Devil Mine: A Dark Cartel Romance (London Underworld Book 1)

A gaping pit of fear opens in my stomach when I watch the security guard fall to the ground, lifeless. I don’t know his name, don’t know anything about him except that he died protecting me. 

I’m petrified as I look up at Thiago. He’s covered in his blood, reveling in it. It’s dripping from his forehead, down his eyelids and onto his lips. He steps over the guard’s body with deranged nonchalance like the man is nothing more than trash that he doesn’t want soiling his shoes, and comes to me. He presses me into the corner with no escape and his arms come down on either side of me, caging me in.

I never thought there’d come a time where I’d yearn for the boredom I felt a month ago.

“I’ll kill anyone that gets between you and me, amor. Take that as my first wedding vow,” Thiago says with a grim, evil smile. “Now where were we?” 

My throat is closed, constricted. I can’t make any words come out no matter how hard I try. All I can do is watch as lust rolls through his gaze once more, thick and blinding, and then he bends his head and shoves it back into the crook of my neck, going back to his carnal attack like he didn’t just slaughter another man in front of me.

I jump when his lips close around the skin on the side of my throat. He suctions it into his mouth, his tongue laving feverishly at it. I’m no longer in control of my own body. I have no idea what’s happening. I’m staring into the dead man’s eyes as Thiago sucks at my throat like an animal. I should be horrified. Nauseated.

I am.

I am.

But my body is a riot of emotions and none of them have anything to do with disgust.

“You…you…” I say, searching desperately for a complete sentence. For the first time in my life, my body masters my mind. I feel shut out of all rational thoughts and who am I without those?

His hand comes up to cup the other side of my face, then slides into my hair. He grips it and pulls my head to one side, giving him better access to my neck. He runs his nose up the expanse of my throat.

“Yes, yes, I’m a murderer and you hate me, we’ve already been over this,” Thiago rasps gutturally against my ear. “But here’s something new.  Apparently, death makes you wet.”

The rumble in his voice tells me how turned on he is by this new discovery.

“That’s not true,” I pant. My voice pitches up when his hand slides underneath my sweater and makes contact with the skin of my stomach. “Oh.”

His palm slides up the plane of my abdomen. The contact is barely a graze and I feel so sensitive, fragile almost, because of it. He curls a hand around my waist, fingers digging into my skin, possessive and greedy, adding pressure to his touch that I didn’t know I needed and pulling me closer against him. He’s stroking me exactly where Franklin hurt me, erasing bad memories with what should be worse memories but is just pure, primal arousal instead.

“Look at you, amor. I’m barely touching you.” His fingers ghost down to my lower back and tease the skin at the hem of my jeans. “And you’re a trembling, whimpering mess.”

I realize that I am shaking. That I’m clinging to him like I’m drowning and he’s my life raft. That my eyes are closed and my lips are parted.

“It’s the shock,” I deny.

I hate how breathy my voice sounds.

“Is it the shock that’s making your pussy wet?”

“It’s not!” I cry out, embarrassed. “I’m not.”

How could he possibly know that?

I push him this time, but he refuses to budge or let me go. Instead, he presses me against his body until I feel him against my stomach. 

My eyes fly open to find him staring down at me with a dark, erotic look on his face. I realize he’s studying every single expression flitting across my features with unflinching intensity. He likes the way my mouth parts when I feel his cock against me, I can see it in his hooded gaze.

“You are. I can feel it in the way you’re panting. Those hot breaths hit the side of my face every time I touch you. You’re aching for me. You’re arching into me, desperate to get your pussy anywhere near my cock.” His voice is ragged with his arousal. He pulls my hair and yanks my head back, keeping me under his control like it’s a leash. “Underneath all that dainty pink, those professional suits, and that socially acceptable behavior, I think you’re hiding a secret.” I gasp and a smug smirk pulls at his lips. “Do you even know it? Are you even conscious of the dark urges you have, of the fantasies that you suffocate inside you because you think good girls like you shouldn’t have them?” His voice is liquid lust, intoxicating and persuasive as he rasps low, “I want them all. They belong to me. Give them to me and I’ll do every single one of them to you. Tell me all the dark, deviant fantasies you dream of and I’ll teach you how to be a good girl and a whore for me, just like you want.”

My pussy clenches painfully in response. “You’re a lunatic and you’re wrong.”

“Am I?” That deranged look is back in his eye again and I swallow thickly in anticipation. Excitement sizzles treacherously in my veins, impossible to extinguish no matter how hard I try. “Prove it.”

All of a sudden, Thiago’s hands are on the button of my jeans, flicking it open, and I’m panicked at the thought that he’s going to find out the truth.

So I pummel my fists on his chest and shove him away with all my might. Desperation gives me strength that I don’t have, but I’m still no match for him. He grabs my hands like they’re nothing more than a slight annoyance and pins them behind my back. I feel something come around them and then they’re shoved tightly together against my will.

