Chapter 7
The dirt clung in wet droplets to my knuckles as I shoved another layer of leaves over their rippable pale skin, not my cleanest work.
I’d been rushed, distracted.
The girl’s hair still glinted through the brush like strands of thread, stubborn and shining because it was wet with the lake’s final goodbye.
I cursed under my breath and ground it deeper into my three-foot hole. The normal decay of a body would take care of itself.
No one would look here because all guests would be accounted for at their exits.
Snap.
The sound behind me was no surprise. But it was not an animal. The echo of the sneaking footsteps was too heavy and too careless.
I tsked, a smile spreading over my lips as I listened. It could have been one of the boys from the maze, stumbling out toward the woods with a willing dumbo to fuck. But there was something familiar about the steps, their breath carrying in the silence.
I didn’t turn, not yet.
I let them sweat.
I let them think they were safe in the dark. But I knew. My sister’s boyfriend was as persistently annoying as she was, or so it appeared, which interested me. That was more than I could ever say about anyone besides myself.
When the person spoke, their words were tight and biting. It was indeed the deep, angered tone of none other than Shiloh Anderson.
“The fuck are you doing?”
I rose to my full height, slow enough to make it deliberate. The gloves on my hands were stained, the blood sticky against my wrists, but I didn’t bother to hide them. I met his stare across the shadows, watched his eyes flicker to the ground behind me, where the earth wasn’t sitting right.
He knew.
Maybe not everything, but enough.
The flashlight in his grip wavered as he approached me.
I let the corner of my mouth twitch, only to watch him frown further. Confusion clouded his baby blue gaze.
“Hunting,” I replied, flatly and cold.
I didn’t offer an explanation or an apology.
Shiloh’s voice cracked like a whip in the dark, that bouncing light illuminating me and revealing all the remnants of my kills.
“Carrington Harding,” he said, his voice darker, the flashlight lowered to the ground, seeking the small grave behind me. “What the fuck is that?”
I didn’t turn right away. I wanted him to bask in this, take in the smell of my kills, even if it had been a few hours and their bodies were a bit bloated from the water.
The shapes of their corpses were half-buried behind me.
Thing One was deeper in the ground. Her body was sitting at the perfect decomposition height. But the other was unfinished.
I wanted to let Shiloh’s brain calculate the possibilities until it made him sick.
I wanted to see how he would react when it clicked for him.
I wanted to confirm he was just like me.
Any normal person would have run off by now.
The setting in itself was discomforting, and survival instincts flared at the worst of times.
Shiloh was making no move to leave. In fact, he was moving closer and closer to me. That fucking flashlight was getting on my nerves, and the rays made my eyes hurt. I didn’t shield them, though. I didn’t move at all.
Does your pretty mask make you feel brave enough to face me? Fucking adorable. You could try to call me out, but you know I’ll have my cock blocking your airway and tears running down your face before you can even so much as make a sound.
When I finally turned around, I didn’t hide my hands. The blood was tacky now, thick in the lines of my nylon gloves. The yellow hue of the bright light caught the flicker of crimson, and his eyes locked on it instantly, then jerked back to the ground behind me.
Now that you know, Sunshine. What will you do with the information?
“You tell me,” I said, stepping toward him. “You’re the one who wants to be a doctor, right? All that studying. All those anatomy charts. Look closely, Shiloh. What do you see?”
He didn’t answer, just stared, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
I chuckled low in my throat.
“Aw, come now. Don’t undermine your intellect just for me.
I’m sure my sister can’t handle your brilliance because it would scare her, but I’m ever so curious.
You’ve dissected frogs. Maybe a pig or two in a lab, yes?
A cat? You know their veins, their bones, and the way their heart muscles beat in your hands. It’s all just skin, muscle, and blood.”
I lifted my hand between us, letting the red catch the moonlight, and wiggled my fingers. “What’s your diagnosis, Doctor Anderson?”
His breathing hitched.
He looked at the heap under the leaves again, his bright eyes narrowing, as if, without focusing hard enough, it might turn into something harmless—but it wouldn’t.
It was still the same mess of broken bodies.
His breathing escalated the longer he stared at that wobbling light, fixated on the pile of dirt.
“That’s not…that’s not a deer, Harding,” he finally muttered.
