The Dancer and the Masks by Bea Paige
Chapter 19
JAKUB
Words fail me. I can’t even fucking breathe. Who is this creature standing before me? What the fuck am I looking at?
Nothing’s eyes glower with fury. The intensity of her hate is powerful enough to make me pause. But nothing prepares me for the sheer fucking beauty of her birthmark. One she’s been hiding from us. I swallow hard, time standing still as I drink in the deformity. I’m greedy, feasting on her appearance, seeing her in a new light. I have to blink several times to make sure I’m not imagining it, but every time I open my eyes she’s still marked, still flawed, still my kind of beautiful. The redness of her birthmark is almost purple in places. I’m sure many people would find her uncomfortable to look at.
I don’t. I don’t.
I want to touch it. I want to touch her. This is nature messing with genetics, meddling with society’s ideal of perfection, and fuck if it doesn’t turn me on. My father spent years searching for the most beautiful men and women. He brought them back to the castle, used and abused them. Then, when he’d finally beat the beauty from their skin and discarded them—because in the end their beauty wasn’t enough—he took his wrath out on me. His obsession with perfection was a disease, one he fed regularly. I grew up hating beauty because all it brought me was pain.
“Jakub, what is it?” Leon asks, approaching us, drawing me away from my thoughts momentarily. I hear the caution in his voice, the concern. I’ve no idea what he’ll think, whether he’ll be disgusted or intrigued, either way I’m not ready to share her with them just yet. I force her backwards into the shadows of the hall, until she’s seeped in darkness just like me.
“What are you doing?” she asks, trembling under my touch. I hadn’t even noticed I’d put my hands on her. My fingertips tingle. My cock fills with blood, punching against my trousers in an effort to get to her.
I want her.
Earlier I’d fucked her cunt with my tongue. I’d wanted to take her first orgasm as my own. It’d pissed me off that Leon had touched her before me and I wanted to take something for myself, but now? Now this new yearning to claim her as mine overwhelms me.
“What the fuck, Jakub?” Konrad says, his footsteps coming closer too.
“Czekać! Wait!” I say, needing a moment.
I need to fucking think. I need to decide how to play this. I may be the youngest, but I’m the true heir and as such I have to maintain what we’ve built here. We stole this woman with nothing more than the need to exact revenge and yet, she’s only been here a matter of days and she’s already fucking with our heads.
Konrad has fallen for her beauty, or at least the accepted side of her. He gets his kicks out of uglying up beauty temporarily with bruises and slashes from his whips and his paddles. It’s why my father loved him so much. Konrad will use pain to punish, just as Leon does. Their only difference is where they draw the line.
Konrad might be obsessed with marking something pretty, but he’s also turned on by the healing process. He thinks I don’t know about his cravings, but I’ve seen the way his gaze lingers on the Numbers after he’s made them come with both pain and pleasure down in the dungeon. I know how he loves to watch Thirteen tend to their wounds whilst pretending he’s making sure they’re still able to perform in The Menagerie, to fuck our clients. Before Thirteen arrived and became the Numbers’ unofficial healer, Konrad would insist on being in the room with the Numbers whilst a maid applied arnica to their bruises and washed their welts and cuts. He would pace up and down like a caged animal, chomping at the bit, wanting to be the one to soothe and pacify but always holding back.
Konrad is a man of two halves, but has only ever revealed the darkest side to the Numbers.
He’ll chase and capture, whip and torture, but he also wants to heal and venerate. He finds peace in the process and, I suspect, the tiniest shred of humanity. It’s why Twelve stole from me to get his attention, why she accepted the punishment because she wanted his attention specifically. She wanted to push him into revealing his other side. Of all the Numbers, she’s been the closest to seeing the gentler side of his nature, but now that his attention is fully on Nothing she’s had to take drastic action. Of course her plan backfired. Twelve’s in love with a monster who’s equally brutal as he is gentle, and who has no interest in her.
Leon, however, is just a monster. Just pain and darkness. He wants the fight. He wants the screams and the tears. He wants his victims to beg for mercy and never give it. He likes the power that he wields. Two, Six and Eight only survived him because he was more afraid of our father’s wrath than he was concerned for their lives. He never overstepped the line. Father understood that whilst Leon did not share his blood, he shared his darkest desires. So after Eight, Leon’s skills have been put to better use elsewhere. If a client disobeys our rules, he’s the one who deals with them.
Endsthem.
The Masks have become feared and respected because of his thirst for violence. Now my father’s dead, there’s no telling what he’ll do. Beautiful or ugly, deformed or perfect. Neither version of this woman that stands before me now makes a difference to him. Nothing won’t be safe with him. Not ever.
“Brother, what is it?” Konrad insists, impatient now.
