been through this.”
I tried to tug my arm free, but he held firm.
Atlas studied the scars leading up my arm as Phoenix held it. “You’re okay? Those look bad.
I gave my arm a hard yank and finally broke away from Phoenix’s hold. I wanted a sweatshirt more than anything right now, but I hadn’t shoved one in my bag this morning. “I know they look gross, but they aren’t that bad.”
Atlas got right up in my personal space. “That wasn’t what I said and it sure as hell wasn’t what I meant.” He lifted my arm gently and traced his fingers over the mottled and twisted skin. “There isn’t a thing about you that isn’t beautiful. But I know these mean you were in excruciating pain. That you were terrified. That’s what I meant by bad.”
I swallowed against my suddenly dry throat. “Oh.”
His lips twitched. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers tangling in the waves. “I could only ever see beauty when I look at you.”
Atlas leaned forward and my breath caught, but this time for an entirely different reason than panic. He pressed his lips to the corner of my mouth.
The buzz that lit my muscles was like nothing I’d experienced before. It was its own form of fire that terrified me in a completely different way. Sensation swept through me like a flood on the heels of the buzz.
Atlas jerked back, his fingers flying to his mouth and eyes going wide. “What the hell was that?”
