Dark Desires by Candace Wondrak
Chapter Four – Markus
I didn’t much care about what was going on with Bennet, not right now. I was too lost in my own head, which was so very unlike me. Bennet was always getting into trouble; that much wasn’t new. Normally, I’d tell Theo not to treat him, but today I didn’t rightly give a shit. I sat in my office, lost in thought.
No, not lost. Just thinking of her.
How she’d looked curled up in the corner of that room, blood staining her pajamas. How light she’d felt when I’d picked her up, held her in my arms, and carried her up the stairs. How much she’d trembled when I’d forced her to feel blood on those hands, to get a taste of cutting someone deep.
Juliet Osborne was not made for this life. That was more than obvious. She was too delicate, too light, a flower in a desolate wasteland. I couldn’t blame her for running away. Who was I to her? Why would she ever listen to me? I’d warned her not to run, and she’d tried anyway, like a fool.
And I’d responded in kind, the only way I could’ve. I’d reminded that girl I was in charge here, and I did not take disobedience lightly.
But if that was the case, she should be dead. The only reason she still lived was not because of her father, but for a more selfish reason of mine, a reason which should never dictate my actions. My own father would be gloriously disappointed in me if he knew, so I supposed it was a good thing he wasn’t here.
I’d never been selfish before. I’d never felt the urge to be, the desire to do things simply because I wanted to do them and not because they needed to be done. Everything in my life had led to this point, and now… now a part of me wanted more, something I’d never wished for before.
It was foolish. I knew it in my core, and yet no amount of wrestling with myself would change how I felt, what I wanted, and what I wanted was—
A knock on my office door dragged me out of my thoughts, and I pulled myself back to reality, glancing up. “What is it?” I sounded like I didn’t want to deal with anyone right now, and that’s because I didn’t. The last thing I wanted to do was don the mask, but if that’s what must be done, it’s what would be. I was not here because I let my own feelings get in the way.
I had no feelings.
I shouldn’t.
I didn’t.
“It’s Will,” he spoke as he poked his head in. Just his head, nothing more. Will’s hazel eyes twinkled; it was more than clear he was thrilled he got to watch her. I was torn between him and Jaxon; Jaxon, I think, still cared for the girl a bit too much, and that made me feel things I did not want to.
Anger. Jealousy. Other things that had no place inside my soul. It was a black, dark thing; it would remain so until the end of my days, whenever the end was. A pretty, innocent thing like Juliet would never change the core of who I was.
As long as Will proved himself able to refrain from his past… activities, he could continue watching her, but should he prove to me he was incapable of true change, I would be forced to once again remind him the only reason he still breathed was because of this family.
“What is it?” I asked, just barely keeping the snide, annoyed tone from my voice. The last thing I wanted was to be bothered for some stupid reason. All he had to do was watch her. Was that really so fucking hard?
“It’s Juliet,” he went on, and I didn’t even blink. Wouldn’t let myself, not until I heard his next words: “She wants to see you, and she won’t take no for an answer.”
That… that wasn’t what I expected. She wanted to see me? Why? Instantly, my guard shot up. Not that it had to be, but considering how often she took up my mind—including the moments leading up to Will’s appearance here—it was for the best.
I needed to stop thinking about her. I needed to shake her out of my system and my head, but doing so felt all kinds of impossible.
“Fine,” I muttered, stopping myself from asking why. The girl would tell me when she came in here, provided she actually spoke to me and didn’t just glare at me with those big, blue eyes, wordlessly telling me she hated me.
I knew she did. I knew she could never understand the things we did here, what I did. She would never know what it was like to look into the eyes of someone you were killing and just… not care. Polar opposite of me, she was everything I could never be and everything I did not understand.
Will disappeared, but within a few moments, Juliet walked in. Will, apparently, would wait in the hall. This little meeting of ours would be alone. Interesting. I would’ve imagined she wouldn’t want to be alone with me after the incident in the basement. The girl surprised me.
I met her eyes, keeping them locked on her face as she went to sit down across from me. I did not let my gaze drop to her body, to the baggy shirt hanging on her shoulders or the dark blue jeans on her hips, though it was more difficult than I wanted to admit.
Knowing what her body looked like underneath it all… made her even more tempting.