I try separating them, but they won’t move. Plastic digs into my wrists and I realize he used a zip tie to bind them behind my back.

“Does fighting turn you on, is that the first of your fantasies?” Thiago wonders aloud, chuckling darkly. The zipper of my pants comes down and I feel air touch the skin above the line of my panties. I can’t do anything to stop him but arousal douses any alarm I’m feeling and somehow he knows it. “Do you prefer being tied up like this so I can discover your lies for myself? So you can pretend you don’t want it when you’re actually desperate for it?”

“What are you doing?” I cry anyway. “You said you’d only touch me if I was willing!”

“Your body is willing, amor. More than willing, begging, to be touched. It’s my husbandly duty to give you what it wants.” His eyes drop to look at the triangle of fabric now visible through the opening of my zipper. When he sees the pink of my panties, his eyes turn black with lust. The gold is completely gone, replaced by a black hole that sucks all the light in the vicinity into its depths. “Now be quiet, I need to savor this. I only get to see my fiancée’s pussy for the first time once.”

All pretense of civility between us is gone. He skims his fingers reverently along the top of my panties, leaving a scorching trail of fire wherever he touches me.

“I don’t know what it is about you that has me so enthralled,” he murmurs, gaze almost hypnotized. His eyes are pinned unwaveringly where his fingers brush against the top of my panties.

Thiago slips a finger right below the band of my panties and stays there, his presence almost like a threat. Then he runs it the entire length of the hemline, sneaking in his remaining fingers.

I shudder at his words and touch, my skin heated. But I shake my head and struggle, more afraid of how I’ll react if he touches me there than of what he’ll find.

“Please, no,” I beg.

“What are you hiding from me, amor?” 

“Nothing. Nothing! You’re assaulting me,” I say, hoping that’ll scare him away. But I should know better than to try to appeal to the devil’s good side. 

It doesn’t exist.

He smiles and looks at me, face still streaked with a dead man’s blood. “I’m getting the truth.”

I turn my head aside as he shoves his hand down into my panties. This is going to be so much more humiliating if I have to look him in the eye when he discovers what a liar I am and I refuse to do it.

He doesn’t give me a choice.

He grips my face and forces me to look at him.

“I don’t even need to touch you. I can smell your arousal from here. But because I know you love data and likely need empirical proof…” With almost relieving finality, his fingers part my folds and slide into the valley of my pussy. My soaking wet pussy. “…Is this enough for you?”

It’s almost cruel how he barely touches me. He just glances over my clit and entrance and then immediately pulls out of my panties.

Thiago’s smile is arrogantly victorious as he shows me his middle and fourth fingers, both of them glistening and covered in the slickness of my arousal. I whimper, defeated.

But he’s no gracious victor.

He squeezes my jaw until my lips part and shoves both fingers into my mouth.

“Taste how much you want me,” he commands.

My eyes widen in outraged surprise but I have no time to process it. His other hand takes the place of the first and pushes back into my panties. He slips between my folds to my entrance and shoves a finger inside me.

“Omf–” My exclamation is muffled around the fingers he’s thrusting down my throat.

Thiago pulls out of my pussy and sucks that finger into his own mouth. I watch as his eyes roll back into his head, pleasure contorting his features. He pushes the finger in and out of his mouth in tandem with the ones still in mine. There’s something so unbelievably obscene about both of us licking my juices together and I’m glad he’s no longer in my pussy so he can’t feel how I just clenched at the sight.

“You taste so good, your juices are all over my hand,” he says, moving to lick his palm and wrist like a rabid animal. He’s right though, my arousal soaks his hand. “Are you ready to admit it yet?”

He pulls his fingers out of my mouth to let me answer. “That means nothing,” I stammer. “It’s my body’s uncontrollable reaction.”

Something dangerous sparks in Thiago’s eyes. He yanks my hair again, sending a jolt of delicious pain running up my neck.

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone how desperate you are to fuck your criminal of a fiancé.”

I gasp when he pushes a finger back inside me, thrusting it in to the hilt. His hold on my hair keeps me from toppling into him but I’m helpless to keep my eyelids from fluttering shut. I can’t take his hot-blooded stare on my face any longer, it’s too intimate.

Just when I think I can’t take any more, he presses a second finger next to the first and shoves inside me. I hiss at the tight fit. My pussy is stretched tautly around his digits and they’re only about halfway in.

His mouth comes down to my ear, making me shudder. “Are you a virgin?” he growls.

“No,” I say smugly, happy to show him I’m not just his possession.

He bites the line of my jaw, his teeth coming viciously down on my skin. Pain explodes along the side of my face before he licks it away.

“How many?” he drawls. “How many men am I going to have to fuck out of your tight cunt?”

I’ve always hated overly possessive, controlling men, so logically, I should hate everything about the brutish, caveman way he’s demanding answers.

Logically.

Instead, his crude, primal words heat my blood until I feel like I’m about to combust. How is he doing this, how is he rewiring everything I thought I knew about myself?

