Chapter 8
Ilya
I watch as she processes her new reality.
I’ve watched this process with many men over the years. It’s always entertaining, the panic that turns to a violent rage that burns out fast to a melancholy kind of acceptance. It’s a little different now than in my past experiences.
For one, I have no intention of torturing her.
I have no intention of watching as pebbles of scarlet dribble over her alabaster skin. The almost constant urge to dip my hands beneath flesh, past bone and muscle to the heart beneath, doesn’t grip me as I watch her chest heave with desperation.
She begins to pace on knees that look dangerously weak. When she stumbles, her hand flies out to catch herself against the wall, and my body lurches forward a step. The motion is involuntary, as it was the very first moment I saw her sitting at the roulette table. She’d looked sad, painfully resigned, and exquisitely beautiful as she pondered the bet she would place.
I’d been stripped of my constant control, then, too. Before I’d had the conscious thought, my body had been moving to close the distance between us. I was like a man at sea, at the mercy of a dark siren calling me to the depths below where the air would be crushed from my lungs, my flesh stripped from bone—devoured by her.
When she’d lifted those magnetically captivating, sad blue eyes to me, I’d felt that feared squeeze of my chest. The one my father spoke of. The one that confirmed my earlier suspicions that this earth siren would steal the very breath from my lungs.
When she spoke, the sad melody of her soft voice invaded every inch of my being, weaving into the very fabric of me.
It ensnared me to her then, calling me to her every moment thereafter.
I’ve been a man obsessed since.
She sucks air into her lungs, past trembling pink lips. Blonde hair with just a hint of strawberry tumbles in waves over her shoulder as she bends at the waist, gasping. Her hand still rests against the wall, and even though her body is trembling, when her hand falls away, it leaves a print of moisture.
She’s moved beyond desperation to panic. The anger will come next.
I’m rather impressed by how quickly she’s moving through the stages. It takes many men, who are physically stronger, larger, more experienced in the ways of this unorthodox death of all they’ve known, to come to the terms she’s coming to now.
That their life is now mine.
That her life is mine.
She is mine.
Her blue eyes flash to me for the first time since she began to truly spiral. A sound of grief and fear rips from her chest to tumble from quivering lips. Tears shimmer in glassy eyes that shine a bright, brilliant blue the color of—heaven.
I almost laugh, then.
It’s fitting that I find myself staring into the warmth of eternal salvation in the eyes of this woman who reached into the void of me and gripped a soul I wasn’t certain I possessed. Fuck, but she didn’t just grip that soul, she tore it from the dark fabric of me to cradle it against the bosom of her pure salvation.
For her, I’ll worship.
I’ll bruise my knees and dig myself from the bowels of my lonely Hell, until my fingertips bleed, raw to the bone. I’ll shield her with my flesh, shelter her with my bone. For her, my deadly touch will be gentle.
For her, the heart that beats monosyllabic and static in my chest flutters and quickens again as it has each time, I’ve been in her presence. Something my unflinching heart never does.
It’s the reason I’ve always found fascination in the thunderous organ people speak of in their chest. The racing. The palpitations. The life it sings of.
My heart never learned to sing. Never bothered. I’ve suspected, with my void-like eyes, obsession with death, and unaffected heart—that I was born with one foot through deaths door, the devil himself waiting, arms open, for my eternal torment.
I’ve experimented, and often, through many means. Strenuous exercise, hunting, sex, and killing. My heart never races. It remains stoic always, my breaths calm, my body unaffected. Even in betrayal, I am calm.
It’s a misconception many have that I don’t love or care for those in my life. I do. Deeply.
I simply don’t feel that quickening others speak of. I’ve never felt the rush of emotion that drives people to thoughtlessness, to rash acts, and regrets.
I’ve never been driven to obsession or yearning.
I’ve never needed another so much, I can’t breathe. I’ve never felt the organ in my chest skip in nervousness or excitement or desire.
Until her.
A tear escapes from her eye to fall down her cheek. A fist grips the untouched organ in my chest, squeezing painfully. For a moment, I’m robbed of the ability to move, my response to her tear so physical—so strong—I’m rooted in place.
