The Art of Obsession (Savage Stalkers #1)

23. She’s perfect like this—helpless, terrified, and utterly mine

23

She’s perfect like this—helpless, terrified, and utterly mine

Chapter Playlist:

“Animals” – Maroon 5,

“Closer” – Nine Inch Nails

“Blood Sport” – Sleep Token

“Better Than Drugs” – Skillet

ACHERON

She gave them a good show.

And me, a worthy challenge.

Her struggles, her screams, the snapping of her teeth only intensified my dark cravings. A brutal hunger only pain can appease. A practice that dates back to my childhood.

Her fear surrounds me. It fills my senses like a drug, surging heat to my cock and swelling the organ.

Now, she lies before me, bound and trembling, her wrists and ankles secured with silken restraints. The fairy lights bathe her nude form in a soft, golden glow, turning her skin luminous. She’s perfect like this—helpless, terrified, and utterly mine.

I trace my gloved fingers over her chest, feeling the rapid rise and fall of her breaths. Her wide eyes, shimmering with tears, flicker between me and the shadowy figures behind the glass.

“You’ll see it soon,” I murmur, leaning close enough for my breath to graze her ear. “The beauty in this. The strength it will give you. And the eternal gift it will give me.”

She jerks against the restraints, her voice trembling with defiance. “You’re sick. And twisted. You’re fucking crazy!”

Smirking, I stretch my arms out and proclaim, “The greatest artists always are.”

Reaching into my pocket, I retrieve the scalpel, its blade catching the light in a glint of silver. Terror rips through her expressions, but beneath the eyes of prey, I find a morbid curiosity. My fingers twitch with anticipation as I press the edge gently to her chest, just above her heart. Her gasp is sharp, her body recoiling, but there’s nowhere for her to go.

The first cut is deliberate, shallow, a clean line that draws a bead of crimson. Her cry pierces the silence, raw and visceral, as her back arches off the bed. I place my free hand firmly on her shoulder, anchoring her to the mattress.

“Breathe,” I say, my voice low, steady.

She is the only one who can rouse and appease the demons in me.

Tilting my head, I smirk at what I find between her legs. When I flick my eyes back to hers, her cheeks are burning with the gravity of how I caught her.

“Look at you, Little Quill. Nearly dripping,” I say, trailing my gloves through her glistening folds.

“You’ll rot in hell for this,” she spits.

Removing my gloves, I snicker darkly and twirl my blade with my other hand while sliding one finger inside her slick opening. “I came from hell, sweet girl. I crawled out of its pits and earned my scars as the art I created through pain and survival. Tonight, you will get a taste…and show me heaven.”

I fit a leather strap between her teeth, remind her to breathe, then lower the blade to her flesh. She tries, but all she can manage are short, ragged gasps. Tears spill from the corners of her eyes, trailing down her temples and pooling in her hair.

Fuck, she bleeds so beautifully, so exquisitely. Cutting a woman, cutting this woman is an indescribable high. With every cut of the blade, every drop of blood spilled, I lose myself and find myself. Nothing exists but the art I write on her skin and the emotions she gives me. I feel every ragged breath she sheds. I feel her very essence dripping onto my hands.

One glimpse at the clients witnessing my art shows hands gripping the edges of chairs or curling into fists. Their restraint is a fragile thread. They lick their dry lips, betraying the craving they can’t voice.

Exhibitionism gives me an underlying thrill. A craving to be seen, to show who I am and the masterworks I create—regardless of how none could ever understand what it feels like.

Until her.

When I pause to dab at the blood and look at her, I half-expect to find her avoiding the sight of me with disgust and rebellion. But it’s the opposite. She carves a new scar inside me, bleeding me internally with the eyes of a tortured historian. Because no one in existence is better at gazing in awe at the broken pieces of the past and finding their beauty as Everleigh Lennox.

I watch her closely. Her eyes flicker with something I recognize. It’s the same look when she has found something wondrous and dark, but something she doesn’t understand. Through this pain, she is seeking me…and rebirthing herself in true transformation.

Seconds bleed into minutes. Haunting music plays in the background, helping me to fade into the art. With each stroke of the blade, the outline of an anatomical heart takes shape. Blood wells along the lines, vivid against her pale skin. I carve slowly, savoring how her body shudders in resistance.

“You’re doing beautifully,” I tell her, my voice primal and possessive.

She turns away, her face flushed with a mix of fury and humiliation. So fragile…yet unbreakable.

More blood trails, painting her in streaks of crimson. I step back, admiring the symmetry, the rawness, the sheer artistry.

And then, it hits me with the force of an icy tidal wave?—

—dragging me under until there is nothing but blood. Blood letting, blood pooling. A small, sickly hand clutching mine for dear life. The childlike veins opened. Essence and matter trickling out.

Purification. Cleansing. Healing.

But she’s fading. I cut a line down my arm, shedding a ruby rivulet and praying to whatever spirits and forces and gods to spare her and take me.

The masculine hand next to me lowers the blade again. But rage and fury ignite a vengeful god of hell in me. I seize the knife, unhindered when the blade cuts my palm. I turn it around. Grip the handle. And thrust deepdeepdeep to the chest.

