Chapter 32

"What are you doing?" My voice shook in a panic, while a symphony of nails clattered at my feet. Alessi's strength was effortless as he pinned me by the shoulder with one hand, and grabbed my wrist with the other. He forced my arm up and back, then held it against the wall with his palm over mine. He fully connected our bodies at every possible point of contact, from the knee he shoved between my legs, to his forearm that pressed from my elbow to my wrist, and the hand he fisted between my fingers. I couldn't even begin to get the momentum I'd need to jerk my arm free, let alone the strength that could out match a beast from a magical world.

"I'm helping you." His words and the vicious expression on his face didn't match. "One woman's trauma is another man's toy, right?" He dragged my arm down the wall, like I was his puppet who he could position any way he wanted. "And judging by your trauma , I know exactly whose toy you've been. "

"So what if you do." I tried again to jerk free, and I don't know why I fought anything anymore. I was nothing in a world of gods. Again, I was too weak, too different, and too much of an outsider to influence this space of demented, fucked up men. "It was just a vision. None of it was real. None of it mattered. Y-you've got it all wrong, so let go of me."

"Let you go? But don't you want to pass the trial?" Though his question sounded like it was in my best interest, that mocking cruelty in his tone told me the answer wouldn't be.

"You said it yourself—I was Theron's toy, not yours. I don't know what you're thinking, but whatever it is, you're wrong." I tried again to squirm, but that only encouraged him to increase the pressure of his hold. "It has nothing to do with you. He was my nightmare."

Alessi kept me pinned to the wall as he reached into the cubby beside us, where he removed a nail and twirled it between his fingers. The fox shook his head, though he never stopped grinning. "Bijou, Bijou, Bijou, let me be abundantly clear. Theron might show you the illusion of a nightmare, but I fucking am one."

He pulled back only enough to reach his arm across me and place the nail on the back of the hand still holding mine against the wall. My eyes near bugged from their sockets as I watched him push the point straight through his muscle and bone without a second of hesitation. And I screamed when I felt the sharp point on the center of my own palm, as it penetrated clean through us both.

"No. No, no, no!" I gasped as the nail broke skin, pierced muscle, and threaded through bones, as he sank that pin all the way into the wall. Our blood mixed on the spike as he used his strength to slowly but purposefully nail our arms together, one point at a time, perfectly in line with Theron's old marks.

He never so much as flinched, while I was digging my teeth so hard into my lip, my blood was trickling down my chin. This time, the pain was real. There was no warping the illusion or altering my experience to spare me. I'd let my guard down around Alessi, and I didn't know what had compelled me to do something so foolish.

"Is this why he calls you Butterfly?" He sank another nail through his arm and then through mine. "So many points. He didn't hold back at all. You must have really riled him up." The last nail sunk in slow, like he was savoring the violence of it. He practically shuddered as our blood mixed in free flowing agony. "Gods, he's still so cute. You both are, honestly." With us fully secured, he used his free hand to grip my chin, letting his claws rest threateningly against my neck. My wounds were still healing rapidly, but so long as those nails stayed in my flesh, they couldn't fully close. "I bet he didn't even ask before he decided you were his. Just forced himself into your mind, staked his claim, and kept you strung on a leash without you even realizing it." He traced my jawline, smearing the blood from my lip with the saline of my tears. I tried not to whimper. "You're thinking about him all the time, because he assured you would have no other choice. How could you forget a man who permanently tattooed his claim in your flesh, after all." He was laughing, but I must have missed the joke. "Some men never change. But then, maybe neither of us want him to, do we?"

"What are you talking about?" My words were lost when he connected our lips. Alessi darted his tongue inside my mouth, as if testing my reaction, then he took time to lap the blood from my healed lip when he pulled out. He laced his fingers between mine, and he squeezed our pinned hands together, only serving to speed his own bleeding from his still fully open wounds. I healed faster than he did. How and why, I didn't understand. But that didn't lessen how much it hurt, or how terrifying the injury.

