17. Feelings I Can’t Name
17
FEELINGS I CAN’T NAME
KRYPT
Remiel’s lip trembles and his eyes water as his blood-high sinks into the pits of despair. Yes, he killed a man, and I’m proud of him for slaying his demons, but he will never be more powerful than me. Because I won’t let him be. Because he doesn’t want to be. I took the power role right from the beginning, and he’s gotten comfortable under my control. He feels important there, and I don’t think Remiel has ever felt important before.
My hero doesn’t want to be the almighty. He wants me to be his deity.
He wants to be scared.
I pull my mask back down and tilt my head at him, waiting for him to challenge me. He won’t, but the option is there if he wants to try.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asks, shaking for a whole new reason.
“I’m a killer who hasn’t killed. A hunter who let his prey get away. A madman with a fucking need that hasn’t been met.” I trail a knife from the hollow in his throat down his sternum.
“Wh-what need?”
I love the way Remiel looks in fear. I wish the lights were brighter so I could see the sheen of sweat above his brow and the way his hands rub together. But under the red-washed emergency lights, I see it in his eyes. I feel it in the way his body shivers and his heart rate accelerates. I taste it in the way his energy changes, and I know it by the way his pants tighten. Because I’ve learned a few things about my hero.
Fear turns him on.
“Blood, Remiel. I fucking need it.” I dig the tip into his chest, loving that it goes in deeper when he breathes harder. To breathe is an instinctive reflex that harms more than it prepares him for what’s to come, and I love that he turns stupid for me. His survival instincts are warped. Maybe he trusts that I won’t harm him, but he’s going to find out how wrong he is about that.
I won’t kill him.
But I’ll hurt him. His blood, like all of him, belongs to me, and I crave it all over my body, against my tongue, and dripping down his skin.
He smartens up. Finally, he smacks my hand away and sends the knife flying. Turning his back to me is his first mistake, but running is his second. He should know by now that running only feeds my beasts and entices me more than anything. I smile behind my mask, giving him a head start, and when he looks over his shoulder to see if I’m following, I throw a dagger straight at him. He ducks, and it wobbles to a halt in the wooden doorframe.
“You’re fucking crazy!”
“Run, hero!” I shout at him, sinking into the sickness my mother hated me for. “Fucking run!”
He runs, and my animal instincts engage.
Remiel is predictable. There are only two places he’ll go. The front door, or my bedroom. I’m not going to let him go to either, because I might be a hunter, but I’m done toying with my prey tonight.
I stalk after him, easily keeping him in my sights. He isn’t as familiar with Vile House, and the darkness makes it a maze he’s eager to get caught in.
Fear has him clumsy. He trips over the rug in the living room, crawling across the wooden floors to get to the stairs. He makes the mistake of looking back, and when he finds me only steps behind him, he whimpers. But it doesn’t sound all that panicked. He’s trying to entice me because he’s as dark as I am.
He grabs the rung of the railing, trying to swing himself to his feet and climb. As soon as he makes it up to the third step, I howl at his back and latch onto his ankle.
“Krypt!” he screams, scared for real now.
I yank him down the stairs, his head clunking off the risers and his hands grasping at the railing. He kicks at me, but I’m more coordinated than he is.
“Didn’t try very hard, hero.” I tug him down and rip his shoes off, tossing them aimlessly.
“Stop! This is my night! Don’t ruin it.” His nails scratch my forearms, and the burn of it is fiery.
“Your night?” I rip his pants down next, finding him hard behind his red boxer-briefs, his thighs thick and tinted with blood. “You gave me the names, and I get to end them. Make them gone. Isn’t that what we agreed on?”
Remiel makes a last-ditch effort to get away from me, but I slam him down and pin him there with my knee on his chest.
“Krypt,” he cries. “Please.”
“Please, what, Remiel? Please let me go? Please don’t fuck me on the stairs? Please don’t hurt me?” I tilt my head and watch him whimper. “Please scare me more?”
Anger stamps into his features, and he growls at me. “Fuck you. I don’t want to be scared.”
“No?” I move my knee down until it’s pressing painfully against his hard cock. “When are you going to own up to things? You love finger-pointing, don’t you?” I grind my knee harder, and when he cries out in pain, I keep going. “Admit you’re scared.”
“No.”
“Admit it.”
“No!”
“If you don’t admit it, I’m going to flip you over, tear the rest of your clothes off, and slice my knife across your lower back until the blood drips down your ass to lube your hole. Then I’ll fuck it inside you until your cum does the admitting for you.” I press my knee down and bring my small dagger to the corner of his eye. “What’ll it be?”