Maybe that’s what she was. Some kind of divine joke, a test. Not that I believed in a higher power—there were no other higher powers than money and power in this world—but if there was, she had to be sent by it. What were the odds my path in life would cross with hers?
What were the odds she was brought into this world by another monster?
“You surprise me,” I admitted to her, folding my hands atop each other as I stared at her. “I imagined you wouldn’t want to step foot in the same room as me for quite a while after everything.” After the basement. After I made her bear witness to the true horrors this house contained. The sin, the darkness, the depravity. Our walls were painted in blood, the heart of this house an inferno.
“I didn’t,” she said, her voice just as light and feathery as I remembered it being. So soft, so smooth, the kind of voice I could close my eyes and listen to at all hours of the day and night. Although, I did suppose we would also be doing other things than talk.
See? That was a thought I shouldn’t have had. Fuck. Everything became topsy-turvy when she was near me.
“And a part of me still doesn’t,” Juliet went on, crossing her legs. My eyes dipped to those legs at the motion, and I leaned forward just a bit from my own chair.
“Then why are you here?” Each word I spoke was rough, my voice nowhere near as smooth as hers. We were two opposites, two people who could not be more different. She was everything I could never be, nothing I ever wanted before… so why did she take up my thoughts more often than not? Why did my mind constantly return to her, no matter how badly I fought it?
I shouldn’t want her. I shouldn’t desire her at all. She shouldn’t even be here. If she had been anyone else, she’d already be dead, and her father? Oh, her father would’ve met his end a long time ago.
“Because,” Juliet spoke bluntly, “I wanted to see you.”
I said nothing at that, for there was nothing to say. I wasn’t so much speechless as I was curious as to why she wanted to see me. All that aside, of course, she shouldn’t. The girl should not want to see me at all, not after what I put her through. Perhaps the little flower was more of a glutton for punishment than she realized. Perhaps everything that drew me to her also drew her to me in much the same way.
“Noted,” I finally said, keeping myself from saying anything more. There was more to say; there was always more to say, but to say more right now would be to reveal my weakness to her, and I’d be damned if I showed any signs of it, not when I still wrestled with myself over the very fact.
Not when I hated it almost as much as I craved it.
Her.
“I also wanted to apologize,” Juliet added, watching me, her full lips parting, “for running. I know I shouldn’t have, and I’m sorry.” Her blonde head tilted down, angled away from me, her hair covering her face and hiding her from me. She fiddled with her hands in her lap, clearly anxious.
She was the one who came here, and yet she acted so uneasy? I supposed I couldn’t blame her for the unease; she’d seen exactly what I was capable of, and even though it’d all been done in the heat of the moment, it had to be on her mind.
“What’s done is done,” I said. “There’s no use apologizing.”
Juliet looked up. “No, that’s where you’re wrong. Apologizing might not change anything, but it still matters. It still means something. I guess someone like you wouldn’t understand that—I doubt you’ve ever apologized for anything in your life.”
She wasn’t exactly wrong.
“No,” I told her. “I don’t apologize. If that’s what you came here for, you’ll leave this office sorely disappointed.” If Juliet wanted me to tell her I was sorry for what I’d done, she was more of an idiot girl than I’d thought. I would not apologize. I would never.
Her next question came off so defiant it was almost amusing—almost. “Were you born this way, or did living in this house make you like this?”
A muscle in my jaw clenched, and it took everything in me to say, “What?”
“I feel sorry for you,” she went on, choosing not to address my question. “None of you ever had a chance at a normal life. I know I’m not the best person to say this, but it’s true. If this place didn’t exist—”
“If this place didn’t exist, people like my brothers and my sisters would be dead. Instead, their… talents are put to use here. We can’t all be perfect like you, Juliet.”
“Are you mocking me, Markus?”
“Now what would make you say that?” I cocked my head at her slowly, taking in the way she jutted out her bottom lip, almost in a pout. “Now, if that’s all…” I willed her to get up and leave my office, to let me breathe air untainted with her presence, unstained with her perpetual innocence.
Juliet stood, the motion almost too smooth. She stood before my desk, saying not a thing. One of her fingers ran across the front edge of my desk, slowly, deliberately, and without saying another word, she spun on her heel and walked toward the door.
