Kill to Love

Chapter 1

In the haze of dusk, I sprung up to sit in my bed. With hair plastered over my face, I looked back at my guest who had brought with him a hunting knife instead of peach tarts or loose-leaf green tea, as most guests usually bring to the manor when visiting.

I knew I should be frightened. However, I wasn't very good at being frightened.

The masked man pulled down the black material that covered the lower half of his face, tucking it under his neck. Through the shadows, his lips cracked into a grin. “Hey.”

Struggling through the web of sleep, I smiled tightly. “Hello there.”

“Quiet, Princess,” he said, his voice deeper than the ocean’s floor. “Keep that mouth closed.”

I opened my mouth, if only to be difficult as I did not appreciate his discourtesy. “Oh lovely, you’ve killed at least one of my guards.”

His knife glinted in the diluted light. Long and sharper than evil. Along the edge of the knife, blood dripped, giving my antique rug freckles.

I frowned.

This was unfortunate. Not for me. For him.

There were fifty guards on my family’s estate all who enjoyed using their batons and Uandra was easy—no, ecstatic—on the death penalty.

I did not know why Soulless continued to slog through the brush that circled the property, hike the gate with barbed wire and then divert the security cameras and guard.

Surely these people had better things to do besides killing political families who were trying to save Uandra’s people?

The man crept closer to me with his knife.

It seemed not.

My heart bashed into an uneven rhythm. I ignored it, inspecting my guest.

Tall and wide shouldered, he sculpted into an athletic build. Donning dark jeans, fingerless gloves, a leather jacket creased from time, and a black hood pulled over his head like the Grim Reaper. I blinked twice as fast at what concealed his eyes. He wore a pair of red heart-shaped sunglasses.

A tickle climbed up my inner thighs.

Moving like a stalking wolf, my heart-shaped-sunglasses-wearing man blended into the shadows as if he had been made from them, his heart-shaped eyes pointed on me. Mapping. He looked me over as if I were his next feast, deciding where to bite first.

My alarm bracelet sat idly on the bedside table. All I had to do was press the button and security bells would be singing their chorus.

However, this man was too close. By the time I lunged and pressed the button, he would charge just as easily with his knife.

I held a useless pillow in front of me and twiddled my hand down to my thigh. “Are you planning on killing me?” I asked. “I have an important Pilates class tomorrow. Can we reschedule for tomorrow night?”

Silver moonlight made the rims on his glasses shine. “No, Princess. We’re doing this tonight.”

This man was most certainly Soulless; a wicked human, corrupt with chaos that would never know the gift of love. No good and decent person would kill guards and break into people’s bedrooms at 2am and ruin perfectly beautiful antique rugs.

My heart thrashed under my ribcage, a horrible thumping, as if the organ was trying to pry itself out of its bone impound. I ignored it and summoned my courage.

It was a very inconvenient time to be afraid.

I was delighted my bedroom was crisply clean and no embarrassment showed in strewn clothes or littered cups as the Soulless man paraded around, keeping his knife pointed at me, running his fingers over the photos of my friends and smelling my favourite perfume.

“Hm.” He tapped his fingers over my bookshelf. I doubted he was here for books.

Whilst he was busy perusing Jane Austen and Stephanie Myer, I reached over to grab my alarm bracelet, but then a dagger flew past my wrist and stuck into the wall as a warning.

Hairs pricked up along the arm I had almost lost. I pursed my lips; he was ready to throw another.

“Princess,” came that deep voice of his, laced with hilarity. “Don’t touch that fucking alarm.”

I kept my hands to myself.

He smirked. It had been a precise and well-calculated move. This man was trained.

I smirked back. So was I.

“Can I help you?” I asked, clutching my pillow.

He kept on his devilish smirk and did not answer my question. “I never thought I’d eat a princess before.”

“This is a democratic society, not a monarchy. There is no royalty,” I said through my smile. “Certainly one that does not partake in cannibalism. Would you prefer a macaroon? I can fetch one for you?”

He pulled out a wad of duct tape from his back pocket and set it neatly on the edge of the mattress. Next, he drew out a bottle of—was that chloroform?

This was concerning.

However, what was more concerning: his boots were dirty, and they were tracking mud on my antique rug.

I choked on air, close to screaming, the precious fibres soaked with wet soil and blood. “Can you take off your shoes?”

“I’m not staying for long. Come on Princess, let’s go.” He crossed into my personal territory, digging his knee into my bed, causing the mattress to dip. The weight of him made me sink. A freckle of blood showed itself on his sunglasses. He smelled like leather and that coppery taste of blood.

“Go…where?” I leered back.

“Home.”

“I am home.”

“To my home.”

“Oh, no thank you.”

A lick of black hair slipped down his forehead.

Though his face was consumed by the shadow from his hood, and his ridiculous glasses hid his eyes, the lower half of his face faintly came into view.

His jaw arched sharply down to a sturdy chin.

Instead of stubble, the shade across his cheek was dark from a splattering of still-wet blood.

This nightmare creature was sparked with hints of handsome.

Curiosity almost had me reaching over and flipping back his hood.