“I’m spoiled goods, already used up,” I answer haltingly. “Get yourself a virgin bride, you don’t want me.”

Poison settles in my stomach at my own challenge. It straight up boils when I think about Adriana and how I’m already just a replacement for  his real love.

“It’s not about starting, it’s about finishing,” he purrs, unfazed. “And I’m going to be the last man to ever fuck this sweet pussy.”

He thrusts in and out of me, loosening me, making me lose my ever loving mind.

“A hundred,” I gasp. “A hundred men.”

“Really?” He pauses, then shoves his thick fingers inside me to the hilt. I cry out at the roughness of his intrusion, at the stretch, at the impossible feeling of his fingers so deep inside me. “And you’re still this tight?”

His words are teasing, revealing he doesn’t believe me for a second. He’s toying with me again, except this time it’s in a game where he’s a grand master and I’m just a beginner.

“I don’t care who you’ve fucked, amor. I doubt any of them meant anything to you, and if they did, you’ll forget about them the moment my cock sinks into this tight pussy and claims it as his home.” His thrusts turn rougher, punishing, as he inches his face towards mine until a hair’s breadth separates our lips. For a moment, I think he’s going to kiss me and instead of turning away, lust makes me tip my chin upwards. “But from this day onwards your pussy is mine and mine alone. If I see you flirting with someone else, if I see you dancing with, smiling at, or entertaining another man in any way.” He pauses, his mouth stretching into a cold, terrifying smile. “You’ll find out just how the devil came by his reputation.”

Indecipherable moans and cries fall from my lips as he brings me closer and closer to the edge of a cliff I didn’t even see coming. He’s careful to avoid touching my clit, knowing one brush of his thumb would make me come apart. He curls his fingers inside me and brushes against a soft spot that has me seeing stars.

I’m right there, right at the edge about to crest past that delicious pause before I tumble off the side of the cliff when he abruptly pulls his fingers out.

I sag against him, my legs giving out. Ragged breaths rip from my throat as I try to make sense of what just happened. I’m frustrated and unfinished but I can’t scream at him for not making me come when I was screaming at him for touching me in the first place. I peer up at him from below my eyelashes to find his gaze already trained on my face.

“You don’t get to cum until you’re legally mine.” Arousal makes his voice throaty and hoarse.

“That’ll never happen.”

His hard cock is still pressed against me, throbbing with need. His eyes drop to the stubborn set of my lips and his pupils dilate once more. He reaches between us and with two fingers, spreads my arousal across my lips.

I’m mid-gasp when he bends his head and claims my mouth. Shock freezes me. Then, slow, unexpected electricity sizzles sharply through my body when our lips touch.

Cinnamon explodes on my tongue, the remaining spiciness of his candy making me dizzy. He tastes like darkness. Like blood spilled and bad decisions. He wraps a hand around my nape and angles my face up towards him. The other digs into my hair and grips it tightly. His tongue parts my lips and dives into my mouth. He doesn’t ask, his strokes tentative and beguiling. No, he takes with a dominance that steals my breath away.

The softness of his lips is in stark contrast with the assault of his tongue. He wars passionately with mine, conquering it like he conquers everything else. This kiss has the gravitational pull of a black hole and I’m sucked in with no hope of escape. Distantly, I’m aware of one hand leaving me, of feeling cold metal against my skin but not even registering that I should be afraid, and then my own hands are free.

He licks the arousal from my lips. A moan of pure male satisfaction leaves his throat and hits me between my legs, reigniting the still frustrated spot. He bites my lower lip at the same time as I feel pressure on my hand, distracting me, and then he rips his mouth off mine. Desire makes him look almost unrecognizable. His chest rises and falls angrily as he pulls in ragged breath after ragged breath.

“Keep telling yourself that,” he growls, voice roughened by lust.© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

I don’t even know what he’s saying that in response to. The kiss has wiped my memories of any prior conversation and stolen the breath from my lungs.

“Be a good girl for me, amor,” he says. “I’ll be back to take you soon. For good this time.” 

He’s gone before I can say or do anything, slinking off and disappearing into the shadows with an ease that shows how dangerous he is. He leaves me with a dead body, blood on my lips, and raging arousal with no outlet.

The haze of lust recedes quickly with his departure. The sobering realization of everything that just happened hits me in stark color.

Looking down at my left hand, I find a massive twinkling diamond occupying the better half of my fourth finger. He slipped it on when he freed my hands and kissed me, and like a lust-struck fool, I didn’t even notice.

I stare at the diamond and see it for what it is.

A life sentence as the wife of a criminal. A life metaphorically — and potentially literally — collared to someone I despise. A life where I’m no more in control than I am now, where fear and violence reign.

A life that is not my own.

In the end, I was right.

The devil in my nightmares did come for me.

So I do the only thing that I can think of, the only thing that makes sense to me.

A decision that’s both logical and emotional.

I run.