The Annihilator (Dark Verse, #5)

by RuNyx

“I don’t know your name.” It was so ridiculous after everything they'd been through.

“Da...

“That’s the name you got in the orphanage you were in?”

“Yes.” His hand began to move again. “The old caretaker named me after death, so I gave it to him.”

“Can you taste me on your tongue, Dainn?”

Never, she had never seen a man more powerful and more wild at the same time, and the sight of him like this, knowing she was getting sides of him he didn’t show everyone, made her headier.

“Do you want me to touch you?” She nodded vigorously. The dark slash of a smirk came again. “I won’t touch you, and you won’t touch yourself either. Let it simmer.” What the fuck? She was going to explode.

“Trust me still?” he asked, his gaze piercing.

“Good enough for now. You know where I’ve been the last few days?”

“I found one of the three.”

She knew, immediately knew, what he was talking about. One of the three men who had abused her.

"I ended him.” His nose found her nose, brushing it once in a gesture so soft she wanted him to do it again immediately. “I cut his hands off—” his nose went down her neck “—then his tongue—” down her breasts, his breath on her rigid nipples “—then his little dick.”

“Was it the bald man or one of the other two?”

“The one who had the camera.”

“You saw it,” she whispered, horrified, humiliated.

“Every. Single. Second.” His thumb pillowed her lower lip, his eyes intense on hers, his body pressed against hers, everything about him fierce and powerful and so dark she wanted it all for herself. “I was with you. You didn’t go through any of that alone.”

"I'm yours." It was sinking in, truly sinking in, how much his she was. A man didn't witness what he did every day for her for no reason. He might not feel emotions as he said, but there was something solid, tangible, unbreakable between them, and they both knew it. His nose brushed hers again. "All mine."

Waking up to the view of the beautiful mountains on one side and the sea on the other thrilled her every day. As did finding a fresh red rose and little notes on her bedside table. Notes that elicited different reactions in her. The ‘I got the piercings for you’ made her breathless. The ‘Did you know you snore?’ made her frown. The ‘I liked the dress you wore yesterday’ made her cheeks warm. And so on and so forth. Little notes, every single day.

Searches got varied, and life got a new routine. She tried different things and learned she had no talent for painting, didn’t enjoy being online for more than a few minutes, and didn’t like making jewelry. What she did like was cooking—or rather learning and experimenting—and reading, though she was a slow reader. And it wasn’t a physical book from the library she was enjoying reading either, but one she’d found online and had Bessie help her buy. It had shown up on her search when she’d looked for ‘raped heroine romance’. She’d been skeptical that there wouldn’t be many but surprisingly, and tragically, there were. It seemed being forced was more common than she’d thought, even in the outside world.

The book she was reading dealt with a normal woman who had been raped at a party, her struggles, and how she fell in love again with a wonderful man. Parts of it, Lyla could relate to. Those parts—feeling dirty, hating her body, being depressed—made her feel seen, acknowledged, as if someone had reached inside her and told her it was okay to feel the way she did. But other parts—mainly where the heroine was falling in love with a gentle, caring man who told her how much he loved her and how beautiful she was every other page—she couldn’t relate to.

The scene in her mind changed. She imagined herself running in the dark, getting caught by a man who was darkness himself, telling her she was his as he claimed her, making her feel safe and protected and unreachable for any other monsters. She didn’t need a good man telling her he loved her; she needed a dark devil to tell her she was his. And maybe Dainn was the man. Maybe he wasn’t.

Watching the video and following the steps, she lost herself in the motion of creating something. It soothed something inside her, just the simple act of cooking something from the scratch, and it excited something inside her, just knowing she was going to make someone besides herself eat it.

“Lyla.” The voice behind her made her turn. Nikki was putting on her coat, still aloof toward her. “Do you need anything before I leave?” Lyla hadn’t even known she’d been in the house. She shook her head, having brushed up on some basic manners. “No, thank you. Have a good night.” A smirk lit the other girl’s lips. “Oh, I will.” Okay. That was odd. “Oh, and whatever you do, please don’t go into the greenhouse tonight,” Nikki said on her way. “There’s a storm coming.”

