Chapter 39
Sunny
My jaw drops as Xavier slams the door to the operating room shut and barricades it.
“How did you—”
“The woman at the front desk nearly escaped, so I locked her in the basement.” He smashes the key onto the table. “I followed you here. Wasn’t easy, but I don’t give up that easily.”
“I told you to stay where you were,” I growl.
He picks up the loose scalpel on the table and clutches it tightly, approaching my victim, who screams bloody murder.
Without even so much as saying a word, he grabs the man’s finger and slices it off, while looking me dead in the eyes. No remorse.
And for some reason, I find it deathly hot.
“Which finger did he touch you with?” he asks.
I lick my lips. “Index.”
He grabs the exact finger I mentioned and cuts it off cleanly.
No man has ever done anything more romantic for me.
“Which one next?”
I frown. “How did you know?”
“He’s a surgeon. Doesn’t take a genius.”
He grabs Carlo’s thrashing leg, takes off his shoes and socks, and cuts off the toes, like it comes naturally to him. Maybe I wasn’t the only one born to be a psycho.
“Wow,” I mutter. “You didn’t come here to play games.”
“I wasn’t kidding when I told you I was going to help you.”
“I don’t need any help,” I reply, thrusting my own knife right into Carlo’s arm, using him as a pinprick cushion.
“And I’m still going to give it anyway,” Xavier answers, taking off another toe.
“You’re being disobedient. You know that comes with punishment, right?” I cut off a finger too, and it almost feels like we’re in a competition.
“I’m not afraid.”
I stop cutting and put down the scalpel to glance at him.
Not afraid? Of me?
I step closer, and the sweat droplets roll down his neck, but he stays put in the face of death.
Admirable. Insane, but admirable.
“You need to leave.”
“No,” he says, still defying me. “Cut me. Kill me. I don’t care. I’m done running away.”
I chuckle. Maybe I’ve finally made someone as insane as I am.
“Running away from what?”
He tilts his head. “Death.”
Death.
To him, I am the personification of death.
One touch and your soul belongs to me.
That’s all I’ve ever shown people. Wrong me, and it’ll be your demise.
It’s an easy way to keep people at bay, to stop them from seeing the deeper parts of my wounded soul, but even the loss of life won’t stop him from craving me.
I slowly grab his hand and bring it to Carlo’s body, our fingers entwined with his blood.
Right then, I push Xavier’s hand forward so he stabs Carlo in the heart. Blood squirts out like a fountain all over us, dousing us in the remnants of my retribution.
The unwavering fear in Xavier’s eyes is gone.
All but replaced with a sense of awe and rage … So much fucking rage over the injustice of it all. He doesn’t ask the question that’s been on his tongue since the moment I came back to campus, doesn’t force me to face my demons, doesn’t judge me for enacting my wicked fantasies.
“I will help you kill anyone you want,” he says, his bloodied hand reaching for my face, the gentle caress so unfamiliar it makes my breath hitch. “As long as I can be by your side and watch you heal the broken parts that make you you.”
Fuck.
He just managed to rip right through the scars.
“You shouldn’t, it’s wrong,” I say, as he inches closer and closer. “I break people into shrapnel and use them as weapons until they’re gone.”
“I don’t care if it’s wrong. I want you. I need you. I cannot live as long as you aren’t happy. And if that means killing every last man on this earth, I will happily oblige.”
How does he make this sound so easy when I demand the world?
How could he want to give a malicious soul like me everything he has to give?
His hands curl around my face, leaving bloodied streaks of madness. “Use me. Hate me. Fuck me. Hurt me until I bleed. I don’t care, as long as I get to be your vessel for slaughter.”
Tears well up in my eyes, but I push them away as my arms wrap around his neck, and I pull him in for the deepest, darkest kiss covered in the bloodstains of my victim.
“Stop,” I whisper into his mouth, but I keep on kissing him. “Stop falling in love with me.”
“I can’t. It’s too late,” he says between needy kisses.
I claim his mouth like there’s no tomorrow. “I’m not the kind of girl anyone should fall for. It’s not fucking right.”
His kisses are hungry, ravenous even. “I don’t care. I don’t want it to be right.”
“I’m selfish,” I mutter.
“It’s an honor to devote myself to your needs,” he replies, so full of adoration it makes my heart skip.
“I cannot feel what you want me to feel,” I rebuke, still kissing him like my life depends on it. “I’m a sinner through and through.”
“It doesn’t matter. Not to me.”
“Yes, it does. What you crave doesn’t exist.” I bite on his lip, trying to turn him away.
But the pain doesn’t make him wince. Instead, he sucks up his own blood and licks it off my lips. “I will force it into existence.”