My defiant little hero purses his lips together, glaring at me.
“Honesty in the form of silence. I hear you, Remiel.” I grab his waist and slide my knee to his hip to flip him over, but he stops me.
“You don’t have all the power here, asshole.” He forces himself against my chest, sitting until I feel the prick of a knife against my stomach. “You wanna fuck me bloody, you’ll do it while you look at me.”
Eye contact. He craves it, and it changes something inside me. No one, apart from Ghost and my brother, can hold my eyes, yet Remiel craves it. Maybe because of defiance, or maybe because he likes to remind himself that I’m not sane while I assault him, but either way, he needs my eyes as much as I need his blood.
I rip his boxers open, tearing them to shreds. The movement makes his knife slice through my skin, blood dripping warmly. He keeps his eyes on mine but lowers the blade to touch my mask. He rips it off, but we’re concealed in the dark enough to keep me comfortable. I back up to get my pants and boots off while Remiel takes his shirt off, eyes still on mine. Completely naked together for the first time, I hold up a packet of lube from my pocket and ask the silent question.
“Surprised you even want to make it feel better. Thought you wanted to fuck me with blood.”
“Do you want that?” I challenge.
He rips the lube from my fingers and tears it open with his teeth. The action reminds me of condoms, but we’re way past that. We were way past that the night I licked his blood from his throat over Ophelia Hargrove’s body.
I fist my dick in my hand while Remiel fingers his own ass, watching my expression and gripping the knife in the other hand. The atmosphere has changed, and he’s almost unafraid. The fear has mostly faded, but I’m about to scare him in a different way. I’m going to test him. Because there’s an insecure part of me that wants to know if he actually cares about me. About my life. Or is he only here to entice me into killing him as part of our bargain?
I lean forward and take his hand, forcing his fist to grip the handle until the blade is pressed to my throat. “Don’t move it, Remiel.” I grab his hips and pull him down a step, and when the head of my cock presses against his lubed ass, I look him straight in the eye as I ease inside him. My forward motion makes the blade slice into my neck.
Remiel breathes harder, pleasure mixing with worry, and fuck… the way his ass feels around my cock defies all concepts I previously had about sex. I push in harder, opening him for me, taking what’s mine, but appreciating it differently this time. The blade cuts when I groan.
“Krypt,” he warns, trying to move the weapon.
“I told you not to fucking move it.”
He swallows, pressing it against my neck again. Lighter this time. He winces when I fuck into him, but I can’t tell if it’s because his ass hurts or he’s afraid of the knife against my throat. I want him to admit he cares. That he doesn’t want me dead, even after everything I’ve done to him. I want my neck to bleed and jar him into a decision about what I mean to him.
Because Remiel Sauder has become everything to me. My property. My obsession. My fixation. My dream.
I’ve never dreamed before.
His tight ass sucks me in and his eyes never leave mine. My internal monsters thrash, but I think I see his rise to the surface to meet mine. I push inside him slowly, feeling every inch gained. Taking my time. Getting lost in the frenzy of him rather than the frenzy of sex.
This is ownership with a test. Will he slit my throat in passion and end this bargain we have now that he’s stronger, more capable, and the first name on his list has been taken care of? Or will he pull back, drop the knife, and prove that he cares about me even though I’m the thing that ruined his already tainted life?
I glance down, watching my cock disappear inside him. It does something to me. Reactions to situations have always fascinated me, and right now, my own reaction is tempting me far more than ever before. Because I’m inside him, watching the way two bodies become one, enthralled by the idea that we’re connected so deeply. But when I lift my gaze and look into his eyes, it’s the way he looks back that renders me conflicted.
“Don’t,” he says, rushed and begging. “Don’t make me do this.” His hand trembles, making the knife against my throat shake.
“Do what?” I grab his hips and pull him closer until he’s one step above me and I’m thrusting into him from the bottom stair. The blade digs in harder, drawing a pained groan from my throat.
I can feel blood trickling down my skin, coating my chest and turning sticky in the air. His breath fans across my wound, but his eyes never leave mine, not even when I push into him so hard his body thumps back and the stairs dig into his spine.
“This…” His fingers drum on the handle, so I cover them with mine to keep his hand steady. “This isn’t our dynamic.”
“How not? Haven’t you wanted this?” I pull back and sink forward, burying my dick in the only body that has ever felt good.
Remiel gets panicked. Maybe angry. His nostrils flare and his free hand swipes through the blood on my upper chest. “This! You make me bleed, not the other way around. You hurt me. I don’t hurt you!”
“But you want to.”
“No,” he whispers, eyes turning glassy.
