Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
HIM
“What the fuck are you doing?” My eyes snapped open, my hand wrapping around a tiny wrist and twisting until I heard it pop. I didn’t break it but I sure as fuck dislocated the shoulder it was attached to.
Jules let out a whimper, not the scream I was expecting, as I fumbled around the nightstand, flicked on the light, and found her standing over the bed looking down at me.
I let go of her arm and shoved it away, watching as it hung like a limp noodle at her side while she did nothing to fix it herself.
Fucking waste of a nursing license if you asked me.
“I just thought…” she whispered.
“You thought what? That you could just fucking grab me whenever you wanted?” I pushed off the mattress, towering above her as she shrunk in on herself. “This ain’t a two-way street, sweetheart. I ain’t your fuck toy. I ain’t your boyfriend either.”
I walked her back to the closest wall, pausing in my steps when she was pressed up against it, and grabbed her arm. Tugging down, over, and up until I heard it pop again. It wasn’t dislocated anymore but I’d bet it still didn’t feel that great.
She blinked at me, and I rested a palm above her head and leaned in so that I was a breath away.
Taking her wrist with my free hand, pulling it forward until her fingers were spread out over my boxers, and adding pressure to her knuckles till she was gripping the bulge there.
“I already told you this ain’t for you. That didn’t change just because I licked your pussy a few times. ”
I rolled onto the heels of my feet, turned around, and stomped towards the bed, popping a Xannie before climbing onto the mattress and turning onto my side.
Leaving Jules to stare at the giant skull tattoo that took up most of my back.
I hoped the fucking thing haunted her nightmares like my childhood trauma haunted mine.
There was nothing worse than being woken up by a hand slipping into your boxers. I tried to shake the chill away, but it didn’t help when my heart was still pounding out of my chest. That pill was doing a shit-ton of nothing right now.
Jules didn’t move for a long time. But I could hear her breathing.
Feel her looking at me. She should have been running scared, not padding closer to the bed again.
But a few minutes later, that’s exactly what she was doing.
Then she was climbing in on the other side and curling up so that we were nearly nose-to-nose.
I shifted back to see her face in the dim light.
“What do you want, Jules?” I huffed.
“Why?” she asked.
I rubbed a tired hand down my face. “I’m not a fucking mind reader. You’re gonna have to be more specific. Why what?”
“Why won’t you do it?”
“My fucking god,” I grunted and pulled myself upright on the bed. “Do what, Jules? Kill you or fuck you? ?Cause one of them ain’t out of the question yet.”
She lifted a shoulder—the side that wasn’t sore and swelled up at the joint—and mirrored my posture. “Either. Both?”
“I ain’t gonna do shit if you keep asking me to do it.”
She nodded a little too enthusiastically. “Okay, I’ll stop asking.”
“Well, now, I don’t know how I feel about that either,” I huffed. “Seems like you’re only gonna stop asking because you WANT me to kill you.”
“Okay… so do you want me to keep asking or not?” she whispered.
“Fuck… Shut up! I don’t know.” I clenched my jaw. “Believe it or not, killing someone who wants to die kinda takes the fun out of it.”
“Is that why you do it? Because it’s fun?” She wasn’t being a smart-ass. I could tell by her tone she was genuinely curious. And now I had a semi tenting my boxers.
Don’t ask. I wasn’t really a doctor. I only played one on the weekends. Which meant I had no fucking clue where my sex drive came from. Or why this girl seemed to manipulate it with the press of a weirdly na?ve button.
“More fun than when the carnies come to town.” I sighed. “I do it because it’s one of the few times I feel alive. Because it lets me feel in control for a little bit. And, yeah, because I fucking like it. I like the fucking high that comes with it.”
I watched Jules out of my peripheral, as she wrapped her arms around her knees and tucked her chin between them. “I get that.”
I turned to look at her head-on. “You do?”
She nodded. “I do.”
“Okay, then can we go the fuck to sleep now?”
“You didn’t answer my other question.” She still wasn’t looking at me, more like talking into her kneecaps.
“Because I said so,” I told her.
That had her shuffling around to sit cross-legged next to me. Facing me. Those same wide blue eyes burning a hole into my forehead. “But why though?”
“Is this what it’s like to be fucking married?” I muttered under my breath. Not sure who the fuck I was asking. “Look, I have a thing…”
“Like a kink?” This chick went from blushing at the dinner table at the mention of an orgasm to sex therapist in a blink of an eye.
“Sure, let’s call it a kink, Jules.” I shook my head. “And because of this… kink… Well, I need my… partner…” Victim. “To be still. Like, I mean, deathly still.” Dying or close to it. “No talking, no moving, nothing.”
“So you’re a necrophiliac.” She shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal.
My hand shot out and wrapped around her throat.
Squeezing just enough to keep her attention.
“No, I’m not a necrophiliac. I don’t enjoy fucking dead people.
If I were into that kinda shit, I wouldn’t need to go climbing into windows, now would I?
Could find plenty of stiffs in the morgue at Briarwood. ”
She sucked in a strangled breath. “Okay, not a necrophiliac. Got it,” she managed to force out. I dropped my hand, and she gulped down a lungful of air. “Show me.”
“What the fuck do you mean show you?” I called out after her. But she was already gone, sprinting down the hallway and banging as she went from closet to closet in search of whatever the fuck she was looking for now.