God of Ruin (Legacy of Gods #4) by Rina Kent

Her lips part and she swallows thickly.

“Oh?” I tilt my head. “Judging by your reaction, it might be your kink as well.”

She shakes her head harder than needed, but her cheeks flush a deeper shade of red.

“No need to be ashamed when you just came because of it. But I digress, only until the next time I wake you up with my cock.”

What am I saying? There shouldn’t be a next time.

She starts to get up, but I grab her by the hand. Mia pauses, wearing a bemused expression. I snatch a few tissues from the coffee table, where her dinner waits, and wipe the evidence of our fuck session from her translucent skin.

What am I if not a caring gentleman?

It helps that I get to trace my finger marks on her flesh. These irregular hickeys and bite marks are fast becoming my favorite creation.

Mia remains still and watches me with eyes that resemble half-crushed, barely surviving wildflowers at the edge of volcanic lava.

It’s definitely not because of the sex, considering the smidge of lust still shining through them.

“What were you dreaming about just now?” I ask as I finish cleaning the space between her legs, then wipe her stomach.

“Nothing.”

“You were crying and gasping.”

“Nothing,” she signs the word with more attitude this time.

“A long time ago.” I take extra care in cleaning the rim of her belly button. “Bran came into my room without light in his eyes, and when I asked him what had happened, he also said nothing. And yet he hasn’t been the same since. So I have deep trust issues with the word nothing.”

She swallows and hangs her head. I can tell she’s close to breaking, and all I have to do is push a bit further.

My voice softens. “Is it related to whoever took your voice?”

Mia nods once.

That’s a good start.

“Is he still alive?”

Another nod.

So it’s a he.

“Did your parents make him live as a cripple?”

She shakes her head and then signs, “No one knows who or where he is.”

Not even her mafia parents.

This must be why she’s often looking over her shoulder and only sleeps when there’s a light on.

Someone stole not only her voice—her beautiful, melodic voice—but also her peace of mind.

Someone who took the major risk of attacking a mafia princess, not caring about the consequences, is of a different caliber.

“Not even you?”

Her eyes, the color of sheer determination, meet mine, looking a bit lost. “What do you mean?”

“You said no one knows where he is, which makes sense, but what about who he is? You’ve seen him, no?”

The air crackles with tension so thick, I could possibly cut through it with a knife. All color drains from Mia’s face and a tremor twitches her parted lips as she shakes her head frantically.

Interesting.

“But I will find him,” she signs after she partially recovers. “Either I get my voice back or I die.”

I push a tangle of blonde hair and blue ribbons from her face. Mia stares up at me with a struck expression, her plump lips parting and begging for my cock between them.

But that’s a thought for another day.

“Complete nonsense. The only ultimatum is that you’ll get your voice back and kill him. I can make it happen. All you have to do is ask.”

I don’t even know what the fuck I’m doing. For the first time in my life, I’m prioritizing someone else over my own schemes.

Maybe, just maybe, I’m irrevocably bewitched by that soft voice and I refuse to believe that was the last time I’ll hear it.





21





MIA





There’s an error in the matrix.

A miscalculated equation.

A hopeless, absolutely disfigured view of reality that’s impossible to fix.

And it all has to do with a certain Landon King.

The current monster of my life.

The demon who’s ushering me to hell with decadent smirks and a hedonistic view of reality.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I’d be into the demented things Landon keeps showing me. It started with mere curiosity, but now, I’m proficiently fluent in his crude kinks.

That morbid curiosity is morphing into something a lot bigger and more intimidating. He’s cutting each of my self-imposed limits with sharp, bloodied claws.

And the scariest part is that I can’t put a stop to it. Every day, I go to the haunted house, which Landon is slowly renovating, with the resolve that tonight will be the last hit.

And yet each night, I keep going back again and again like a hopeless addict.

My excuse is that a deep part of me has been yearning for this feeling of complete abandon and being slightly forced into giving up control. That black hole in the corner of my soul has been dreaming about unleashing this darker side of unbound lust—the side I wouldn’t even tell Maya about.

A side that’s frowned upon by all societies and their religions.

I often felt an itch in high school. Where Maya loved the attention, I realized early on that none of the boys I knew could satisfy this itch, not even other mafia leaders’ sons who thrive on violence and asserting their place in the world.

So imagine my surprise when I found that in none other than a posh British guy.