Cole rises from the ground.
He’s covered in Shaw’s blood and his own, his skin wetly gleaming in the moonlight.
I look at my own hands, drenched in blood. Droplets patter down on the pristine snow.
Then I look at Cole again, and his face breaks into a grin of relief.
Always Forever – Cults
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We run to each other, Cole sweeping me up in his arms. He spins me around, snow spiraling around us. He kisses me, his mouth warm and wet in the coldness, sweet and salty, with the taste of copper on his tongue.
Our breath mixes silvery between us. His wet hands slide over my skin, leaving red streaks vivid as paint.
He kisses and kisses me, both of us warm and alive, Shaw cooling on the ground.
Distantly, I hear the sound of sirens.
I don’t care who it is, or how long until they find us. I don’t care what happens when they do.
All I care about is Cole, and his arms wrapped tight around me.
He saved me, and I saved him. Not just from Shaw, but from everything else in this world that wants to destroy us—the demons outside, and the ones within.
I don’t need anyone else.
I just need one person to make me the center of their universe. I want to be two stars locked in orbit, burning bright in the blackness of space.
The snow reflects on the glossy black walls, thousands of flakes swirling all around us.
Cole whirls me around and around, his mouth locked on mine.
He presses me against a cold black wall, lifting the long, sparkling skirt of my gown up around my waist. I’m yanking at the waistband of his trousers, ripping off the button, pulling them open.
He thrusts inside of me, his cock blazing hot, our gasps puffing into the air, steam rising off our skin. The cold can’t touch me. I’m pure fire, burning and burning, but never consumed.
I’m floating outside my own body, watching us from a distance. I see us entwined, my legs around his waist, arms around his neck, his tongue in my mouth and his hands gripping me tight.
We’re wrapped together, twisted up. Not one snake but two, the black and the white.
We are the same.
And I like what we are.
20
Cole
I fuck Mara in the snow, in the cold, like she’s the only warmth in the universe, and I have to stay inside her to keep warm.
The scent of her skin fills my lungs, rich and alive.
The pleasure I feel is so much more than physical.
I finally realize what happiness feels like.
There’s no malice in it. No greed. It’s not something you seek for yourself.
It flows between two people, around and around, back and forth, given and received in the same breath.
Her happiness makes me happy.
And even if it didn’t, I want it for her anyway.
That’s what loving her means—I want her safe, protected, flourishing, whether it benefits me or not.
It hits me so hard that I let out a groan. Mara touches my face, tilting it so I look right in her eyes.
“I love you,” I tell her.
“I know,” she says.
That’s what makes me cum. Not the physical act of fucking—the emotion of it. Finally being known. Finally being understood.
I explode into her. It rips through me, painful and pleasurable, just the way I need it—the only thing that satisfies.
She clings to me, biting down hard on my shoulder. Tasting my blood in her mouth.
When I set her down, the sirens are closer.
“Listen,” I say, holding tight to her hand. “I need you to do something for me. Can you do it quickly, before it’s too late?”
“Yes,” Mara says at once.
“Good.”
I retrieve her coat and wrap it around her shoulders, explaining exactly what I need.
When I’m done, Mara nods and kisses me once more.
Then she runs away through the maze, leaving me alone with Shaw’s body to wait for the cops.
21
Mara
3 Months Later
It takes several months, a team of lawyers, and some hefty “donations” to the right people before Cole is entirely in the clear.
In the end, the Chief of Police pins a medal on Officer Hawk’s chest for closing the case on the Beast of the Bay.
Hawks scowls through the entire press conference, not at all pleased with the deal Cole struck with the SFPD.
Hawks gets the credit, and Cole gets fifty hours of community service for flipping a police cruiser in the middle of Sanchez Street. He’s been serving his time at the Bay Area Youth Center, teaching delinquents how to draw.
He comes home from his sessions in a surprisingly good mood.
“Some of these kids show real talent,” he says.
“What kind of talent?” I tease him.
Cole grins. “All kinds. That’s why I like them.”
Cole’s lawyers argued that he was wrongfully arrested, and that he had no choice but to escape after he witnessed Shaw abducting me off the street and dragging me into the labyrinth.
I supported this story, including the part where it was Cole who cut Shaw’s throat, while I fled back to Cole’s mansion. I pretended to be disoriented and in shock, freshly showered and hiding in bed in my pajamas when the police finally found me.
They couldn’t question me too hard since I had been telling them all along that Shaw was the Beast. I was the girl who had to escape him TWICE because they wouldn’t listen to me.
It helped that the cops uncovered a mountain of evidence in Shaw’s apartment.
Most damning was Shaw’s collage of stolen driver’s licenses. He had spray-painted them gold, hiding them within one of his technicolor paintings. When the cops scraped off the paint, they found the IDs of Maddie Walker and twenty other victims, Erin’s “lost” license among them.