Bile rose in my throat. “Your sister? As a child…?” I trailed off, not wishing to hear the answer to my question.

Valentin shook his head. “Not as a four-year-old. As a four-year-old she began to be raised to clean and to cook under a different type of obedience drug. It took away her personality, anything about who she was. Mistress would show me Inessa on a screen every night, 152 as the tattoo on her back said—they didn’t tattoo females’ chests because it would spoil their looks. Mistress knew that I would never leave the Blood Pit without her. She also knew that I’d do anything to get my sister back, so she personally trained me to be an Ubiytsa.”

“An assassin,” I countered.

Valentin nodded his head. “For years Mistress held me in her personal chamber.” He pointed around the room, “This is a replica of her chamber. She keeps it the same wherever we go to find and make the hit, so I know where everything is, to make the torture more painful.” Valentin’s face, which was pale from his injury, began to redden with the anger thoughts of his “Mistress” were stimulating. “I was twelve when they took me and Inessa from our orphanage. Mistress immediately saw the bond we had. She’s a sick twisted whore who knew she could control me using Inessa’s safety—and she has; she still does.”

Valentin’s hands were shaking. I knew it was in fury, not fear. Shuffling closer, I ran the pad of my thumb over the racing pulse in his wrist and said, “Shh, calm. Take your time.”

Valentin, to my surprise, leaned forward and pressed a kiss on my cheek. Heat ghosted over my skin at the gesture. I saw his top lip curl, which melted my heart.

“She’d torture me. She separated me from the other boys from age twelve. She had a male there for a time, a male she was screwing. I hated him about as much as I hated her. He had a couple of boys caged in the room too, his own personal playthings, whom he would torture and exploit. But Mistress still took me in her chamber every day, and ‘demonstrated’ how to torture a captive. The first year was pain.” Valentin ducked his head and said, “What I did to you.” He swallowed and said, “Fuck, Zoya, how can you forgive me for that?”

I shivered, remembering the prod and the pain that spouted from its tip. But I kept my composure. “Perspective,” I replied. “My life has been one of hardship. When you too have walked through a thunderstorm you understand, through perspective, how another soaked by familiar gray skies can feel desperate, too. Desperate people do desperate things.”

I drank in her soft skin and beautiful face. I asked, “Are you real?”

Zoya dipped her eyes in embarrassment, then huffed a laugh. “That depends on who you ask. Zoya Kostava is a myth, the famed daughter of the Kostava Clan whose body was never found. It seems I am more of a ghost than flesh and blood, if you are minded to ask the people of Georgia about my name.”

Valentin dragged the hand that was on my face down over my neck to skirt over my waist and said, “You’re real to me.”

I sobered. I felt static energy crackle between us. The tension was high, but both of us were sore and fragile. This was close enough.

For now.

“Tell me more,” I said, to continue the conversation.

“She hurt me. She taught me pain. Then she turned the training on its head and I became the one to administer pain. I was happy at first. I got to torture the Georgian bitch who had ruined my life. But as I administered the torture the bitch loved it, stealing any pleasure I could take from those messed-up days.”

Valentin reached up and pushed his hand through his hair. “Then, when I was fourteen, I began a new form of torture training. Sexual torture.” Valentin’s face paled. “I won’t go into it, but that fucking bitch raped me. She took everything from my body. She must be at least twenty years older than me; she just lapped it up.” His skin turned a sickly shade of green when he explained, “Then, just like with the pain, she flipped the lesson. She made me touch her. Made me make her come, over and over. Made me stick my dick in her dirty fucking mouth. Then she made me fuck her. Fuck her until I couldn’t stand.”

“Shh. Calm down,” I soothed. Valentin’s body tensed so much on replaying these memories that the holes in his neck began to erupt. But he gripped on to my wrists. “She still makes me take her like that. She triggers the serum in the collar until I’m not myself, then orders me to fuck her. But when the serum fades, I still remember everything she forces me to do.” Valentin’s eyes squeezed shut. “And I hate it. She tears off another piece of my soul every time she makes me fuck her.”

I could see that Valentin was about to lose it, so I pushed him onto his back and straddled his waist. His hands instinctively landed on the backs of my thighs, and drifted upward until they stopped on my behind. Valentin gasped as I shifted to lie over his chest, my flesh to his flesh.

I felt him harden underneath me, and heat pooled between my thighs. Valentin sucked in a sharp breath. “Zoya,” he moaned as I laid my cheek on his chest.

My arms wrapped around his thick and toned waist, and I listened for minutes as his heartbeat decelerated from fast to slow. When he had calmed, his hand ran through my hair and he said quietly, “I never knew touching a female could be enjoyed, until I touched you. I never knew if I could ever block out that bitch’s schoolings, until I touched you.”

Lifting my head, I traced my finger over my lips and said, “I never knew a kiss could be stolen, until you.”

Valentin’s eyes flared, and stroking my cheek with his finger he said, “I never thought I could be a thief of the first kiss, until you.”

I stilled. Among all the heavy and sad talk, a laugh burst from my lips. Valentin watched me; then, unable to resist, a gruff rumble came from his chest.

“Come here!” he ordered. Doing as he bid, I climbed up his body. He cupped my cheeks and said, “Soon, I will steal another kiss.”

Dropping my smile, I tipped my head to the side and said, “I think I would be happy if you stole all of my kisses.”

“You don’t mean that,” Valentin said sharply, his humor evaporating and a darkness taking hold.

“I do mean that,” I argued. “I mean it with everything I am.”

“I am your torturer. I have brought you pain.”

“Yet here I am, revealing exactly who I am. And you are still here, too.”

Valentin studied my face, then threatened, “I could still use the knowledge I have gained to complete my hit.” His hands ran down to my neck and held it in his hands. “I could still kill you. My orders are to kill you before I leave this chamber. Did you guess that, little Georgian?”

A moment of fear held me in its grip. But confident in my instincts, I said, “But you will not.” I left Valentin’s hands wrapped around my neck. With a pained sigh, he released his hands and looked away. I could sense the war he was fighting deep inside. “Talk to me. What is it?” I pushed.

Without looking my way, he said, “I have to complete the hit, I have to return, or Mistress will harm Inessa. Master, Mistress’s brother and the man that runs the Blood Pit—controls all of us. He wants my sister for himself.”

Ice coated my heart. “Wants her for what?”

Defeat leaked from Valentin’s rigid posture, and he said, “When Inessa reached the age of fourteen, things changed too for her. At fourteen her lessons changed from domestic to something much worse. They began giving her different drugs, the drugs that made her sexually dependent. Mistress made me watch her being trained by older women in ways to pleasure men. Then she made me sit and watch my sister’s innocence being taken by that male who had given me the drugs. After that, it became my sister’s life—a sexual slave to anyone Mistress wanted to grant favors to, or who paid her for my sister’s time. At times, even Mistress would take her, to ensure I remained obedient.”

“Valentin,” I whispered, and hugged him tightly.

“I am to bring your brother back after torturing him, so Mistress can claim the kill. If I don’t, Mistress will send Inessa back to Georgia, back to the Blood Pit, straight into Master’s arms.”