Chapter 18 Abi
ABI
The question throbs on the thick, sultry air. The last time he asked it, in my office, I shoved him away.
I don’t shove him away tonight.
“You’re already touching me,” I finally say.
“You know what I mean.” My killer presses himself up to me, his other hand coming to rest on my hip. “I want to make you feel good, so you’ll forget about all this, just for a little bit.”
Why? I scream internally. It makes no sense. I know what he’s capable of. I’ve seen it firsthand. And yet—
And yet his hand on my hip is impossibly warm. Impossibly heavy.
“Out here?” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer right away. Then he pulls his hand away from my hip and slides up his mask. Not enough for me to see his face, but enough that I can see his full, sensual lips.
“May I?” he asks, tilting in toward me.
A too-small part of me is screaming to stop, to run, to call the police. Too small, and it’s getting smaller by the second.
I nod, my throat too dry to speak.
He gives me another one of those soft, chaste kisses. Electricity ripples through my body, and I tilt my head and return it with the barest hint of pressure.
My killer deepens the kiss, parting my lips with his tongue. I let him. Not only that, but I open up to him. His tongue slips over mine, and he presses closer against me, his hand tangling up in my hair.
For a long time, that’s all we do. This slow, meditative kiss. It’s not a lot, but the tenderness of it sends heat pooling between my legs.
My killer’s the first to break it. He pulls away, his gloved fingers still twining around my hair, and I stare at his mouth, at the scatter of five o’clock shadow across his chin. The same dark brown with red highlights that I noticed earlier.
And then he jerks his mask down, recovering his mouth.
“Inside,” he says, the voice coming from the mask’s twisted, leering lips.
“W-why?” I stammer out, bracing against the banister.
“I want to touch you properly,” he says. “And I can’t do it out here.”
My heart thunders. I can’t possibly be considering this.
But that kiss—no one’s ever kissed me like that. Slow and sweet. Almost worshipful. I press my thighs together, trying to relieve the pressure there. Or hide it.
“Why me?” I ask.
My killer stares at me, his eyes dark behind his mask.
“Because you’re perfect,” he answers.
I’m too stunned to say anything to that. Even when he takes my hand in his, braiding our fingers together. Even when he tugs me gently toward the door. My feet slip over each other to follow him.
“That’s it,” he says softly. “I told you. I’m not going to hurt you.”
He eases the door open, and I blink at the rush of AC spilling out into the hot, humid night. Then we’re standing together in the foyer, only this time there’s no dead body lying on the floor. There’s only us.
My killer pushes the door closed and turns to me. I suck down a deep breath, my hands trembling. That tension pulls taut inside me: the knowledge that I should tell him no. The fact that I don’t want to do.
He moves up to me and spreads his hands over my hips and looks me straight in the eye. I catch just enough of them to see that they’re brown.
“May I?” he murmurs.
I can’t speak. My tongue is a weight in my mouth.
But I’m still able to nod.
His eyes change when I do. Lighten, somehow, like he’s smiling.
Then he slides his hand down, easing it between my legs. I suck in my breath as he finds the heat there and makes a small, surprised noise in the back of his throat.
I widen my stance, giving him access. His eyes never leave mine, but his gloved hand slips up beneath my loose, flimsy shorts, shoving them aside. Then he’s stroking me over my underwear, his breath soft and ragged.
Heat surges through me, and I fall into him, winding my arms around his big shoulder. He’s solid and tall and reassuring, something I can cling to as he hikes my thigh up around his hip.
“Stay,” he murmurs. “Just like that.”
Then his fingers are on me again, only this time he’s slipping them inside my underwear so the leather of his gloves slides along my damp, aching pussy.
I gasp, digging my fingers into his shoulder blades. I’m afraid that if I don’t, I’ll fall.
Fall more than I already have. This is a killer, and I’m letting him touch me.
“You’re so warm,” he breathes as he slides his gloves up between my folds. “And you open up to me so easily.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to pretend someone else is touching me. Someone who isn’t a murderer.
It doesn’t work. Because I can smell him, my killer, the dark, sweet earthiness of his scent, and I bury my head into the crook of his neck.
One of his fingers slides into me. This time, I can’t bite back my moan. Nor can I ignore the way his body shudders as he pushes his finger into the wetness there.
