11. Chapter eleven #2
“Sure did, Sergeant,” one of them says smoothly, eyes glinting.
“Good.” I nod once, never breaking eye contact with the seething fucking bastard. “Take him in for threatening a Watcher and making public threats. The rest of the group, too. I don’t like their faces.”
An indignant sputter leaves his mouth, and I can’t help but curl up the corners of my mouth as they get shackled.
Good fucking riddance.
The charge is not big enough for a ticket to the Pit, so they’ll be out soon enough, but Joyeus is nowhere to be seen.
Our sources say she’s still up north, but once she’s back she’ll drag her pets free again.
For now, though, these fuckwits are off the streets and, most importantly, nowhere near Kieran. He can breathe for a bit.
I can breathe for a bit.
That itch still crawls under my skin, though.
Biting, demanding, unsatisfied. The Pit fight already feels too long ago, while in reality I still carry the marks of my fun little torture session on my body.
A full-blown, honest, bloody reminder that some councilmembers are as bad an infection on this island as the red rain.
And I’ll make them pay in flesh.
Some day.
Today? I’m focusing on the anal fistula with a goatee.
I take my seat at the bar, throw my legs out, cross my ankles, and enjoy the show as the group is pushed toward the exit amid a lot of protest.
In a moment of what I assume is sheer despair, Goatee turns back, looks me dead in the eye, raises his voice over the rowdy crowd and says, “You’re queued for the Pit the second I’m free! Joyeus will see to it. And while you rot in a cell, I’ll have his ass with no Immune to guard him.”
Before I know it, my boots hit the ground again, taking me in his direction. I haven’t even started to think about what I’m going to do to him, letting my primal instincts run this little shindig, letting my monster come out to play.
The bloodlust shatters for nothing more than a touch: a soft breeze on my skin, warm and cold at once. I know those fingers, know where the calluses sit. They’ve been on my skin too many times, still never enough.
Those ocean eyes find me, ground me, try to shove the monster back under its lid.
He looks at me, but I don’t see him. I only see the lust of those motherfucker’s eyes, only hear his vile comments ringing in my ears.
Blood. I need fucking blood. His blood. I want to strangle the life out of him, watch it drain from those fugly little eyes, witness the exact moment whatever’s left of his rotten soul leaves the poor excuse of a shell.
I know Kieran fucking sees it. The bloodlust. The rage. The godsdamned beast staring back at him.
Fuck if I don’t feel like a cursed one, fuck if my control isn’t slipping. The very thing I taunted that bastard with is coiling back up in me, loud and hungry.
Demons swirl under my skin, that itch clawing its way back: a need so blunt it tastes like metal, an itch that won’t shut up until it’s fed.
I rub my eyes, hard, and when I open them, Kieran is on my vacant bar stool. Goatee and his gang are gone from the bar, and Tass is before me, her slanted eyes furrowed, the stud in her nose glistening in the bar light.
She can see it. She always sees it.
“I need to go,” I push out of my clenched teeth.
She doesn’t argue, just nods. She knows when I have to leave, when I’ve hit the wall, when the itch gets too strong. When the only thing left is to get out before I tear the place apart. Before I tear someone apart.
Before I kill. Slay. Maim. Rip. Break. Whatever it takes to burn the fire out.
“Off-grid?” she asks.
“Off-grid,” I confirm, voice flat, clipped. My gaze drifts anyway, traitorous, to that golden boy who stole… something. The last piece of my heart? My godsdamned sanity? Who the fuck knows? All I know is I can still taste the blood in my mouth from not finishing what I started.
“Don’t worry,” Tass murmurs, low enough he can’t hear. “I’ll look after him.” Her gaze flicks to Sami, slouched next to Kieran at the bar. “ We’ll look after him. I don’t think Sami’s leaving our side anytime soon.”
“Roe could always pull him off our detail,” I mutter, though the words taste like ash.
Tass’s lips press tight. She doesn’t have to say it, we both know why Roe saddled him with us. To see if we mesh. To see if he can keep up.