I lift my head and press on his hand, baring my throat to him and the weapon. “Don’t you want payback? I burned your fucking house down, Remiel.”
He cries out.
“I raped you!”
“Krypt,” he begs, free hand rubbing my blood onto his cock.
“I drugged you and stalked you! I keep you here as my fucking prisoner, Remiel. Make me pay for it!” I snarl at him. “Do it!”
“I can’t!” he screams, tears leaking down the side of his face.
“Because you’re a coward?”
“Because I want you! I’m… I’m a willing prisoner, okay? I fucking want you!” He rips his hand free and throws the knife somewhere into the living room.
I’m so jarred by his admission that I refuse to accept it. “No. You need me,” I correct.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. He sits up and pushes me back. Flipping our positions so I’m sitting upright on the step, Remiel climbs onto my lap and wraps his fingers around the back of my neck, thumbs under my chin. “I don’t need you.”
I watch him intently, looking for lies and meaning. I don’t know what he’s getting at, and the whole thrill of the night is shifting into something vulnerable and horrific. This is supposed to be about blood and the rush of death. Yes, I wanted him to throw the knife and show he cares, but now he’s saying things that don’t mesh with my idea of the connection we share. I want him scared! Honest with actions, not words!
I’m his monster. The one who will complete his bargain. His tormentor and his rapist. He relies on me to keep him safe and end the lives he wants ended. Nothing more.
“I don’t need you,” he repeats. “I can survive without you. At least until the curse takes me. But I can do it. I can live on my own.”
I swallow, too afraid to say anything.
“But I pick you,” he says, tilting my chin and looking straight into my eyes. “I told you I’m sick. I fucking told you.” He lifts onto his knees and wiggles until my cock lines up with his ass. “I pick you as mine. I pick you to turn me into something I’ve never been before. I choose you to show me a way of life I’ve never lived. I don’t need you, Krypt. I fucking want you.” He slides down my cock, and even though I’m mentally panicking, I’m coming, too. Suddenly and without warning. Feeling it too deeply without reacting to it. My cock throbs inside him while my chest pulses from what he said. It’s not pleasure soaking me. It’s pain. I can’t tell if it’s good or not.
The pit of my stomach coils tightly, churning and burning into something volatile and dense. My eyes surge with the need to free my demons, wondering if they’ve always simply been vulnerabilities in the form of tears, and the breath in my lungs refuses to leave. I don’t know what the feeling is. It’s a craving I can’t name and a sensation that doesn’t make sense.
I want to fucking kill him for being so stupid.
I want to kiss him without hurting him.
I want to lock him in the basement as punishment for what he said.
I want to wrap my arms around him and touch him tenderly.
I want to throw him from my life so he can never change it.
I want to hold on to him so tightly he can never leave.
He wants me. The real me. Keegan from town and Krypt from Vile House.
I don’t like being wanted. I love it. I hate it. It’s too much and not near enough. It’s all my diagnoses coming back to war with one another because none of them can settle on the way we feel about this. He’s an idiot! He’s fucking mine.
“I want you,” he repeats.
“Don’t. Stop wanting me.”
“I can’t.”
He can’t. He can’t. He can’t. I’m going to kill him with my want, and he has no idea how dangerous my love can be. My love is warped. It doesn’t feel the same as it does to others. It’s alarming and scary and dangerous. It’s a complete fall into obsession and the obliteration of everything else. If Remiel becomes the focus of my love, it will annihilate him. Wipe him out. Strip him bare and turn him into a husk of his former self. He’ll die.
I tilt my head at him, hurting everywhere but nowhere in particular. “You’re tricking me. Trying to entice me into killing you.”
He squints at me. “How is telling you I want you a trick?”
I latch onto his hips, scrutinizing everything about him. The way he breathes and moves. The way he looks at me. The way his lips pop open and his pupils dilate. “I told you my love is dangerous. You’re using that to make me kill you. No.” I push him away, barely caring when he crashes to the floor and falls down the last few steps. “No, I won’t let you.” My cum seeps from his ass, but I’m too stuck in my head to appreciate it.
“You won’t let me want you?!” He stands, naked and angry, inner thighs glistening.
“I won’t let you want me! I won’t kill you, Remiel!” I turn my back on him and rush upstairs. I’m supposed to be in the basement, but fuck everything and everyone. I’m overstimulated and incapable of processing my thoughts. Because, for once, they’re mingled with feelings I can’t fathom. Feelings I’ve never felt before. Feelings I don’t understand.
Feelings I can’t name.
This was supposed to be about fear. Now I’m the one who’s terrified.