Leaning on the railing behind him, Lincoln crossed his arms, his cock finally growing limp. “We have a problem,” he muttered.
“Please tell me it doesn’t involve the one you took home. Please tell me she’s not up there, dead, across the hall from Stella,” I whispered, mostly joking, sizing him up. Not repentant in the least, not that I expected him to be. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d killed someone without planning to, however I was not happy it had bled into the bedroom with Stella.
“You know me too well,” Lincoln said.
I wanted to push him over the railing. It wouldn’t kill him, but it just might knock some sense into him. “What were you thinking?” I said, taking a step forward. We were both still naked, but neither of us cared much, not after sharing our first.
“I was thinking her eyes were too blue like fucking Stella’s.”
I wanted to strangle him now. He killed the girl because her blue eyes reminded him of Stella’s lone blue orb? What the hell kind of sense did that make? None. None whatsoever.
“This is the end, right? You’re not going to see Stella again,” Lincoln stated, hoping I’d go along with it. The man still didn’t know how much I needed her, so I had to inform him.
“I am going to see her again, because I want to. I need to. And you need her too, you are just too stupid to realize it.”
“She’s clearly not healthy for us.”
“She’s only not healthy for you because you’re fighting her. Stop doing that!” I was practically whisper-yelling at him now, because apparently it was a real thing people did in the spur of the moment, just like murder.
“I—” Lincoln was about to say more, but the sounds of a door opening stopped him. “She’s—” He went up a step, but I grabbed his arm and tugged him back down. “What are you doing?” he hissed, glaring at me with eyes as cruel and black as his heart. My heart was much the same, only I hid it better.
“I’m letting the pieces fall where they may,” I said. Stella wasn’t normal—now was the time to put her to the test. Now was the time to see just how fucked up she really was beneath that unique stare.
Lincoln let out an annoyed breath, and I was slow to release him, measuredly making my way up the steps, being as quiet as I could. Almost immediately, I saw Lincoln’s door had been pushed open, and I tiptoed closer, peering in from the hall. What I saw…it made me happy in the most peculiar of ways.
When I turned back to Lincoln, who stood scowling behind me, I could only smile. The smile remained on my face as I pushed him into my room.
Stella was…
She was fucking perfect.
Chapter Sixteen - Stella
I couldn’t just sit there, while the guys were off doing who knew what. I kind of felt like I had to pee. Being used was…not something I was used to, but I liked it remarkably so. It was like my body craved something it never had before, instinctual almost.
I waited a moment on the floor, wiping at my mouth. I could still taste the remnants of Lincoln’s cum, and I wondered if he’d done the same thing to the girl he’d taken home. I’d heard her breathy sighs through the door, so I knew she was here. I also saw the wetness on his dick before he untied me and had me like a dog.
My mind raced. Where was she? Asleep in his bed? Was she not enough for his appetite? Had her stamina not lasted long enough, and he’d needed more to reach his fill? I would not complain about getting Lincoln after, but I was more than a little curious when it came to the girl.
I had to know if she was still here.
Getting to my feet, I tugged down my shirt to cover my bare ass. My fingers curled around the door handle, and I slowly tugged the lever down and pulled it open. I heard the muffled sounds of the guys arguing farther down the stairs, but I wasn’t interested in whatever they were saying. I had a one-track mind.
I crossed the hall, pausing before the door I knew led to Lincoln’s room. I remembered glancing in it the first night I’d come here with Edward, and I remembered it being dark and gloomy. I stepped inside, quiet as a mouse.
What I did not remember was the girl on Lincoln’s bed.
The sheets were ruffled and sticky with sweat, a telltale sign he’d been with her moments before coming to me. Her head was turned to the side, away from me, and when I moved closer, I saw the markings around her neck, noticed the way her eyes remained open. A glasslike expression frozen to her face. I knew it even before I was at her side, gazing at her from the foot of the bed.
She was dead.
Tilting my head, I studied her. I wanted to touch her, feel if she was still warm or had already gotten cold, but I knew my fingerprints should probably stay off her body. Her corpse.
She was a pretty girl, prettier than I was. Her hair was a golden yellow, bleached, if her dark roots had anything to reveal. Her body was not as skinny as mine, not as bony, and her chest was large and ample. She was curvy and gorgeous in a way I would never be, and yet she was here, dead, and I stood, still alive, even after my encounter with Lincoln.
As my stare rose to her face, past the dark bruises on her neck, I couldn’t help but wonder why. Why had she met her end here while I hadn’t? What made us so different? I met her glassy eyes, realizing their color was only a shade or two away from my blue one.
So Lincoln had taken this girl home, fucked her, used her up, and then killed her? Or had he killed her while using her? I knew both options were bad, and I wasn’t certain which was worse. I also knew I should probably run from this house and call the police, but Lincoln was a cop, so he had to know how to hide a body. And judging from the way he had been able to fuck me so soon after, how he’d acted…I knew.
He’d killed before.
I was in the house of a killer.
Hmm. Maybe I should be more worried.
It took every ounce of my strength to pull myself away from the girl’s body, and even after I left the room, I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering. Thousands of thoughts raced in my head and I was powerless to stop them.
Lincoln could’ve killed her after sex and then gotten off again as he did it. He knew Edward had me right across the hall to fulfill his needs. I should feel dirty, should feel something other than curiosity and acceptance—because it wasn’t every day you found out the men you’d lost your virginity to were riding the crazy train—but I didn’t. My curiosity was morbid and my acceptance was final.