“Wait.” The word left me before I could stifle it, before I could stop it from forming in my throat.
Her feet halted the moment I spoke, though she didn’t turn around.
I got up, moving around my desk, toward her. Juliet stood just before the door, and I knew Will waited for her outside in the hall. The man had probably put his ear to the door and listened to the whole exchange; I wouldn’t put such sneaky moves past him. If there was one thing Will was good at, it was listening and planning.
He was kind of like me, in that respect. Maybe that’s why I’d agreed to keep him here, to invite him into the family.
Juliet stood as tall as she could—which, admittedly, was not very tall. Her eyes were level with my chest, or they would be, if she turned around. So very small, so fragile and breakable. I wanted to touch her, to draw a hand up along her back, hold her neck, feel her breathing beneath my fingertips. I wanted to do so much more than that.
But I didn’t. I simply stood behind her, inches away, and spoke in a bare whisper, “Don’t run from me again.” More than order, for if she tried to run from me again… I did not know if I’d be able to hold myself back.
She sluggishly turned, head tilting back to stare up at me. Such wide eyes, almost doll-like. They lent to the innocent look she constantly wore, even if she glared and tried to appear tough. “And if I do?” Juliet asked.
Such a naive question, and we both knew it. It was almost as if the girl baited me on purpose, asked the question while batting those thick eyelashes at me, just to see what I’d say.
I said nothing, because I knew any words that might’ve left me after that would not be the kind of words I could take back. After all, who was this girl to me? I knew what she should be—nothing—but she was so much more than that, and I didn’t know why.
Never let a woman come between you and the job. That had been lesson number one, and up until this point, I’d done a damned good job at keeping everything in order. But now, with Juliet here, I could feel things starting to slip into disarray.
I hated disarray. I hated unfettered chaos. The only reason the Scotts were still here, doing what we did best, was because we had a system. We had order. We did not invite strangers into our lives each and every day, and when we did, it was because they were one of us.
Juliet would never be one of us. She would never be a killer, never lust for the chance to watch someone die while knowing you were the reason they perished. Not like my brothers. Not like some of my sisters. Not like me.
She didn’t give me the chance to answer her, for she went on, hardly blinking those entrancing blue eyes as she said, “Would you kill me? Would you have me chained up in that basement? What would you do to me if I tried to run again?” Her questions were spoken in a bare whisper, and yet there was a strength to them, as if…
As if she already knew the answer.
“Do you even know?” Juliet asked.
I stared at her. I stared at her while barely resisting the urge to latch my hand onto her neck, push her up against the door a few feet behind her, and show her just what I would do. So bold, so defiant… and yet I knew how easily that body of hers could give into mine.
Such thoughts should not enter my head, and yet here we were. Here we both were. So tempting. So sinfully tempting. I supposed if there was one thing this family was good at, it was sinning.
“Why am I here, Markus?” Juliet went on. “Why show me everything when you know it’d be stupid to let me go?” Her line of questioning paused before she added in a hushed whisper, “Did you ever plan on letting me go?”
“That’s up to your father,” I muttered, frowning at her, wishing she would cease this constant questioning. It… it was making me think too much, and when it came to her, I’d already been lost in my own head too much. So unlike me.
“Is it?”
Her response made something in me snap. I brought a hand to her neck, stepping forward, stopping only when her slender frame hit the door behind her. I did not squeeze hard, but I held onto her tightly enough she would know to choose her next words carefully. No one questioned me in my own fucking house.
“And what is that meant to mean?” I hissed out, holding onto her neck as I forced her head up so she could look at me towering over her. “I’d be careful with what you say next, Juliet. Your fate lies in my hands here, don’t forget.”
Juliet almost appeared uncomfortable, but she did not fight the hand around her neck. She simply stared up at me, breathed slowly, and whispered, “We both know it’s not really up to him. It’s up to you, and I think you’ve already made up your mind.”
My fingers tightened reflexively around her neck, and I felt my chest rumbling with something fiercer than indignation. How dare this girl claim to know what I thought and how I felt. How dare she say she knew the end of this road. She didn’t. She couldn’t. Juliet could not know because I did not know.
I didn’t know. I really didn’t know. It was the first time in my life I did not know, and that made it all the more infuriating.