This fucker just doesn’t know when to quit, does he?
Grinning, I drag a line from his lips to his ear, and he moans out loud. “It’s hopeless,” I whisper. “Give up.”
“Never,” he groans. “I cannot. I refuse.”
“Why?” I grit, as my knee pushes up against his package.
His Adam’s apple goes up and down. “Because … I love you.”
I lean back to look him directly in the eyes.
“What?”
He … he loves me?
I snatch the scalpel from his hand and point it at his throat, lifting his chin with the blade.
“Say that again, and I will gut you.”
“I love you.”
The edge of the knife pierces his skin, but there’s no fear, none, zero.
And it makes my hand quake.
The power I hold, the fear I bequeath on anyone who dares to get in my way…
It’s vanished from his face.
“I have always loved you. From the moment I met you when we were still young up until now, I have never wanted or craved any other woman besides you.”
I suck in a breath, but my lungs feel constricted.
He dips his fingers into his pants and lowers them, revealing the circular tattoo with wriggly lines on his V-line again.
It hadn’t occurred to me before, but that’s a tattoo of the sun.
His sun.
Me.
“When did you get that?” I ask.
“A long, long time ago. When I first realized I wanted to devote my life to you.” He swallows. “I’ve never touched another woman, looked at another woman, or even so much as thought of another woman. It has always only ever been you.”
Holy. Fuck.
All this time, I thought he was a virgin because he was scared of women.
He … saved himself for me?
“I will never stop loving you. No matter how hard you try to push me away. No matter how badly you want to shut yourself off from the world and kill yourself in the process.”
Now I really can’t keep those damn tears at bay.
“I love your fire, your violence, and every dark spot on your soul,” he says.
No. That’s not fucking possible. No one can love what I’ve become.
I cut into his skin, but it doesn’t faze him as blood ripples down his neck.
“And I will love you until the day I die.” He swallows against the blade. “So if you want me to die, right now … I’m ready.”
“Why?” I say through gritted teeth, cursing the one tear that manages to roll down my cheek. “I’m a monster.”
The way he looks at me, so full of reverence, makes me weak in the knees.
I am never, ever weak in the knees.
Ever.
His lip quivers. “You are my sun. My world revolves around you.”
My jaw drops.
I’m his sun?
“Nothing shines as brightly as you. To be worthy of watching you burn down everything in your path with such fiery passion is the greatest gift I could ever receive.”
His thumb reaches up to pick up the single teardrop rolling down, spreading it between his fingers.
“I will help you destroy whoever hurt you. It doesn’t matter if it costs me my sanity, my freedom, or my life. I will be the knife you cut with. I’m yours.”
I stare at him for a moment before the scalpel drops to the floor as I wrap my arms around his neck and smash my lips onto his.
Xavier
I’m stunned by her sudden kiss, the outpouring of her love so palpable that my entire body zings in her arms. Her lips are tantalizing and everything I ever dreamed of.
Every kiss makes me feel like I’ve been given the greatest gift a guy like me could ever receive, and I want nothing more than for this moment to last an eternity.
She tastes of violence and retribution, the blood still caking her skin, which is hot to the touch. I hold everything I love in my arms.
She’s kissing me back.
Tongue and all.
And I take in every second like it could be my last. It nearly was.
But I was ready. I was ready to give her my all.
“I don’t understand why,” she mutters between kisses. “Why didn’t you say so earlier that you saved yourself for me?”
I have always only ever wanted her.
No one will ever suffice.
Not when she exists, and there’s the smallest, minute chance that I could be … enough.
I swallow. “It terrified me. Because you’re … you.”
She chuckles, her lips still hovering close to mine. “That’s the biggest compliment someone’s ever given me.”
“Really?” I frown. “Because you are fucking gorgeous.”
“You think I’m pretty? That’s cute.” An immediate blush follows when she smirks.
“I’m just saying …”
“I know. But being pretty isn’t everything,” she says, and she glances at Carlo’s body. “People get scared once they realize what I’m capable of. So I keep things casual. No strings attached.”
“Casual murder,” I muse.
She chuckles again and shoves me. “And you fucking love it, admit it.”
It’s true, I do love helping her realize her full potential. Even though it may cost me everything in the process, it’s worth it just to watch her glow with vengeance.
She grabs my shirt and pulls me close again. “But you … you did well today.”
She slides her hand down my shirt, my pants already tented from the sheer amount of attention, but when she reaches my pants, I hold my breath.
“What are you doing?” I ask as she goes to her knees.
She’s not the one who’s supposed to go on their knees.
That’s my job.
“Giving you a reward for making me smile.”