A dark and sick satisfaction washes over me as the blood bathes my fist. I’m twisting the blade and carving out the still-beating organ.

But then, one last desperate gasp of air echoes in the room like a strike of thunder. I turn to find the little body pale, drained of life as the bed soaks up her blood.

The torture sucks me into a neverending storm, an ocean of blood waiting to drown me. Wave after wave of bone-deep horror. I drop the blade. The organ falls with a fleshy tumble onto the wood floor. I scoop up the little corpse. More viscous fluid gushes, soaking my clothes, my skin until I become nothing but blood and scars.

“Acheron!”

The melodic voice jerks me out of the waking nightmare of my past. And I turn to the silver eyes in the middle of a bloodstorm. The colorless corpse does not exist. It’s only this vision of a woman, the torment in her eyes from the design I’ve scrawled on her skin, the lines like

flush, thin ribbons.

“Where did you go?” she whispers, her fingers twitching, their tips curling toward me, longing, needing.

I don’t respond. I’ve never shared it with anyone. Tonight, she will be the first.

But I can’t get a fucking handle on it. I poise my blade upon her chest, but I need to grip something or risk the undertow again.

I lock eyes with hers. I need her grip. Need her to surround me as I surround her and finish the design.

“What are you doing?” she asks, shuddering beneath me as I tilt my head, then slowly loosen my belt. Her eyes go wide as cathedral doors, ready to welcome me into her sacred place.

“It’s time,” I say, low and deep.

She tenses, but I take her mouth, eating her lips, tasting her with a force of hunger I’ve never felt. Devouring her, I grind against her, unable to wait any longer.

I lower my throbbing dick to her pussy, part the wet folds, and drive forward, burying myself inside her. Her scream pierces my throat, vibrating into my lungs, into my chest, and spearing deep into my heart.

“Fuckfuckfuck!” I snarl against her lips, stabbing the bloody blade into the duvet again and again. “Fucking owned!” Wrecked. For all others but her. Blind, deaf, dumb—mindless, heartless, soulless to anything but the heaven wrapping around my cock.

She’s gushing all over me. Her breaths a symphonic storm. But her eyes…fuck, those eyes. The flames have melted like silver blood.

I drop the knife. Because I’ve found it. The deepest gravity of pain, of suffering unlike anything I’ve ever seen or felt—excruciating and violating. I know what it is. Because I’ve felt it. It rushes back to me, but I take my power back, purging myself as I channel my sin into her. My greatest art. And purest vessel.

I pull my cock out. Bloody. My length hardens and swells all the more. Confession in those two silver moons shining, unbroken in the darkest, starless sky. My undying light.

I’ve never fucked a virgin…until now.

A dark and twisted hunger crosses the faces of the men—an acknowledgment that they will never hold, feel, or understand what I have done in this moment. They’re fucking starving for her.

Gripping her hair, grinding my bloody dick against her folds, I lean in to growl above her lips, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She meets me head-on. Those eyes like gleaming blades. “Because…” she whispers, lifts her chin, and sweeps her nose along my cheek until she presses her lips to my ear and reveals, “I want you to feel like an asshole.”

Everleigh nips my ear, then fucking bites the side of my neck. Like a punishing goddess, feminine and feral but too soft, too sweet, too pure. Like she’s marking me, staking a claim.

Christ, my heart clenches, but my cock is damn near ready to explode. Need back inside her, fucking her as deep as I can go, consuming her.

Chuckling darkly, I bite her bottom lip and purr, “That backfired, Little Quill. Greatly.”

I push back inside her, take her savage moan into my throat, and start thrusting, fucking the best and most fulfilling vessel of my damned soul. Her cunt sucks my cock with the heat and force like a golden sun.

I go balls deep, driving inside her harder, memorizing the kaleidoscope of emotions on her face. I feed on them. Hate, fury, agony, fear, yes—but also a raw pleasure, desire, and lust. Her nipples are hard, little rosebuds. She’s flushed, glowing like a star.

She doesn’t fight me. But she’s not frozen, not in shock. She’s taking. She’s clenching. And slowly, breath by breath, she’s softening into the bed and lifting her hips to receive me.

Fuck, this isn’t just cathartic. It’s nirvana. Sheer energy. Ultimate divinity.

The men’s breaths grow even more labored. I grin with cunning self-satisfaction because some have taken out their cocks, fisting them, getting off on my art brought to life. They’re entranced by my control, the raw intensity of my bond with her.

The second Everleigh flicks her eyes to the spectators, drawn by their movements, her lips part, her eyes turn gray with a deeper hurt.

I grip her jaw, shake her, and summon her. “Eyes on me, Little Quill. They do not exist. It’s just us. The historian and the artist. The muse and the master.”

She doesn’t let go. But she gives me the greatest gift of surrender. Her muscles squeeze around me, and she’s dripping all over my cock.

I’ve never seen a more beautiful creature. Never such an explosion of light and color and shadow. All the galleries in the world could not possibly hope to capture her.

She narrows her eyes. Her voice is hoarse when she speaks. “You think this makes you an artist?”

I crouch beside her, brushing a strand of damp hair from her face with my bare hand. Her eyes burn with defiance and agony.

“No,” I say softly, meeting her gaze. “It makes us immortal.”