Serpentine Desires

The prey

The rough concrete under my knees bit into my skin, and the pungent, metallic smell of gasoline and something strange hung in the stale warehouse air. My pulse hammered as Lucius's hand closed around my arm and his grip was tight as he pulled me down the hallway.

My body shook with the cold, and my cardigan hung open revealing my bare chest with only bra. The thought of Judas seeing me like this—the dread clawed through me, slicing through every last inch of courage I had.

Anya's voice was fierce and biting as she cursed more viciously than the last as the guards dragged her along. My fight was swept with thin air. Lucius didn't bother to look back and I didn't what scared me the most, his smile or my own vulnerability. He was relishing this, dragging me toward whatever twisted display he had planned.

He was so wrong if he thought Judas cared about me. He was here for his sister, and definitely not me.

I was just his whore... slut as he called me several times.

No more than a body to warm his bed.

A part of me that felt the smallest spark of relief was gone—Judas was here. But relief was tangled with terror, tainted by the reality of where we were and what this could mean. This wasn't a rescue; it was a reckoning, and Judas was the storm that would fall upon us all.

Me included.

As we neared the large, open space of the warehouse, my eyes instantly fell upon him.

Pale blue eyes were sharper than the edge of any blade, burned from the depths of his face, taking in the surroundings. He was still in the same clothes he left in. Dark suit, light grey collared shirt and that gold watch.

Kyle stood just behind him and no one.

Judas looked like a devil reincarnated. A god of wrath and ruin, and the closer we got, the scarier he became.

I could feel the guards closing in behind me, but they were nothing compared to the dread building inside me as I was shoved onto my knees. A rough hand dug into my hair, yanking my head back, and pain flared through my scalp as I met his gaze.

My doom.

My ruin.

My destruction.

My nightmare.

His pale blue eyes instantly found me freezing me to the spot. My breath caught, and the world stopped as his stare moved over my face, falling to my exposed chest and then back up again. Shock flickered in his gaze, something he never showed, something I'd never seen before. I knew he wasn't expecting to see me here.

'Be a good girl for me.'

I bit back a sob.

His eyes widened for a fraction of a second and the faintest glint of horror rippled beneath the surface, before they darkened, turning glacial and deadly in an instant.

Everything around us fell silent.

And then a collective unloading of guns as they all were pointed towards him. My eyes widened and my body immediately tried to struggle. Thirty men. There were thirty of me against him and Kyle.

But he barely flinched. Instead, a cold pair of eyes moved from me to the man holding my hair.

All eyes were on Judas and I could feel the weight of his fury crash over us. I had no words to describe how thick and suffocating it was. His gaze was a silent promise of destruction. I had never seen him this calm and this mad at the same time. I couldn't look away. His stare held me captive, and in it, I saw the storm raging within him, a tempest ready to be unleashed.