More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Everyone thought Danny was a feral dog without a leash, but that was bollocks. I was his leash. He just didn’t fucking realise it.
Danny mighta been the one who handed out the worst nightmares, but I was the one smart enough to rule.
the pair of us mirror images of the same dark souls in that moment. My twin brother and me. A pair of demons born into power on the streets of fair lady London.
My body had been as fair game as my brothers’, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Except the way where none of us had been beaten – duh.
You can’t raise monsters and expect them not to be monstrous - I should get that on a t-shirt. Bit wordy though.
Apparently his epi-pen had gone missing and he hadn’t made it to the hospital in time. Funny how I’d acquired an epi-pen not long before that.
I bobbed my head, falling into the music, feeling like I was sinking deep underwater and drifting into a wide, open ocean where anything was possible.
But the place I was the least broken was in my head when the music was playing. Then everything just felt…bearable.
The world could probably burn and so long as I was listening to Bob Dylan, I’d smile my way through it.
I am your death and I am flying towards you on metal wings, Butcher.
I was taking on the Devil with a teaspoon. And it looked like I was on my own.
My girl’s halfway through an audiobook about a chick who gets abducted by an alien with a tentacle dick and she’ll listen to it without the headphones all night long if I don’t get her new ones.
I mean, sure, I’m happy for her to come climbing onto my cock at three am sobbing because the tentacle bloke almost died, and I’ll even let her paint me blue before she rides me like a horny space cadet that needs breeding, but I got work to do before then.
“You’re always horny for my horn,”
“Honestly, Frank is beautiful, but that man has the personality of a Chihuahua that’s been rattled in a box, I don’t know how he puts up with himself.”
“You were listening to Johnny Cash when I first laid eyes on you. Hurt specifically. Can’t say I’ve ever thought a song matched a person’s soul quite so well as that one seemed to fit you in that moment. I guess you could say it left an impression.”
And in that moment we were sharing oxygen, letting the songs consume us while all I did was watch her as she listened to it, my own music playing in my head as the songs came to life through those small reactions on her face which spoke so clearly to me.
In that silence, I saw her, and I found myself enraptured as I stole the freedom to look.
“He wants a trophy and I’m not going to be one. I’m not putting on those disgusting dresses, I’m not becoming some pantsuit asshole in high heels either.”
The attendant gasped dramatically at the dig, but I didn’t give a fuck. That pantsuit was an insult to pants and suits.
“I’m officially joining the free tits movement,”
“You have entered my life like a fuckin’ meteorite, Anya Volkov. I can still count the hours I’ve known you and somehow you’ve possessed my thoughts in every single one of them,”
He’s the Devil with a pretty smile. So fuck him. And fuck his gang.
Until then I’d suffer in abstinence for the sins of my brother and focus my efforts on winning her over.
She had that give-no-fucks look on her face again which had made me so hard for her right in a house of God, speaking my vows like a virtuous man, when all I’d been thinking were ungodly thoughts about this woman. This fucking beautiful, mouthy wife of mine. All mine.
I was more than happy to be the sacrifice on her altar. She could have pleasure and blood from me in equal amounts, and I was pretty sure I’d die happy so long as she was gratified.
I was pissed at them. Royally fucking pissed, and I could hold a grudge longer than The Grinch, so they’d better be prepared for my wrath if I ever saw them again.
His fingers circled and tormented my flesh without ever straying to my tits as the music swallowed us whole and I slipped into my fantasy land with someone else for the first time in my life.
Something told me Frank needed this escape as much as I did, the burdens that weighed on him lifting for a moment as we simply became one with the rhythm.
But you, you’re so full, you’re practically overflowing with life. And not just the good, you’re full of the bad too. I look at you and see death and music.
was cosy and full of character, the chatter in the place loud enough to make my ears buzz. I was instantly, unashamedly and wholeheartedly in love with it.
I decided not to point out the fact that he was being a gem, enjoying the perks of this warmer side to him. Long may he reign.
No. Kissing Anya was like tasting the first lightning strike of a storm. Devouring her lips was like claiming a bite of the most beautifully forbidden poison and heading into death willingly for the pure fucking ecstasy of that taste.
Bloody hell, I loved the free tits movement she was leading. I was gonna be head of the committee and hold tea parties every second Sunday of the month.
Oh my god, Church is gonna be my fucking mistress.
“I see sadness,” she said breathily. “Pain. And an echo of the loss I feel every day of my life. I see lyrics when I look at you, Frank, the thump of the bass and a melody which pulses with every kind of emotion there is. You make the world loud in all the ways that count.”
“If you ever find yourself caged by me, you only need to point it out and I’ll hold a knife to my own throat, bombshell.”
“Your touch makes me feel like I could die in your hands. But it would be the most beautiful death in the world.”
“You, Anya Butcher, are the fire that burns in my chest every time I look at you. You’re the passion which opens my eyes every time I want to blinker myself from the truth. You’re the breath of fresh air in my lungs which shook up a life which was always going to be stagnant for me. I’m a violent, honourless man and I was content to stay as such until you.”
“Because you won’t run. You’ll realise what we have, and yeah, it’s not ever gonna be a fairy tale, love. It’s gonna be real and ruinous. It’s gonna push us to the brink of insanity, and there might be times when we wanna walk away from each other, but we won’t. Because Lucifer himself crafted me from brimstone and hellfire, he made me irredeemable, bombshell, but I guess the daft fucker decided to make me a mate in you and didn’t realise you’d save my fucking soul.”
She was a fucking enigma,
She wasn’t responsible for my suffering. But she might just have been responsible for my salvation.
“I’m sorry.” “Don’t be sorry, love. How many men get to say they were murdered by their wife and lived to tell the tale?” He reached back, hooking my thigh over his legs and squeezing it. “I’m a living fucking legend, me.”
“It ain’t gonna stop ticking now, bombshell,” Benny promised. “While I was out of it, I swear I felt a demon slide his hand into my chest and turn my heart to steel, like a grenade with the pin pulled. But the explosion ain’t in here.” He held a hand to his heart. “It’s right here in front of me.”
“My wild, forget-me-not bombshell.”
“I love you, Anya Butcher,” I said simply as I watched her. “I love you and I’m gonna fucking keep you forever just like this.”
“I love you, Benny,” she whispered against my skin, her lips brushing over my heart and a smile filling my mouth.
“Don’t take them away from me. Either of them. I demand it.”
ain’t denying you anything, love. But from this second forward, none of us lie to each other, even if the truth cuts us open and leaves us to rot. I’d rather fester in the truth than die with a veil pulled over my eyes.”
Three men. Three barbaric, cutthroat men. And somehow, they were mine.