“You play a dangerous game,” I growled out, “pretending to know the future. Tell me this.” My bottom half pressed against her, my entire body screaming to put her in her place, remind her that I was the one in charge here, not vice versa. I was the one on top. Always. It was so very difficult to keep my head, to not lose my cool.
If I lost it… if I let her get to me in that way, I didn’t think I’d ever have control again, and then where would this family be? What would we become if I was not here to be the shepherd among the lost? Where would my brothers and sisters be if I did not lead them to their salvation?
Nowhere. They would be nowhere. They would rot and die, their souls never knowing what they could do. They would be forgotten as the sands of time kept moving ever onward. Who wanted to be forgotten? We were the Scotts, and we would be eternal. I wouldn’t let this girl or her innocence distract me from that.
I couldn’t.
“How do you think you’ll die here?” I whispered, eyes raking down her slender nose, landing on her lips. Parted and pink, they were more tempting than a pair of lips should be, and as I stared at them, I couldn’t help but wonder why I couldn’t have something of my own. Why did I always have to be the one who kept everything and everyone in line?
Why couldn’t I have something I so desperately craved? A young, beautiful girl, the light in the darkness. Fragile but strong, small but overwhelming. A girl who knew nothing of the monster she’d been so close to all this time—and I didn’t mean me.
She would learn. It might take time, but she would learn that some creatures of this world were worse than others. Juliet might believe we were the worst of the worst, but there were other, far more deadly and vile men out there.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, and I could feel her breath on my hand, the slight air from her lungs dancing across my flesh. “I guess that’s something you get to decide, too. For what it’s worth, I don’t want to die here.”
Nothing Juliet could say would lessen the battle in my head, but I found myself loosening my hold on her neck as I whispered, “What do you want, then?” I shouldn’t have asked, for it was clear what she’d say: her freedom.
But that wasn’t what she said.
“I want to understand. I want to live. I want to do everything my dad never let me do—go to college, have friends, go to the movie theater.” Her eyelids fluttered shut. “I want everything I was told not to.” Those eyelids of hers cracked open, and she stared at me, the expression on her face soft. “I want the truth.”
The truth. The truth was so much uglier than she knew, than she could ever imagine. She might think of me a monster, but I knew there were other kinds of evil in this world. Not worse than me, but certainly not better. Not quite on the same level, but different all the same. Evil she couldn’t dream of.
She wanted the truth? No. Juliet, with her kind heart, could never take the truth. She could never know it, accept it, and move on from it. I supposed, in that way, I was her savior as well. The man who’d delivered her from evil, only to welcome her in hell.
“The truth,” I repeated, my hand falling to her collarbone, fingers splaying on her shirt as I wished she wasn’t wearing one. I wanted to tear the fabric open, much as I’d done while taping that video for her father—only this time, I wouldn’t be doing it for the benefit of someone else. I’d be doing it for me, so I could look at her, touch her, have her.
Juliet Osborne was mine, and the confusion inside me was simply because I did not know what to do with her. How long did the light last before darkness snuffed it out? How long could an angel keep her white wings in hell, when she was surrounded by nothing but demons and the devil himself?
Oh, Juliet. What was I going to do with you?
“Maybe,” I told her, “if you prove to me you can be good, I’ll let you have everything you’ve ever wanted. But the truth? Trust me when I say the truth is not something you want.” My hand on her dipped a bit lower, dangerously close to her chest, which rose and fell with steady, even breaths. What I wouldn’t give to make that chest rise and fall with heavy, erratic breaths instead.
“Don’t lie to me.” As if she could make demands of me—although, I supposed, if anyone in this house could make demands, it would be her.
Not that I’d give in to them, of course, but it was almost adorable to see her try.
“I am many things,” I spoke slowly, pulling myself away from her even though it was the last thing I wanted to do, “but I am no liar. Be good to me, and I can be good to you.” I turned away from her, resisting the invisible pull I felt. I wanted to rush right back to her, pin her against the door again, and let instincts take over. Dark, carnal instincts which flared up any time I thought of her, any time she was near.
Juliet drove me mad, bit by bit. Until she stepped foot in this house, I never knew how weak I truly was. Weak for her. Weak for the one thing I could never truly have. Weak for a girl who could never love a man like me.