I swallow hard, trying to figure out what the fuck I’m going to do. “She’s…” I can’t even bring myself to speak. Instead, I press my fingers against her birthmark, unable to control the tremor in my voice.
“I repulse you...” she murmurs.
I nod my head, even though that’s a lie. “She’s marked. Deformed.”
The words come out as a snub. They’re hurtful like I intended, because I cannot let her know that she is anything more than a toy to play with. Too much hangs in the balance. We can’t afford to be distracted past the point of exacting revenge. Besides, my brothers and I made a promise to each other a long time ago that no one would come between us and I’m going to stick to it, regardless of how my cock twitches and my fucking dead heart stutters back to life. We will stick to the plan, we will use her, then we will discard her.
That’s it.
“You’re an arsehole,” Nothing says, her jaw gritting as angry tears form in her eyes. This time she lets them fall, and I feel the jewelled drops warm my hand. I want to lick them from her skin. I want to know what sin tastes like.
Resisting the urge, I drop my hand and step back. “No, I’m your worst nightmare.”
“What do you mean, deformed?” Konrad snaps, stepping up beside me at the same time as Leon does. “Let me see!” he reaches for her, pulling her out of the shadows and back into the light.
“Get your hands off me!” she growls, her temper flaring once more, and I can’t help but notice how her birthmark darkens with the emotion. I swallow hard, and bite down on the inside of my cheek until it bleeds.
“What the fuck?” Konrad reaches for her, his hands gripping her shoulders as he turns her to face him. “Who are you?” he asks, anger rolling off him.
She laughs, more tears welling. “Yours? Or am I no longer desirable? Am I too disgusting, deformed, for men like you to fuck now that you’ve seen my true face?”
Konrad’s jaw grits, then he pinches her chin between his finger and thumb and twists her head from side to side. “You hid.”
“I’m not hiding now,” she replies, jerking her chin from his hold, but he lunges for her, his hand curling into her hair as he yanks her close.
“You shouldn’t have hid,” he grinds out, then smashes his lips against hers in a kiss that is as punishing as Leon’s was, just in a different way.
I’ve watched my brothers kiss women—fuck them—before, but I’ve never seen them act like this. Leon kissed her like he wanted to ruin her, end her life. Konrad kisses her like she’s an anchor and he’s a boat cast adrift, like she keeps him afloat, alive somehow. Two polar opposites but both of them are punishing. Nothing fists his shirt, her knuckles white, her body stiff until it isn’t, until she’s melting in his hold. Then he lets her go with a grunt and she wavers on her feet, hands still raised, eyes blinking, face flushed, nipples erect.
“Screw you,” she hisses, wiping her hand over the back of her mouth, fury painting her features—her skin—with a pink blush. She looks from Konrad to me, finally resting her gaze on Leon. “Don’t you have anything you wish to say?”
Leon’s quiet for a time, assessing her. Then he rolls his shoulders and bares his teeth in a way that is more animal than human. “Looks like we’re not the only ones wearing masks.”
She snorts, her gaze trailing up and down his body. I’ve never seen anyone as brave as her when it comes to Leon. Though I suppose there’s nothing more dangerous than someone who believes they’ve got nothing left to lose. “Fuck you.”
“No, you’re the one who’s well and truly fucked now,” he replies, a dark laugh bursting from his lips.
“Is that so? Well, Leon, this is me. Every last deformed and scarred part,” Nothing taunts, throwing her arms out to the side. She lifts up onto the ball of her left foot, and turns gracefully until she has her back to us. I watch as her long red hair sways over her arse, revealing the red stripes of Konrad’s lashes and the shapely curve of her long legs. Next to me Konrad groans, and I know he wants to run his tongue over the welts marking her skin. I’m about to ask what she’s doing when she reaches for her hair and pulls it over her shoulder revealing a back so ravaged by scars that I have to force myself to keep rigid and not fall to my knees in reverence.
“Still want to fuck me now?” she asks.
Yes, I think. Yes I want to fuck you. I want more than that. But I’m stunned into silence.
We all are.
I take a step forward, but Leon’s hand flies to my shoulder, squeezing tightly. He holds me firm, understanding me at this moment, understanding the danger this woman brings to our status quo, to our life we’ve made here. She’s suddenly turned from a plaything to tease, torment and cast aside, to something infinitely more dangerous.
We stare at her, unable or perhaps unwilling to break the spell she’s put us under. I don’t know for certain how my brothers feel, but I can guess their thoughts are as tumultuous as my own.
This woman. She’s not what any of us expected.
Beside me Leon twitches, the muscles in his body taut with tension. He’s barely holding on and I know he’s close to exacting his revenge on Nothing for the death of our father in the only way he knows how. Violently. Right now he’s her biggest threat.