Can keep up with me .
Can keep me in check when Tass…
I shake the thought off hard, jaw locking. Can’t handle that atop of this bullshit as well. My fingers twitch to grab Whisper, hungry, aching for something to cut. The urge crawls under my skin, coiled and restless, demanding blood.
I need the forest. I need the night. I need the dead .
Sometimes it gets like this… This obsessive need, this burn clawing up through my chest like fire ants under the skin.
Antisocial. Narcissistic. Sociopathic.
Always those fucking words, hissing in the back of my skull. Words I choose not to believe. Not anymore.
You’re no monster, Max. You’re mine.
I can feel. I can care. I do fucking care. That’s something I can’t deny anymore, no matter how much I try.
Courtesy of Kee. Of golden curls and soft whispers in the night.
But sometimes… sometimes those diagnostics fit too well. Sometimes the itch gets too sharp, like a blade pressed against bone. Sometimes the urge to snap skin and crack tendons runs so deep it’s all I can think about.
And I need to let it out .
My head twitches, like a dog trying to shake off fleas. As if I could rattle the urge loose, fling it into the dirt, and walk away clean. But it doesn’t work like that. The itch doesn’t drain out unless I bleed it out first. Unless I feed it. Burn it down to nothing in screams and torn flesh.
“Just go,” Tass whispers. “I got it.”
I nod once, jaw tight, and push off from the bar. The bar is a haze of smoke and spilled drinks, voices that are too loud, too close, following me. My skin crawls. Every sound fucking scrapes.
And then my attention drifts back to him.
Where he’s still on my stool, my Kee, and I move to him before I think.
“I need to go,” I tell him when I step in between his spread knees, so close he needs to tilt his head up to look me in the eye. My voice’s rough and clipped. “I can’t explain now. Later.”
His lips part, a question lingering there, but I don’t let it out. My hand slides up, fingers curling around his throat, his hot pulse hammering against my palm.
I tip his head back until his neck strains, bared, pale against my tatted fingers. He makes a startled sound in his chest, half protest, most of it surrender, but he doesn’t fight me.
Especially not when I bend lower.
My mouth hovers, brushes. Lips grazing his like I’m testing the shape of him.
Gods, how I would love to taste him again, and again, and all over.
The flutter becomes pressure, and I feel him soften beneath me, becoming pliant. I feel the gasp tear free of him and break against my mouth.
My thumb circles the insistent thump-thump-thump at his throat, steady and frantic at the same time. Every beat pounds into me, feeds that itch, redirects it, twists it into something hotter, hungrier.
I can’t help but graze his lips once, twice with my own, my tongue gliding against that plump lower lip for just a second, earning me a full body shiver from the one that buried his way into me.
“Oh shit, that’s hot,” Sami mutters somewhere close, but I don’t even glance his way. Don’t focus on the fact the bar has gone quiet. Again.
I don’t give a fuck that they’re watching. Let them watch. Let them all watch me lay my claim. He’s mine, and if another man, another person, so much as breathes near him, I’ll tear that breath right out of their lungs.
Kieran’s hands twitch uselessly in his lap, itching to cling me to him, to keep me here. His chest rises too fast, breath hitched and shallow, like he’s afraid even to breathe. His eyes blink open and find mine, wide and glassy, and fuck if I don’t want to drown in that ocean.
“Stay with them,” I murmur against his lips, voice low, raw, final. “They’re safe. I’ll be back soon.”
I kiss him once, hard, my lips fitting perfectly against his, and let go. His head falls forward a fraction, breath rushing out like I knocked it clean from him. He looks up at me like I’ve just torn the ground out from under his feet.
And maybe I have.
“Promise me you’ll listen to them?”
He nods, dazed, a curl falling over his forehead.
“Good.” I pivot, marching out of the bar, pretending not to notice the wide-eyed gapes and the smirk on Tass’s lips as she salutes me before I leave.