Chapter 78 #2
“Counting the Marines? Too many. But that was blind duty. This is different. This is what I do to balance the scales. To remove them from the earth because they don’t deserve to live, Camryn.”
“Because of Angel and Ivory.”
“Yes. And that’s why you need to stay away from me.” I drop my hands and step back again.
“So you save them? The women and children?You hunt down their abusers.”
“Don’t make me out to be some hero, Camryn. Yes I save them, but it’s for me. I need to kill them. I need to make sure I avenge them.”
“Mortem tuam uliciscar,” Camryn repeats the inscription on my sister’s tomb. “You blame yourself.”
Not surprised at her ability to read me.
She’s the only woman who has seen so much of me.
She’s the only woman I’ve laid myself bare for.
“Yes. For her rape. For her death. My choices killed her and her child. I chose the Legion Lords and our enemies chose my family for retribution. They hunted them and I had no clue they would go after her. They killed them for enjoyment. So now my cock gets hard when I eviscerate them, and make a mockery of their death. Nothing makes me harder, more alive than ripping their bodies apart. Nothing except you.”
Her eyes widen, and she licks her lip. My dick responds.
“But you are a hero, Stone. Your darkness still brings people light.”
“Fairytale bullshit, Camryn. I’m a selfish bastard. Period.”
“That’s not true. All I know is I met you a year ago and since then you’ve cared for me, challenged me, consumed me.
It’s burning in my veins. For the first time in my life, I’m not afraid to ask for what I want.
I’m not afraid to be honest with myself.
I don’t regret you or us. And I want you, Stone.
Besides my art, you’re the one thing I’ve wanted, deeply and truly since I can remember. ”
Tears drip down her face, and I touch the wet trails.
The only other time she’s cried was the first time I fucked her.
I treasure those, but these ruin me. I’m at war with myself over whether I can keep her safe and keep her as mine.
I’ve never held onto anything. My club, my sister, and my niece were all I allowed myself to care for.
She’s asking for closeness, asking for me to risk losing her.
“Don’t turn me away, Stone. Don’t use my brother, or my wealth or anything else that happened in your past as a barrier. I deserve the truth.”
More tears sting my eyes. I can feel myself weakening.
I want to give Camryn what she wants, but not before I rip the proverbial band-aid off to tell her everything.
She has to know what she’s getting into.
“Then you’d belong to a killer. You want a man who would murder for you?
Who has taken a life for you? Three times. And would again, without a blink?”
“Three?” She rears back. “What do you mean?” Her brows furrow.“Who else?”
“A man in the club. The night I took you home.”
“I don’t remember. What did he do?”
“He did too much and he paid for it.”
“Who else?”
“Reed Spencer.”
Her mouth drops open. “Reed? But how do you—Where? When?”
I look for signs that it bothers her, but all I see is confusion. “I learned everything about him the moment I knew you were involved with him.”
“Why?”
“You know why, Camryn.” She steps closer, and I shiver when she touches my chest. Sighing, I hang my head, and I tell her more of my secrets.
“Because he touched you, Camryn. Because from the second I saw you across that fucking pool, I’ve wanted to kill any man who was near you.
The fact that his cock was inside you was enough of a death sentence, but when he dared to put his hands on you, his time was at an end. ”
She tilts up my chin, and I grit my teeth from her touch. “The day at the apartment. When he and I got in a fight?” The realization is in her eyes. She’s finally seeing the breadth of my fixation on her.
“Yes,” I confirm.
“What did you do to Reed?”
“What he deserved.” Agitated at seeing her, at wanting her, I dig into my pocket for a cigarette, needing something to touch other than her. “Any transgressions against you won’t be tolerated.”
“I want the details, Stone. No more secrets.”
I blow the smoke out of my nose, savoring the burn in my nostrils.
“I cut off both his hands.” I let the statement rest there, figuratively standing between us.
Another drag on the cigarette fills my lungs; I blow it into the sky, and some of my nerves settle.
I head to my desk and stub the half-finished cigarette into the ashtray.
Her voice quavers. “Is that all?”
“No. I burned his fingers until they became charcoal. I watched them smoke and char until they were nothing more than ash. Then I took the dust from his burned bones and mixed it in paint. I used the ash so I could ink it into my skin.” I start unbuttoning my shirt, watching her face as I shrug it down over my arms, until my chest is bared to her.
She moves forward, and her fingers tentatively touch my skin.
I want her hands all over my body. The only hands touching me. “I gave the leftovers to you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, Countess. I wanted to watch you open the gift. The night you sketched me, sketched us fucking, you used his severed fingers to do it.”
I expect each confession to change her reaction. To change the way she looks at me, but she keeps steadily staring.
“The gift. The set of charcoal and paints. Those were from you?”
“Yes.”
Her nail outlines the new tattoo on my chest. Onyx finished it last week.
It’s still tender; the protective covering has been removed.
I watch as she slowly moves her finger down the dagger with my name on the blade.
The blade is embedded in the skull. An owl stands, perched on the hilt, and underneath are 47 tally marks.
The newest line is still pink around the edges.
“When did you get it?”
“After I finished with him.”
“Reed?”
“No. The man who took you.”
I take her hand, knowing she may look at me in disgust when she knows the extent of who I am, what I am. I hold it over my heart. I don’t lie or skirt around the truth. “I disemboweled him and cut out his heart, tongue, and eyes. I removed his genitals and scrotum.”
She sucks in a breath, her fingers pause, lifting off my skin. Her eyes meet mine, and she stares at me, those gorgeous green eyes looking deep into mine.
“I burned them and consumed them.”
“What does that mean, Stone?”
“I ate his ashes.”
I wait for her horror, her rejection. She doesn’t say a word, and I keep going, needing her to know. “Then I skinned him, removing his skin. I dragged his body out into my forest and left the rest for the scavengers to eat. There are countless bodies—”
“On the property.”
It’s not a question. “Yes.” She resumes touching me, caressing each mark. She doesn’t shrink away from the knowledge of what I did, but reads the words above the tattoo. I close my eyes as she reads.
“He took fire and burned; and ashes wholly
Behoved it, that in falling he became.
And when he was on the ground, he was thus destroyed,
The ashes drew together, and of themselves
Into himself they instantly returned.”
She presses deeper, and the pain makes me moan. I want her nails digging deeper, hurting me. “Dante’s Inferno?”
Opening my eyes, not shocked that she knows. “Yes. Vanni Fucci, is a thief who stole sacred objects and his punishment is to turn to ashes and burned over and over. Tormented. He stole something sacred.” I touch her lips. “He stole you.”
She kisses my fingertips softly, and I’m done. Gone. I wrap my arms around, pulling her close, and kiss her back, hopeless and hopeful at the same time.
She opens her mouth, meeting my tongue, matching the fervor in my blood for her. When she pulls away, both our lips are swollen.
“You said you skinned him. What do you do with the skin?” Her face is expressionless, and I don’t know how to read her.
“Are they like the maps?” Her voice is steady.
Calm. I nod. The dark knowledge in her eyes about the evils of the world lures me in.
There’s a somber shadow about her that calls to the damage inside me. “Show me.”