BEAUTIFUL MONSTERS BOOK #1
RATED M 18+
{completed}
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You don't become the fiancé of one of the most powerful crime lords in the city without understanding exactly how gritty and depraved the world truly is... and how to thrive in the inferno...
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E X CE R P T:
Daniela
I wake up in the lair of a beast. His scent irritates my nostrils, though for some reason my lungs heave to breathe him in. I'm nauseated by his flavor, but my belly is a shriveled ball, devoid of anything left to force out through my mouth in protest.
I don't know how long I lie there. How long before my eyes manage to peel open one by one and light stabs at them like jagged pieces of glass. I'm naked. Damp sheets create a shocking sensation that I can feel against nearly every part of my body. My head throbs, and it's almost ironic—my fingers prefer the strings, but my brain apparently has taken up percussion. It hammers out an unsteady rhythm against the inside of my skull.
I can't decide if I'm alive or if this is that eternal torment in hell that Bibles warn about. An agonizing few seconds pass, but I still don't know which destination seems more appealing, Hell or Vinny? Then I see him. My vision is a colorless blur, reducing him to nothing more than a splash of shadow against an otherwise gray surface—but those eyes shine through, unsettlingly clear. Through the chaos of my thoughts, a single name comes tumbling out. Dante. A part of me scuttles away from it the way a roach escapes the light. It's a terrible thing to learn the name of a monster. I'll settle for choosing a made-up one to call him instead.
I blink until his dark features form into more solid lines. In the pale light that comes in through the window, he almost seems harmless. Lucifer. He used to be an angel, I remember. God's favorite before he fell. I'll call him that.
Lucifer doesn't react when he sees that I'm awake. He eyes me coldly, and then he turns his gaze to the empty wall behind me instead. Broken women are such a poor way to start the morning off, who could blame him?
He sits a few feet away with his back braced against the wall. There's something on the floor beside him. Two almost invisible cylinders...white caps...light blue labels. Before my mind can settle on an identity for them, he bats at one with the flat of his hand, and it rolls toward me.
