Beauty, a Hate Story the End Read online

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  Frankie swayed closer, curving to his touch, eyes closed and sighs music in his ear. For a moment, Anteros thought they would make a symphony, but then she shoved her elbow against his gut. The surprise of it made him stumble back and she spit on his cheek.

  She walked backward, past where Big O’s blood had wet the cement, making bloody footprints. She looked down, eyebrows caving. Weak light stole into the copse of trees, casting half her face in light and the other in shadow.

  “Don’t you…” Her breath released from her nose in a dragon’s fury. “Don’t you dare do this right now.” Her glare was hard and angry, but beneath that he saw the truth. “Not here. Not with, with…” she stuttered again, eyes dropping to Big O’s slack and lifeless face. He grinned crookedly and slowly advanced toward her. She eyed him warily but didn’t move, making small fists as if fighting something within herself.

  “Don’t lie to me.” He slid his palm around the small of her back, pulling her to him, and whispered beneath her earlobe at the base of her skull. “This gets you wet.” Eyes locked, Frankie swayed toward him as if in a carnal trance, bringing her hands to a rest on his pectorals. A hot sigh left her parted lips, white steam in the night. She inched closer until her breath was hot and hazy on his lips, and Anteros thought she would finally give in. Then suddenly the trance shattered, and her tiny fists, elbows—anything she could use—pushed at him. This time he was ready and didn’t let her go.

  “The blood,” he said, drawing her tighter. “The death.” She pounded harder while her body swayed closer. “The power.” He dove his hand into her jeans, groping the bare skin. All at once Frankie ceased struggling, fists becoming open palms on his pectorals, mouth parting.

  “It gets you fucking hot,” he continued. “Lie with your mouth all you want, the truth is between your legs.” Anteros thrust two fingers into her and nearly groaned; it was so easy to slide inside. “You’re so fucking hot for this, you’re dripping down my hand.” Frankie grasped his tank and turned her head to the side, muzzling her breathless cry against his bicep. “Do you like pretending to be a normal girl? A good girl?”

  She moaned and, fuck, that sound—it was almost as devastating as her screams. If he could bottle her moan and save it, he’d be the most powerful man in the world. It was so telling, too. She loved the bruises. She loved the danger. She was afraid so she pretended to hate everything Anteros did, but he could tell by the wetness pooling between her legs and the breath leaving her parted lips that she loved every minute of it. She wanted to see what the other side held and Anteros was the key to the door.

  “You can be my good girl, Frankie,” he rumbled. “Just say you fucking need this.” A few beats passed before she spoke, and then the words were muffled against his skin. “I can’t hear you.” Anteros thumbed Frankie’s clit, hard enough to have pleasure throbbing through her body, but soft enough to have her craving more.

  She gripped his tank and pulled him closer, hips moving a tormenting circle on his fingers. Placing his lips where her shoulder met her neck, he bit. She screamed and he lifted his head, crushing his lips against hers to stifle the noise. She hungrily took him, moaning into his mouth, grinding her pussy on his fingers while gripping his shoulders, skin rubbing against skin. Anteros growled and pushed her harder into the tree, plunging deeper. When Frankie was like this, it was fucking maddening, almost enough to forget that she still hadn’t said what he’d told her to say.

  Reluctantly, Anteros slid his fingers from her body. Frankie made a small noise in the back of her throat, but she still didn’t admit her need. With his free hand, he grabbed her own and shoved it in her jeans, forcing her to feel the wetness. The heat. The blatant need.

  “Say it.”

  “Okay,” she hissed, lidded gaze slowly transforming into a glare. “I like it.” The ire in her tone dissipated and her glare dropped to the ground. A ghost of a smile came to his face, but he worked it out with his jaw before she could see it.

  “Close, but not quite.” Before she could respond, he dropped her hand and pulled her into a kiss.

  He devoured her.

  Ate her.

  Consumed her until there was nothing left. Anteros had been aching to kiss Frankie for a month and now that his lips were on her, he was punching himself for not doing it the first fucking moment he’d laid eyes on her. Held between his palms, he made sure to keep her still until he was done feasting. Her tongue found his, tangled with it and waged war, but she surrendered. Arching her back, she sighed and capitulated.

