“I want you!” My voice was ragged, my tongue thick in my mouth. “I want you. I want you.”
He twisted my nipples as he thrust his fingers in me, three short thrusts and then out and no! God, no, I needed it, I needed more, I needed all of him—
“Louder.”
“I want you!” I screamed. “Please! I want you! I want you! Gavriel, I want you!”
He sat back on the bed, his hands no longer on me. My body shook with the ache of desire, unsatisfied. Lust tore through me, a hard pain that made my teeth chatter.
“No,” I moaned. “Don’t stop. Oh god, please, don’t.” I whimpered, unable to stop myself from pleading. This was the torture he wanted to see, this was the agony that he would leave me in. I hated him then, hated him and wanted him in equal measure, and I had never known that such desires could be one and the same.
Then he smiled, his lips gleaming with my juices.
“There, kitten,” he said. “I’ll be back soon.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Gav
Instead of satisfying her, I decided to let my kitten squirm. All tied up, looking delicious. Tasting delicious. When I took my knife out of the drawer she nearly cried, but I left her there without touching her again.
Release. That’s what she wanted. That’s what I wanted, too, but I could control myself. I could control her. Yes, everything was falling nicely into place. Even with her little stunt with the razor. I admired her for that. She was a smart one, I knew that from the beginning. There was something different about her that made my mind go into a reeling circle of...
Emotion? Maybe. Maybe it was the thrill of the kill, enhanced by her as a witness.
I ran a bath for myself; I wanted to imagine that I was her. Imagine what she must have felt like. In the other room she moaned, but I ignored the sounds. I wanted to know what was in my kitten’s mind, what she was really, truly capable of. Now I knew she was capable of killing, or trying to kill, and I understood that. But she had also been capable of suicide.
I settled myself into the bath and picked up my knife from the granite edge of the tub. It looked bigger than when I’d used it to kill other people.
Could I do it? The shadow resting over my heart was a poison, but could I bleed it out this way?
I put the point of the knife to my skin. The blade made a dimple on the thin tissue of skin just under the heel of my palm.
Could I do it? I wanted to. The world grew dark around me, and all I could see was the point of the knife, the shiny steel blade. I twisted the handle slightly. The knife pierced the skin and a drop of blood welled up at the point where it had slipped through into me. My teeth gritted tightly.
In the silver reflection of the blade I saw myself. My mouth twisted in horror. Pain crumpled my face. I looked almost… human.
The knife left my hand, flew across the bathtub. It hit the cream-colored stone and bounced back, slid down into the water at the other end of the bathtub. I pulled my knees back, as though the knife would come after my legs, wanting to finish what it had started.
My hand gripped the punctured wrist. It ached already, ached much more than a simple cut should have hurt. Under my fingertips I could feel the pulse of my heartbeat. It was fast, frightened, but it was there. I was still alive, after all.
Not like this. I couldn’t end it like this. If I could snap my fingers and turn the world off, turn the shadow off, I would. More than her, more than anyone, I hated living. It was an endless fight against the shadow, one that I could not win. I did not want to live, no, there was nothing on earth that made me want to stay alive.
But unlike her, I was too scared to die.
I could lie to myself about why I stayed alive. I saved women from being abused. I saved children from being molested. A service to humanity. But I served the shadow only; the real reason I killed was to drive back the darkness. If I could make it go away by killing myself...
I unwrapped my fingers slowly from around my wrist. The drop of blood smeared red over my skin. I lifted the wrist to my lips and licked off my own blood. The coppery tang filled my nostrils and my stomach roiled.
I stood up from the tub. Water dripped down my body in slow rivulets; it felt thick as blood. At the bottom of the tub, the knife’s edge rippled under the waterline, silver and shining.
I would never be as brave as her. No matter how much I wanted to.
How, then? The thought of popping pills repulsed me – the vomiting, the mess. A gun would be a sure thing, but again, messy. I don’t know why I cared so much about my body. It was only a body, after all. I’d sink into the thick earth of a graveyard as easily as anybody else.
I forced myself to think about it. Worms devouring my flesh. The blood in my veins clotting and crumbling.
I didn’t care overmuch about the bodies of my victims, but mine was different. I wanted my body to stay whole, at least until after I was dead and gone.