I should not be wet for him. But I am. Wet enough that his thick leather-covered finger goes in easily. He pushes it back and forth, making me keen softly and twine my arms tighter around his shoulders.
“Do you like this?” he says roughly.
I don’t answer except to roll my hips against his hand. More. I want more of him. Pressure’s already building in my core, hot and traitorous.
My killer slides a second finger inside me, pressing up against my walls. I cry out sharply, the intensity of it thick and unexpected. Then he presses the pad of his thumb against my clit, and my legs shake with need.
He knows what he’s doing. He knows exactly how to touch me.
“That feels good for you,” he says. It’s not a question, and he moves his hand faster, fingers and thumb working in tandem. My whole body shudders, and the only reason I’m still standing is because I’m clinging to him in desperation.
“You’re going to come soon,” he adds, tilting his head toward me, pressing the mask’s mouth against the top of my forehead.
“H-how can you tel-tell?” I choke out. He’s right, of course. Pleasure swirls around in my belly.
“I can hear it.” He shifts something in the way he touches me, pressing his fingers in even deeper. I gasp and dig my nails into the fabric of his shirt, feeling his skin relent beneath them. “The way your blood beats faster.”
I keen softly. His words introduce a new vein of fear into my pleasure, but that fear just makes everything better.
“How can you—” My words catch as his fingers fall into an exquisite, perfect rhythm against my G-spot. And then I can’t get anything out at all beyond a low, panty keening.
My killer laughs softly.
“I told you.” His mask presses against my hair. “I can smell it. Sense it.”
My pleasure builds until it’s almost unbearable. All I can do is roll my hips against his hand, too caught up in my ecstasy to care that this is wrong. But I don’t want to be moral. All I want is to come all over his fingers.
And then he jerks his hand away.
I shriek in protest, the sudden lack of his touch devastating. “What are you—”
He sweeps me up and over his shoulder.
“Put me down!” I shout on instinct. My fear spikes, a cold vein of ice against the pulsing heat of my aborted orgasm. I was so fucking stupid, letting him touch me like that. Now I’m going to die.
“I will,” my killer says, carting me unceremoniously down the hall. I struggle against him, still distracted and shuddery and impossibly turned on. “I’m just looking for a good—”
He steps into the viewing room and switches on the light, revealing the rows of neatly-placed chairs and the soft drapes falling around the big picture window that looks out at the flower garden.
Uncle Vic would always set the deceased in front of the window so they could have a view of the flowers.
There hasn’t been a deceased person in here since Uncle Vic’s funeral, although the dais is still in place, draped in black. I could never bear to touch this room, which is why I left everything the way Uncle Vic always kept it.
But now, my killer flips me over and lays me out on the dais, like I’m a dead body waiting for her funeral.
I blink up at him, fear making my breath tight and lust making my legs spread. He pushes his mask up again, giving me another tantalizing view of his lips.
“This is the first place I ever saw you,” he rasps. “In this room. In front of this window.”
A million thoughts surge through me: every funeral I ever worked, every body I ever watched over. Thousands of faces. Hundreds of tall, dark-haired men.
And then I’m not thinking of any of them, because my killer is yanking my shorts and panties down over my legs.
“I want to taste your orgasm,” he says, throwing them aside and then crawling up on the dais with me. “I bet your pleasure’s as sweet as ice cream.”
For a moment, I’m too stunned to respond.
Then he hooks his arms around my knees and hoists me up, practically bending me in half, and latches his mouth to my cunt.
I moan in pleasure, dropping my head back against the dais and relenting to him completely. He slides his tongue along my slit and then presses it inside me to lap at my inner wall. He kisses me as deeply and slowly as he did earlier. Deeper, even.
“Fuck,” I whisper, my thighs trembling wildly on either side of his head. I drop my gaze over to the window. Unlike the dead, I can’t see the flower garden because the night has turned the window into a mirror. Instead, I see my legs wrapped around a masked killer’s head as he feasts on my cunt.
Lust surges up through my core. I stare at the reflection, panting and hungry, watching as I roll my hips up against him, thrusting and jerking.
He never stops licking me. His tongue probes through my folds and over my clit, and I give a desperate, shuddering moan.
It occurs to me, distantly, that if someone were to drive by on Hatch Street, they would see everything.
And that thought sends even more lust surging toward my core.
“Don’t stop,” I pant. “Please. For the love of god. Don’t stop this time.”