  Fuck.

  She was made for him. Her saliva got him drunk. Breaking the kiss, he lavished her jaw, her throat, then sucked on the veins. He held her face so she had to stay still and take his attack, her breath uneven in the night. When he went back to her swollen lips, he bit the lower one until her breaths disappeared inside a thready cry. Then he thrust his tongue inside to silence her scream, the coppery taste of her blood sharp in his mouth.

  She was still hot on his tongue when he noticed Frankie had been touching herself the entire time. Anteros stifled a groan at the realization. His forehead was to hers, light only a sliver through the space between their faces.

  “I need this,” she whispered. Just as their lips were about to touch, the crunching of twigs sounded; someone was in the woods with them.

  Their heads broke apart and snapped to the sound.

  “Is that you, Boss?” called the unmistakable voice of Little O. “You okay?”

  Frankie tore from his embrace but before she could run, Anteros snatched her elbow. Terror dripped down her face like wet paint and she tugged furiously on the grip.

  “Stay,” Anteros said. “Don’t go back.”

  “And be what? Your permanent slave?” Her eyes darted to where Little O’s voice had been heard. Anteros pulled her and she spun as if they were dancing. Her back hit his chest and he locked her in with one arm.

  “Only if you beg,” he said in a low growl. Truthfully, if she came back, it would have to be as a prisoner. He’d been working the problem in his head over and over like a vulture with a carcass. That night at the hotel, something had become inviolable: they would be together. Somehow, he would have her at his side. He just hadn’t figured out how yet.

  “Let me go,” she said, raking nails along his wrist. As painful as it was to release her, he wasn’t going to take her without consent. He needed Frankie to want him, fully and without hesitation. With a frustrated groan, he pushed her off him. She stumbled forward, throwing her hands out to keep from falling over.

  She ran toward the cluster of abandoned buildings and half-finished developments beyond the trees. Just before the copse ended, Frankie turned back, cornflower eyes locking with his. The air stilled.

  Half engulfed in shadows, Frankie watched him. She was too damn radiant, destroying the shadows around her like the sun does night. Watching her in the trees, Anteros realized he didn’t know when he would see her again. It was like someone had put cinderblocks on his chest. He’d gone a month without her, he didn’t think he could go another. Frankie’s mouth parted and her eyebrows caved, as if sharing the same thought. A crunch of more twigs snapping sounded as Little O got closer and Frankie turned, running toward the concrete and steel ruins of unfinished New York City developments.

  Anteros bent over and picked up her knife—his knife—watching her get sucked into the syrupy black night. The blade was fresh with Big O’s blood. When he stuck it into his boot, it stained his flesh.

  “Boss?” Little O came through the trees, pushing small branches out of his face. “What are you doing out—” He stopped completely when he saw Big O. As Little O steadied himself on a tree, Anteros couldn’t stop staring at the spot where Frankie had disappeared. A month he’d gone without her, and in the end, she’d sought him out.

  “And you didn’t see anything?” Pretty Boy asked. Anteros thrummed his fingers on the table, deciding how to respond. Two days had passed since Frankie had come for him and Anteros
was losing his fucking mind. As much as he wanted to force Frankie to come back with him and say fuck it all, she still wasn’t ready. She had the darkness but she feared it—feared him—and he wasn’t going to take her captive again. When she came to him, it would be willingly.

  I found your map.

  Anteros looked at his fingers against the shiny table, thinking back to the way they had just recently felt inside Frankie. Wet and hot, always constricting for him, even when she pretended to hate him. He’d left a clue for her, and in the end, it had brought her back.

  They’d all but decided Lucia was behind Big O’s assassination, a fact Anteros didn’t dispute as it meant the Wolves had a place to direct their ire. The knife used to kill Big O was still in Anteros’s boot, blood long dried, the same one she’d used to carve him. He’d stared at the missing spot in his knife holder for weeks, would never mistake it.

  It was an essential piece of intel, one that would have given Frankie and himself away, and thus had to be hidden—at least that was what Anteros told himself. The reason he carried it in his boot all the time was less clear.

