Cartel by Lili St Germain Page B

her. She kicked it a couple of times too, but most of her energy seemed intent on using her fists to smash the fucking wall to smithereens. It wasn’t as if she was trying to escape — the wall was solid limestone, anyone could see that. No, the little Colombian girl that made his cock ache was mad. Ropeable. Absolutely fucking enraged .
    He watched her a little longer, a vague sense of concern pressing at him as he saw the blood dripping from her knuckles. She stopped hitting the wall, but she didn’t stop hurting herself. She marched over to the suitcase he’d left inside the door, opened it and spilled the contents onto the ground. Selecting a small round compact from the pile of clothes and make-up, she opened it and threw it at the ground. The mirror shattered into several pieces, and he watched with interest as she knelt down and selected one of the larger pieces.
    He assumed she was going to hide it, use it as a weapon for when he re-entered the room, but what she did next surprised the hell out of him. She took the piece of mirrored glass in her hand, sat on the narrow bed that took up one corner of the room, and held out her wrist.
    Is she going to …?
    She was. She dragged the sharp tip of the glass down the inside of her wrist, and fresh blood sprang forth. The sight excited him — yeah, he was a sick motherfucker. He enjoyed the sight of blood. He wanted to burst into the room, kneel in front of her, and lick the deep cut in her arm from end to end.
    As long as she didn’t stab him in the neck while he did it.
    Make sure she isn’t marked.
    His father’s words came back to taunt him, and it gave him the perfect excuse to interrupt her psychotic attempt at self-mutilation.
    Make sure she is untouched.
    Well, that one was a little more difficult, but he’d do his best to make sure he at least didn’t leave bruises on her if he found himself unable to resist. He’d never raped a woman, but he’d never needed to — they usually found his enthusiasm a turn-on more than anything. He might have coerced or blackmailed, but he’d never straight-up held a woman down and driven himself inside her against her will.
    Yet.
    He liked to think he never would, but he was his father’s son. The darkness that flowed through his veins disgusted him, but trying to resist it had only ever made things worse. When he tried to control the darkness inside him it didn’t abate, but stored up in increments, until it inevitably bubbled up like poison, rendering his violence uncontrollable. He’d killed people over trivial matters when he let things get too pent up, so he figured it was better to destroy the people who were the source of his rage in the first place. Even as he justified the blood on his hands to himself, he knew that he was a bad man. Hopefully, though, he wasn’t the worst.
    Make sure she isn’t marked.
    Dornan groaned as he opened the door and saw Ana sitting on the bed, sobbing incoherently as she bled all over herself.
    ‘What are you doing?’ he asked her as he closed the door behind him. He expected her to try and hide the glass, or run from him, or attack him. He expected something. What he didn’t expect was for her to continue what she was doing, dragging the sharp glass down her arm as if he wasn’t there, as she muttered and shook and wept.
    ‘Hey!’ he said, a little louder this time. He crossed the room in two quick steps and grabbed hold of the hand that held the offending weapon, squeezing hard until she was forced to drop it. The glass fell to the ground, breaking into two bloodied, uneven shards.
    ‘Seven years bad luck,’ he said flippantly, looking from the glass to her glazed eyes. He felt relief when she glared at him, the daze seemingly broken.
    ‘Are you kidding me?’ she growled. ‘I think I’ve got a lifetime of bad luck ahead of me, don’t you?’
    He kicked the glass away and sat beside her on the bed, close enough that his jeans brushed her blood-smeared thigh.