He leaned forward, pushing his hands onto the bed to crawl up to me, the tip of his knife penetrated my cotton sheets. “Princess, you’re my Soulmate. I can feel it.”

I watched those hands. “Aw, how sweet.”

Many people thought they were my Soulmate, all in hopes of touching my family’s money.

“My heart is pounding for you,” he said. His hand crept over his chest. “It’s yours, Princess. Here, feel it.”

“No, thank you. And, my darling, I think I should let you know that currently, I don’t feel a pain in my chest to search for my Soulmate, so you cannot be mine.

You may leave now.” I gestured to the door and then abruptly re-gestured to the window remembering his preferred entrance.

“Please let me know your name on the way out so that I may send you the bill for my rug.”

“Princess.” He leaned forward, showing a whiff of severity chiselled across the lower half of his face. It was difficult to take him seriously with his sunglasses. “I came here to save you.”

“Save me?” I asked. “From…” I looked around my bedroom searching for my supposed imminent danger of which I needed saving from and landed my sight back onto his bloody knife.

“Are you saving me from a good night’s sleep?

You have been successful, well done you. You may leave now, thank you so much.”

Irritation licked his lips. “I don’t know why you can’t feel me or what’s happening between us, but there’s something fucky going on here.”

My eyes stayed trained on his knife. “There certainly is.”

“I’m taking you with me.”

“You’re going to kidnap me?”

“No, I’m just taking you with me, whether you want to come with me or not.”

He may be a crazy person. “Ah, yes, I see the difference.”

His fingertips dipped in dried red reached out for me…but, first, he paused to sneeze. His entire body shuddered, then he sneezed a second time, cupping his hands over his mouth to catch it.

I grimaced. “Ew. Are you sick?”

“No, it’s my allergies,” he groaned, took out a small bottle of sanitiser from his pocket and cleaned his hands. “I can’t do cat hair.”

I slipped my eyes down to Cauliflower who lounged at the edge of my bed, her white fluffed fur camouflaged into my blankets.

He tucked the sanitiser back into his jeans’ pocket. “Do you have a cat in here?”

“No.”

“Oh.” He spotted Cauliflower through her stretch and reached out his hand.

“Don’t hurt her!”

“That's a cute fucking cat.” He tucked his finger under Cauliflower’s chin. “Hey, Kitty.”

Usually, she would claw and drag to hell whoever dared near her radius. The evidence of this came from scratches up my arms. Cauliflower, however, found favour in the kidnapper/murderer/cannibal man over the one who actually fed and cared for her.

“Please leave my cat alone,” I said. “I would prefer if you direct your attentions towards me.” Scratches or not, Cauliflower was my baby. “Stop it.”

He continued to pet her.

“Stop it!”

He lifted his hand.

I shooed Cauliflower away. “I don’t much feel like getting out of bed, so, I will not be going with you. Can I assist you with anything else? Is there anything I can give you?”

“You, Princess.”

“Lovely.”

“You’re mine.”

“Lovely.”

“I’m going to save you.”

“Lovely.”

“Now, do I have your consent to touch—”

I ripped out the small pocketknife I kept against my outer thigh and stabbed it directly into his shoulder, specifically to the axillary artery where he would bleed out and ruin my cotton sheets, but I did not mind. I was considering changing to silk.

Horribly, I missed.

There was no bleeding out.

No changing to silk sheets.

I landed the blow just next to his axillary artery because the bastard moved. He moved! Rude. A half-second was all it took. Faster than light and he managed to evade death.

Still, I did not waste the moment and lunged for my bracelet, but he seized me by the arm, yanking me back.

I groaned and twisted, re-grabbing my blade in his shoulder and shovelled it back into his flesh a second time. “Bastard!”

He snatched my foot before it landed in his crotch and tugged me down to lie flat under him. “Sorry, I gotta touch you.”

I sucked in a powerful breath, filling my lungs to scream. “Help—”

He smothered my mouth with a strong hand, funnelling the word back down my throat, and laid on top of me.

He did not push his entire weight on me, merely enough to stop me from flinging myself around like a fish out of water trying to escape.

My heart capsized into frantic beats, banging as if it might tear through my chest.

Oh, he smelled good.

Leather and blood and crushed cedar and musk and violent storms. A recipe of everything lush and dangerous and, sex… he smelled like sex.

I bit his fingers.

He rolled off me with a groan. My teeth clamped down on themselves from the absence of his hand.

A new set of arms grabbed me and tore me off the bed.

The lights flicked on.

Voices shouted.

Boots marched.

Panting, and riddled with an aching heart, I looked up to find the friendly face of Bernie, one of the estate guards using his body to shield me from the sight of the intruder being reprimanded by a string of guards.

Behind Bernie’s back, the Soulless man’s laughter echoed through batons battering into a body. Bone cracked.

Oh. My. God.

They were doing this over my rug!

Successfully they managed to secure the Soulless man, and I did not look as they lugged him outside of my room, his laughter scratching in the air like a dying thing.

“Did he hurt you?” Bernie cupped my cheeks and forced me to look up at him. “Ms De Astor, where are you harmed?”

“My rug!” I flung my finger to it, a horrible mess violated by blood and uncaring boots. “It’s ruined!”