“There you go,” I murmured with mocking approval, like I was grading him on an essay. “Such a sharp, calculated eye. What gave it away? The smell? The way the joint angles don’t quite fit a deer’s?”
His nostrils flared. Anger, disgust, and maybe even fear lingered on him like the stench of death. There was another emotion he couldn’t hide, one I personally knew very well.
Arousal.
Interesting.
What emotion do you want me to see? They all taste the same when you strip them down.
“Say it,” I pressed, stepping in until my shadow swallowed his. “A diligent student such as yourself should know this one. If it’s not a deer, what is it? A wittle bunny perhaps?”
He smacked my arm away, the spark of pain making me hard.
Ah, so he wants to touch, does he?
He froze as I stepped toward him, his eyes darting from my hands to the leaves behind me. I saw it. The flicker in his stare, the part of him that knew what he was looking at but was too confused to name it.
“You look puzzled,” I cooed, almost sweet, though my grin was cutting him sharp as a blade. “What’s the matter, Shiloh?”
His jaw clenched, but he didn’t answer.
I stepped closer, holding my stained hand out between us like I was offering proof. “You want to be a doctor, don’t you? All those textbooks, late nights memorizing bones and muscles. Go on then, diagnose it.”
His eyes shifted again to the lump under the brush, and he swallowed.
There was just enough of a lapse in his focus that I was able to grab his wrist and pull him to his knees beside the heap on the twigs and dirt, partially buried in the soggy earth.
The flashlight fell from his grip, skittering off into the brush, and leaving us in the moonlight.
I let a low laugh slip free at his squeak of surprise. His hands fell forward, right into the blood.
“I’m starting to think you aren’t a doctor at all.” I tilted my head, mocking and curious. “So what is it, genius? Some monster? A ghost, maybe?”
I stepped in close, forcing him to tilt his head back to look at me.
“Or maybe you’ve been staring at those anatomy charts too long, Shiloh, and now everything looks like something it isn’t to you.”
He flinched, just a twitch, but I saw it. I loved manipulating his reality, showing what I wanted him to see, despite the truth being literally at his fingertips.
“Come on, Sunshine.” My tone softened, taunting, like I was coaxing a child to steal the last cookie out of the forbidden jar. “If this were a body, don’t you think you’d smell it rotting? Don’t you think you’d hear bones cracking when I pressed down like this?”
I stood above him and ground my boot into the dirt where a pale wrist peeked through the leaves. The ground gave way, but I didn’t break eye contact with him even when the crack sounded in the night.
“See? Just brush, mud, and my hunt. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
He shook his head, but his voice cracked. “I saw—”
“You saw what I let you see.” Leaning back down to him, close enough he could smell the blood still thick on me. He still smelled like come, even more so now. A cheap perfume coated him, making my nose wrinkle in disgust.
“Maybe you’re just tired from fucking whatever whore came your way.
Infidelity is a full-time job, I hear. Why are you so worked up?
Minds do funny things when they’re angry, don’t they?
” My smile spread slowly as his beautiful face faltered, his hands rising to yank off the smiling mask before pausing.
“Tell me, Sunshine…you sure you know what you’re looking at?
Or are you just imagining other things in that pretty blond head of yours? ”
I leaned in closer.
I could feel his bated breath on the chilled air.
“Perhaps you’re recalling my sister’s muted cries as you nearly suffocated her on your dick, or the random whore you got too rough with out there in the woods before you came to spy on me. Or maybe…”
Shiloh was hard as stone, the bulge in his pants clearly straining against the leather. His face contorted into enraged, wrinkled rows. He looked to be in physical pain, and it made me throb for him.
“Don’t you dare fucking say it, Carrington…I will kill you.”
That elicited such intense joy from me that I moaned, and my body leaned heavier into his. As if it had its own mind, my cock sought the beacon of his.
“Or maybe,” I panted, licking the skin of his neck, tasting the salt, and feeling the tension in his corded muscles.
“Your mind is still so wrapped up with the way you came for me. How hard you orgasmed in my hands. Is that it, Sunshine? You can’t stop thinking about how hard you fucking came for me, and now your mind is as fucked up as the control you think you have? ”
Something shifted in my sister’s boyfriend. His body was practically pulsing. His muscles retracted, and before I knew it, he lunged.