  “That’s not what I said.” Anteros stopped thrumming and looked up. “I said I didn’t see his face.” Pretty Boy scrunched his eyebrows, but Anteros knew he didn’t question his loyalty. He would never think it was Frankie. The truth had died that day in the hotel. As far as the Wolves were concerned, he hated the Pavoni Princess as much as the next soldier fighting this war.

  They were in the back office of his club, the same club Anteros had gone to the night he’d found a Pavoni Princess Lives flyer on his balcony, the night he’d given too much of himself to Frankie. It was more underground than his mainstream clubs and easier to police with just the one entrance. With inky black walls and Victorian chandeliers, gauzy jewel-toned curtains reminiscent of Arabian nights, cigarette girls, and a false speakeasy door, the club was a melting pot of decadence and iniquity.

  “We need more security here,” Pretty Boy said as he looked out a two-way mirror designed like a giant painting, complete with an elegant gold frame that allowed them to see the main floor. “After Rhys and now…” Pretty Boy trailed off, eyes traveling to a forlorn Little O in the corner as if he couldn’t believe it.

  “Big O,” Little O finished for him, voice croaky. “And now Big O.” Little O didn’t look at Pretty Boy as he spoke; he hadn’t looked at anyone since the news broke, hadn’t even slept since that night. He kept his head in his hands, unwashed hair falling over them.

  Anteros looked to Crazy A, the only one who might have an inkling of his true feelings. Slouched in a quilted, satin wingback chair, Crazy A eyed him silently, arms folded. Anteros wasn’t fucking stupid. The punishment he’d given Crazy A for his insubordination the month Frankie had been a slave hadn’t made him fall back in line. It had only made him quieter.

  “Rhys is dead because of his own greed and stupidity,” Anteros pointed out. Technically Rhys had been one of the first casualties of the war, the Second Blood War as it was being called, but in reality he could never let the Africa deal go. As he’d been attempting to kidnap a De Luca girl to trade with Ekwensi, one of Lucia’s men had caught and killed him. Anteros would have killed him anyway, so he wasn’t mourning the loss.

  “Fuck this,” Little O said loudly. “After Big O we need to move. We can’t keep operating in the open like this, like we aren’t at fucking war.” Little O rubbed the back of his neck nervously. Everything had always been certain for the Wolves since Anteros had brought them together, but now their footing was off.

  Anteros and Lucia were neck and neck; it was what he’d been waiting for his entire life, the time to be Boss of the Pavoni mafia. He should have been concerned about security, but only Anteros knew that it was Frankie who’d killed Big O. It wasn’t Lucia or her men doing careful, pointed attacks—it was Frankie. Beautiful, scared of her own darkness, Frankie. They didn’t know any of that, just like they didn’t know he’d gotten her off to Big O’s death.

  He still remembered the way her lips felt against his when she admitted she loved the blood, the death, the power. The admission had thrummed through him, vibrating inside his body.

  When she’d been atop him in the hotel, he should have been angry then as well. She’d deceived him, carved him, and escaped. It had been the opposite, though. When her hand had been on the blade, cutting into him, it had only cemented what he’d suspected: there was darkness in her that craved the darkness in him.

  If loving her was playing with fire, then it was wildfire, and he wanted to let it rage because nothing felt better than being licked by her flames.

  “We still need to figure out how the slave escaped in the first place,” Crazy A spoke up, emerging from the shadows as he leaned forward on his elbows. “That will lead us to the leak.” His eyes zeroed in on Anteros. At least on that charge, Anteros was innocent. He still had no idea how Frankie had escaped.

  “We know—Lucia,” Little O said.

  “No shit Sherlock,” Pretty Boy said. “There’s a leak working for Lucia.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Little O snapped. Control was slipping, fear like pollution in the air. Even Pretty Boy was undone, his usually perfectly coiffed locks frizzy.

  “Calm the fuck down. You’re starting to sound scared—”Anteros growled, getting to his feet, but he was cut off by a knock at the door.

  “Sorry, Boss.” Nikolai came in, pushing the door all the way open. “But distro is here.”