Konrad, however, is perfectly still. He’s assessing what he sees before him, trying to figure out how she’ll fit into the way he sees the world, and me? I both want to throttle her to death for causing this friction and fuck her until I can’t see straight. Of the three of us, it’s Konrad who eventually breaks the silence, who acts.
“I didn’t know you were burnt in the fire too,” he comments, stepping up behind her, his voice soft, sympathetic. Jesus, fuck. She’s his wet dream come true.
Nothing looks over her shoulder at him accusingly. “How did you know about the fire?”
“We do our research. How do you think we found you, Zero?” His fingertips feather over her damaged skin in a way a man might touch his lover: gently, and with affection.
“Well, your research wasn’t very extensive given you didn’t know about this. Perhaps you should’ve dug deeper,” she retorts, jerking away from him.
“Don’t,” he warns, gripping her upper arm and holding her firm with one hand as he traces over every bump and swirl of skin with the other. Her chest heaves, her breathing becomes more ragged. His touch is no longer pleasurable, that’s for sure. However she managed it, The Quickening has left her system completely. Right now she wants to fight him off, she may still do that. A large part of me wants her to because I know if she did, Leon would end this here and now and we could forget about all the ways she’s fucking with our heads.
“Grim was good at hiding your past, just not good enough at keeping you hidden,” I say, my eyes drinking in every inch of her scarred skin. I can’t seem to look away. From just beneath her shoulder blades to a few inches above her hips, her back is completely covered in scars reminding me of the whorles and grooves that form the thick bark of the trees in the forest surrounding the castle. They’re almost too painful to look at. There’s no doubt that she would’ve suffered immensely. My black soul finds a sick kind of peace in that, and my cock. Fuck, I’m harder than I’ve ever been in my life.
Konrad releases her from his hold and she turns around to face us, backing away. None of us move to go after her, stuck in place with shock, and dealing with our own perverse reactions to her disfigurement. Leon clears his throat, tension rolling off him. I glance at him, and for the first time in my life, I can’t fully read his intentions. I’m not sure if he wants to fuck her or kill her. Probably both. Either way, he’s resting on a knife’s edge. So you can imagine my surprise when Leon doesn’t lunge for her like I expected him to, and instead asks her a question.
“How old were you when it happened?”
“Aren’t you supposed to know that already?” she retorts, folding her arms across her chest in an attempt to comfort herself.
“I wasn’t interested in your history before.”
“And I’m not interested in telling you either—”
“But I am now,” he says, cutting her off. “Tell. Me!”
She flinches at his anger. “I was eight. The fire took my mother’s life and gave me third degree burns, some sections of my back were classified as fourth degree.”
“Where did it happen?”
“What difference does that make?” she counters.
“Answer the damn question!”
“My childhood home in Ilfracombe, Devon.”
Leon’s fingers momentarily grip me tighter. I glance at him. “Brother?”
Ignoring me, he keeps his gaze fixed on Nothing. “How come you didn’t die?”
“What kind of question is that?” she asks.
“Your mother died. Why didn’t you?”
She swallows hard, her eyes filling with tears. “I don’t know. I don’t remember getting out of the house. When the fire brigade found me I was passed out, lying on the wet grass at the bottom of my garden by our pond. They thought I’d run there to soothe my burns. My nightie had melted into the skin of my back from the heat of the fire.”
Leon’s jaw grits so hard I can hear his teeth grinding.
“Your scars are some of the worst I’ve seen,” I say, drawing Nothing’s attention away from Leon. She may not know it, but he’s acting stranger than usual. I don’t understand why he’s so interested in her story. He couldn’t give a fuck before.
“Over the years I’ve had extensive skin grafts from donors to aid healing. But this is as good as it gets.”
“Is that why your pain tolerance is so high?” Leon cuts in, “Because of what you’ve endured?” He keeps his fingers wrapped firmly around my shoulders, holding on tight, but this time I’m not sure if it’s for my benefit or his.
“I don’t know.”
“But you can tolerate high levels of pain, yes?”
She swallows hard, taking another step back, sensing that the monster prowling beneath his skin is close to revealing itself. Now I understand his sudden interest. Earlier, Nothing hadn’t reacted to the lashes Konrad gave her. She somehow managed to detach herself from the pain. That intrigues him.
“Why do you want to know?” she asks.
He smirks, letting go of my shoulder and stepping towards her. “Because, Nought, you haven’t deterred me or my brothers. If anything, revealing your true self makes us want you more, not less.”
“No,” she shakes her head, tears cascading down her cheeks as she stumbles backwards, her knees giving way. “All the Numbers are beautiful…”
“I don’t give a fuck about the Numbers. You, Nought, have suddenly become a very, very fucking interesting toy indeed.”