She’s beautiful always, but she’s a goddess when she cries.
Still, I don’t like it.
She shakes her head and palms away her tear with a viciousness that has her panic morphing into anger.
I breathe a relieved breath. Her tears, obviously, I can’t handle. Her anger, however…
“You broke into my apartment, my home, and you stole me. You stole me from my life!” she screams.
Oh, yes. Yes, I can handle her anger. “This is your life now.”
Her jaw drops.
Fuck, she’s beautiful.
Flushed with anger, eyes still glassy, lips ruby red and legs on display, I feel my cock harden in my pants. That’s another intriguing development in the past week. Sure, I engage in sex. I’m a man with urges like any other. What sets me apart is the fact that, for me, sex is a clinical kind of thing. It’s about release, not intimacy or even enjoyment. For the most part, my fist does the trick just fine.
I never simply see a woman and want her.
But I’d wanted Irelynn the moment I saw her sitting at that table in my casino. When I leaned closer to her, inhaling the scent of cookie batter, it had taken everything inside of me not to push her over the table and fuck her raw, audience be damned.
Her voice breaks through my thoughts. “This is not my life, you psycho asshole.”
I laugh, because she’s not just sexy as sin. She’s fucking cute with her feathers all ruffled. “You have no idea how psycho I am, Little Blue.”
Her eyes widen, but little hands slam down on her hips. “Take me home. Take me home right now.”
“No.”
She stomps her slender bare foot, a sound of frustration tearing from her chest. I nearly laugh.
She’s adorable.“I mean it. You can’t keep me.”
“I can, and I will.”
She stomps her foot again. She’s like a ruffled little kitten, angled sideways and spitting tiny hisses. Too bad she’s tossing tude for a tiger. I’m not intimidated.
“I’m a person!” She takes a step toward me. My heart leaps in my chest. I want to grab her and kiss her. “You can’t just take people.”
“I do it all the time.” I don’t mean it the way she takes it, and instantly regret the words as her eyes widen, darting to the door. I clarify, “Not women.” Her jaw unhinges. It’s clear I’m quickly making a mess of this. “I mean, I take men. Often.” Fuck, that sounds—well, it sounds bad. I add, “I always kill them.”
“Oh, my God,” she gasps. That step she took toward me turns into six steps back before she bumps into a chair, falling into it.
I watch as she scrambles back to her feet, the anger abandoned for absolute, unbridled terror.
Fuck.
“They’re bad men,” I try again to clarify. She doesn’t seem to care that I’m killing bad men as she puts more space between us. I track her around the room as she walks backwards, back into the direction of my bed.
“You—you kill—p-people.”
“Men. Bad men.” I’ve killed a few bad women, too. I don’t discriminate. But I don’t think telling her that now will help to dissolve the situation. I also don’t bother telling her that I’m also a bad man.
Her eyes are wild as the backs of her legs connect with my bed. She falls to her ass, and I stride quickly toward her. She lets out an ear-piercing scream that has the previously mentioned, unaffected organ in my chest, pumping blood on overdrive.
I’ve never felt anything like this.
I can hear it pounding in my head between my ears. It slams like an axe in my chest, threatening to cleave me in two.
The cat scurries, running in place for a moment before he gets traction.
She falls onto the bed. Her shirt rides up around her waist as she flings her legs to the side, hurrying to crawl across my bed in her haste to escape me. I get a flash of little blue cotton panties with snowflakes before she’s leaping onto the floor on the other side of the bed. Her cat scurried from the foot of the bed when she screamed, the skin on his back twitching as he stands to watch the commotion from a safe distance.
The sound of his nails on the floor must have drawn her attention, because her wild eyes land on him and she cries, “Lucy,” as she takes a few thoughtless steps toward him—and therefore toward me. I continue to close the space between us, and she lets out a grief-filled sob as the black ball of fur runs away, before she turns away from her cat to race, full-speed, for the door.
Only, it’s the closet door.
She gets to it, her hand twisting the matte black knob a moment before she throws it open.