  It was night by the time Anteros was done with the Beauty distributor and he needed a shower and a change of clothes, but first he needed a fucking drink. Music from the club was like a heartbeat getting faster and faster at his back, just another reminder that a war might wage, but he still had a goddamn empire to run.

  Anteros turned to face the mirror that looked out to the club while he poured cognac into a crystal glass. A nude woman swiveled in front of it, the painting tattooed across her body. Hair in 1920s finger curls and a feathered headband, she carried a polished cigarette tray, a vacant smile on her face. A man approached her and picked an item off her tray—a rope. All the cigarette girls were prostitutes with the same tray and offer: pick up an item and choose your fantasy. He set down the rope and picked up a silver hand mirror. All the girls all also sold Beauty, Beast’s designer drug. If you picked up the mirror, you bought Beauty, a drug like if ecstasy and heroin had a baby.

  During the war, Anteros had managed to stay profitable, but the margins were slim. The longer the war continued, the slimmer they got. Anteros watched the man disappear with the cigarette girl and a cat o’ nine tails, lifting the drink to his lips. The minute the liquid burned his throat, though, there was a pounding at the door. He turned just in time to see Nikolai coming through the hidden entrance. Light from the club filtered into the room in ripples of color, like an underwater rainbow.

  “There was a break-in,” Nikolai practically gasped, mopping blond hair off his forehead.

  “Did you capture him?” Anteros hedged, keeping his voice and demeanor level even though his chest was constricting. Had Frankie come back?

  “No, not even on camera,” Nikolai responded. “Somehow the person knew the blindspots.”

  Slowly Anteros set his drink down behind him. “Then how do you know?”

  “Something was left.” Anteros’s eyebrows pulled together in thought. Left? What the fuck could have been left? A second later, Nikolai filled in the blank. “A book.”

  “A book?” Anteros replied, unable to hide his surprise. “Are you sure?”

  Nikolai nodded. “I put it in your room.” Anteros reached back, grabbed his drink, and folded his arms in thought. Why would someone leave a fucking book? Swallowing his drink in one finish, Anteros set the glass down and headed for his room, Nikolai trailing after.

  Technically it wasn’t a bedroom, as technically he wasn’t living there. The penthouse had better security, but in the penthouse Frankie had been like a phantom haunting him. He saw
her reading in the library, felt her weight next to him in bed. So he’d started sleeping at the club, but even still, she haunted him. There was no way to run from that.

  Anteros kept a few bespoke suits and shoes around in case he had a meeting with distro, but he’d all but hung up those clothes. He liked it Spartan. Street. Real. They didn’t warn you that when you changed how you dressed, it changed who you were. Anteros used to admire Lucio’s suits—they were the reason he’d picked Lucio’s pocket—because he’d assumed they meant power. Really those suits softened him, were the reason Anteros could take Lucio’s crown. Fancy clothes and fancy things didn’t belong in this world. This world was blood and fire and bone.

  When Anteros got to the room he’d been crashing in, he saw the book on the couch. It was his book, from his library.

  “Odd,” Anteros said, keeping his face still. Everything inside him wanted to tear into it and find the purpose for it being left. Instead he acted as if it meant nothing. “Have you informed anyone else of this?”

  “Just you,” Nikolai answered and Anteros nodded, walking over to the mirror he’d had brought in.

  “Good,” Anteros responded. “Keep it that way.”

  “Should I destroy it, just in case?” Nikolai asked. Anteros paused, fingers at the bottom of his tank, and stared into Nikolai’s questioning celery eyes through the mirror.

  “No.” Anteros ripped the tank off, throwing it to the ground. The F Frankie had carved had healed, but a scar remained, raised and rippled on his left pectoral, near the center of his chest, right where his heart would be.

  Nikolai was the only one who knew the secret beating beneath his shirt. It was Nikolai who’d found Anteros on New Years, and to this day Anteros was thankful. He couldn’t imagine what would have happened had anyone else found him tied up, fucking branded by Frankie. He never would have been able to rein in Crazy A. Things would have been irreparably damaged with his Wolves, his reputation tarnished.