Her body froze. Nikki stood naked in front of the long table, her hands holding Dainn’s shirt, his hands on her waist.

Ice filled her veins as she took in the sight, her few weeks of relative happiness crashing as she realized she was discarded again. He hadn’t touched her in all the days he’d had her under his roof, and that was because he’d already had someone. And Nikki had hated her on sight because she’d been with him. God, she was an idiot.

She was done. He could eat the fucking pasta with Nikki and laugh over her feeble attempts. Fuck him.

“What the fuck, Lyla?” The tone of his voice made her still, the fact that he called her ‘Lyla’—when it had always been ‘flamma’—making her realize he was pissed. And he was never pissed, not with her at least.

Every single time she’d been hurt, every time she’d been debased, every time she had hoped for something only for it to die, every time she had stared at the ceiling counting cracks, every time she had cried herself to sleep, every time she had given him a piece of herself only to feel discarded, every time she had lost parts of herself until she didn’t even know who she was anymore. Every. Single. Time. Every. Single. Thing. Every. Single. Memory. Crashed, collapsed, crushed inside her. She shattered.

She screamed and screamed and screamed until her throat felt raw, crying and thrashing, for minutes and hours she didn’t know. She cried and cried until she couldn’t anymore, until her breath got short and she began to hiccup.

“Shh. It’s okay, flamma. It’s okay. Shh. You’re safe.”

“My beautiful girl,” the voice kept whispering, seductive in its call, alluring in its lure to reel her back in. “So soft, so vulnerable, so hurt. You hurt, don’t you?”

“I will set the whole world on fire before I let anything hurt you again.”

“Give me your eyes, flamma. I want to see the fire in them. Show them to me.”

Jolted from whatever mental state she had gone in, she hiccupped occasionally, slowly letting her mind come back down to reality, unable to understand her heightened emotions or her overreaction. And she had overreacted, hadn’t she? She had found him fully clothed with a naked woman and done the first thing that had come to her mind—run. She hadn’t given him the benefit of the doubt, hadn’t waited to calmly let him explain exactly what had been going on, hadn’t even stayed to let him get a word in. And then she’d screamed like a banshee and proceeded to have a mental breakdown in the middle of nowhere.

She’d been doing so well, so much better. She just didn’t understand it.

Slowly setting her down on the floor, he pushed her wet hair out of her face, looking down at her with a softness she’d never seen from him. “Get out of the clothes.”

“What happened tonight?”

“Seeing her there... with you... it triggered something,” she admitted haltingly.

“What did you feel?” he asked, his hypnotic dual eyes snaring her in its trap. What did she feel? He didn’t experience emotions as she did, and knowing he wanted her account of her feeling things made her heart race.

“I felt—” she stopped, looking at him, her throat working “—angry. So, so angry.”

“...

“Because I thought you’d chosen her,” her voice wavered with her words. “I thought you were keeping me on the side, making a fool out of me, giving me little nothings, and giving her ever...

“...

“Because you’re mine!” She slammed her hands on the table, standing up. “You’re the only person, the only thing in this entire world that is mine!” Her chest heaving, she glared at him. “My killer, my stalker, my lover. The thought of sharing your obsession makes me sick to my stomach. You have power over me. Is that what you wanted to hear? T...

She looked down at him as he leaned back, a satisfied expression o...

“Your heart isn’t stupid.” His words, again quiet, made her look at him. “Soft, yes. Stupid, no. I think it’s quite smart to believe me when your mind doesn’t.”

“There’s been no one for six years, Lyla.”

“Believe me or don’t, fact is fact. I haven’t fucked anyone in six years. I’ve not touched anyone who’s not you in six years. And I’ve never kissed a woman on the mouth in my life. Never saw any point in it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Any other woman would have been a poor replacement for you, and it didn’t seem worth the effort. Now...