The needle hovers for long seconds that turn into a full minute. I'm breathing hard. Trying to force my hand to cooperate. This needs to happen. There can be no alternative. She will be the other half of my dead soul, chained to me for eternity. My skeletal queen.

But when I lower the needle into her flesh, piercing her with the first dot of ink, I make the mistake of glancing at her eyes and am rattled by the emotion I see there. I flinch back without thinking, grunting out a frustrated curse as I power off the gun and toss it aside.

"Fuck!" I yank the candelabra from my nightstand and throw it against the wall. The crash does nothing to satisfy my rage. This frustration has no cure.

I can't deny she's made me weak. She's seen it for herself now. She's seen what her fucking tears do to me.

I turn back to face her and crawl onto her body, mounting her with mine as I wrap my hand around her throat and begin to squeeze. She tries to shake her head, and I tighten my grasp.

I'm choking the air from her lungs as I lower my bloody lips to hers, smearing the evidence of her hatred across her mouth. My tongue breaches her lips, and she cries out when I relax my grip on her throat. I swallow that sound, and she drags the breath from my lungs into hers. Greedy. Desperate. Poisonous.

"Santiago," she sputters against me.

She's yanking against the restraints, and I want to see what she will do, so I release one of her wrists before I focus my attention on her throat, biting and sucking my way down the flesh. Her free hand comes to my hair, yanking and gripping and pulling me closer as she continues to repeat my name like a prayer.

"Thank you," she pants. "Thank you."

I close my eyes and shudder when her fingers caress the back of my neck, feeling the scars there. She doesn't flinch away. She's stroking them like she wants to heal them somehow.

"Tell me how much they disgust you," I whisper in her ear.

"No." Her voice trembles.

"You can't pretend otherwise." I pull back to stare down at her, and she uses her free hand to drag me back, forcing my lips against hers.

I don't know how it happens. One moment, she is bound beneath me. And the next, I have her untied, naked in my lap as I piston her body up and down the length of my cock. We're facing each other, eyes locked, breath against breath. I reach up to choke her again because it's too much, but instead, I find myself touching her softly. Reverently.

"Goddamn you," I growl. "You fucking liar."

I roll my hips up into her at the same time I slam hers down onto me, fucking her hard and rough.

"Traitor."

Thrust.

"Poisonous fucking—"