Yet, when he distracted me with another much harder kiss, sinking into my mouth with perfect dominance, and shifting his thigh even more firmly against my pussy, some part of my brain wanted to rationalize this whole thing away.

Join as one.

I recalled the words on the wall. Was this about the challenge? Was this what he was supposed to do? I wanted to believe that. I had to.

In the corner of my eye, I caught the first clock. The one hour countdown had stopped. The two hour timer had started.

I closed my eyes, then I wrapped my fingers around his knuckles, one digit at a time. It was the quietest, most terrifying consent I'd ever given.

The fear and adrenaline only spiked higher when I felt the way his lips pulled into a grin against mine.

"That's my perfect girl."

That small affirmation had my whole body shivering, and I willfully let him claim my lips this time. He moved his body against me, and the tug of nails was the only thing that grounded me to rationality and consciousness. He kept my head in place with his kiss, while his free hand slipped beneath my skirt. I jerked in surprise as he flipped on the vibrator again. I gripped his shoulder with my one free hand while I found every nerve in my body climbing rapidly towards release.

I could hear the sound of him undoing his belt over my muffled gasps, while he kept my lips covered by his own. I was losing my sense of existence when he lifted my thigh to his hips, and I was still clinging to the dark explosion of orgasm when he shoved my panties to the side, and he entered me while my body was already mid-climax. His kiss was delicious violence, while his thick cock was my missing piece, filling every ounce of space inside me.

I was still coming down from that clitoral high, when he started moving. He grabbed my shirt and tugged it up and over my breasts, then he pressed his chest to mine, grabbed my other wrist, and pinned my last defense to the cold, hard gold.

Alessi sunk the heel of his hand into the marks on my wrist, and he pressed his thumb into the one dot on my palm, connecting us at every single point.

My mind went blank, the searing pain now feeling secondary to the sensational high he was building in my core. All I could rationalize was to hold onto him with my thighs. My heart rate neared explosion, and I was desperate for relief when each thrust of his hips put new pressure on the vibrator.

"You're taking me so well." Alessi said as he pulled back from our kiss. He let me breathe long enough to lick the tears from my cheeks, while still inside me, still moving, and I was so heavily pinned by both the strength of metal and muscles, that I couldn't move a single inch without his permission. If I could overdose on endorphins and dopamine, I was a mile past the limit. If I could be suffocated by lust and lilacs and pleasure, I'd already drowned .

"Shhhhh, don't cry, Bijou. I'm going to need you to hang on just a little longer." He growled against my lips, before claiming them again. My mouth was his, my body was his, and I had no semblance of where I ended and he began. I could feel the tension in his body as he chased his release with a trancelike desperation. He slammed in hard, then he held that position, sharing that low rumble of the vibrator between us. Alessi was gripping both of my hands like he was clinging to a life raft in a storm, and I squeezed back to offer a misguided lifeline. Heat filled my core, while renewed agony shot through my arm as he ripped his blood-soaked, nail laden limb from mine with sudden and powerful force.

He stepped away, every nail still protruding from his skewered arm, and I slid down the wall. My wounds closed nearly as quickly as they'd been reopened, and a new symbol embedded itself in the pattern of the dots. The image resembled a fox tail, twisting on itself in an infinity symbol.

I trembled, the vibrator still driving me mad, my clit way past overstimulation, and the feel of his warm come leaking down my thighs. My sanity had long since left this realm. Absentmindedly, I turned off the vibrator, but my body was still coursing with so many sensations, I couldn't figure out where I was or what had just happened.

It wasn't until I heard a voice that I found any semblance of my senses again.

"Did you like that, Theron?"

My vision crawled from the floor to Alessi's boots, up his body, and past the satisfied, mischievous expression on his face. The clock on the wall stopped suddenly as I locked gazes with Theron, who was perched atop the yellow partition, glaring down at both of us through his lightning sparked eyes.