Oh, yes. I knew Edward had to be in on it to some extent, otherwise there should’ve been shouting, if Lincoln had told him what he did to the girl.
This was such a strange twist to the night; I found myself wondering where it would go next.
Would these guys try to kill me? Was I a thread that had to be cut? I shouldn’t be excited at the prospect, but considering my line of work and what I wrote about, to find my end at the hands of killers seemed fitting, even if they weren’t serial killers themselves.
What really sucked was if I made it out of this house alive, I couldn’t tell Callie about it. She’d freak and call the cops right away; she was the more normal out of the two of us, and she never understood my fascination with all things morbid.
When I stood and moved back into Edward’s bedroom, I was met with two sets of eyes. One dark, one light. Both stared at me doggedly, and I supposed my bathroom excuse wouldn’t work, especially not if they saw me in Lincoln’s bedroom with the body, which they definitely did if they walked past in the hall.
Damn it. I’d been too entranced in her lifeless blue eyes to notice, too lost in my own mind.
They were going to kill me.
Lincoln stood near the window, his arms crossed over his beefy, solid chest. Edward was beside him, though he looked a bit more relaxed. Both men were still naked, and right now they only had eyes for me.
A normal person would’ve tried to run.
But I wasn’t normal.
I stood with my back straight, meeting the eyes of both men. Lincoln’s scowl deepened when I met his stare, probably
because he hated my eyes. I didn’t hold it against him, because he was the first person to ever tell me he didn’t like them. They made him think I was a liar. I wasn’t, not really.
“You know I saw her,” I said, my voice surprisingly even, considering the fact I was staring down my own two angels of death. “And I know you probably are going to kill me now, so…I won’t ask too many questions. I just want to know—why her?”
Lincoln’s chest rumbled with a ragged, heavy breath, causing Edward to glance at him sharply. It was Lincoln who answered me, because it was Lincoln who had killed her while Edward and I were busy over here. “I killed her because she wouldn’t close her fucking eyes, no matter how many times I told her to.”
So he killed her because she wouldn’t listen. He killed her to be in control. The question lingered though: why did he need her eyes shut? Was it because the color of her eyes had reminded him of mine?
I…wasn’t sure if I should be flattered or not. I kind of was.
I asked the only other question I could, “Why me?”
This time it was Edward. “Because I knew you’d be perfect for us, Stella. I could tell by reading your articles that you would complete us.” He gave me a dimpled smile, and still, even though I knew I was going to die tonight, his smile gave me butterflies. I wanted to smile back, but I didn’t. “And after tonight, I know it beyond a shadow of a doubt. You’re meant to be ours.”
Theirs.
His and Lincoln’s? Lincoln, the man who’d killed a girl because her eyes reminded him of me? I was…strangely okay with it, even though I knew I shouldn’t be.
I watched Edward push away from the wall, slowly making his way to me. He slipped an arm around my lower back, pulling me to him. “How could we kill what’s been perfectly made for us?”
As a human being, I knew I wasn’t crafted for anyone, but I couldn’t argue, because I felt much the same way. These two, psychos as they might be, were mine just as much as I was theirs.
Shit.
Edward sensed something was off. “What’s wrong? Are you worried about the body? Don’t be. Lincoln will take care of it—” At the mention of his name, Lincoln let out a groan, interrupting whatever he was about to say next.
But that wasn’t it. “No,” I spoke, eyes crawling up Edward’s chiseled chest. “It’s just…I have a date tomorrow.” My words caught both of them off guard. Edward looked shocked while Lincoln looked angry.
“What the fuck do you mean, a date?” Lincoln spat out.
“With who?” Edward asked, keeping calm and collected, but I could tell the news got to him.
It made me…content, to know I could elicit reactions like these from them. Even from Lincoln, who could barely look at me because of my eyes. I didn’t know these two well, but I knew enough, now.
I couldn’t walk away from them, nor could I walk away from the date I had with Killian. He was my boss, and now there was someone out there killing people and displaying their bodies like people in mass, I couldn’t get fired.
And, if I told the whole truth, I liked having power over Edward and Lincoln. I liked that I could elicit such strong emotions from them. It made me feel, for once in my entire life, important. Here, with these two, I was more than what I was before.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I won’t go home with him like I did with you. Believe it or not, you were my first.” And now you’re my only, but I couldn’t say that without sounding like I was plucked from a Disney movie, nakedness and the dead girl aside.
Edward’s brows came together. “Your first? Your first what?”
When I smiled and told him “Everything,” he shoved me to the bed and ran his tongue all along my body. I closed my eyes and surrendered myself to the darkness, to the luscious, sweet sensations of a blissful void.
These men would be my undoing.
Chapter Seventeen - Lincoln
Ed took her home when dawn started to stream through the window. She’d slept like a baby after we’d taken turns with her a few times. When Stella’s eyes were closed, it was almost easy for me to forget the body across the hall, forget what I had to do today before I went into work to get rid of it.
Luckily for us, my family had connections. They didn’t call on me often anymore, but I was still more than able to use their connections to my benefit.
When Ed left with Stella, I worked on putting the body in the trunk of my car. The wonders a man could hide behind a closed garage door. I threw my sheets in the washer and was currently taking a shower.
Something had to be done, I knew. Something final. Stella was like a plague on this house. Watching her bend Ed to her will last night was…I couldn’t believe it. Hell, I couldn’t fucking believe Ed wanted to keep her, couldn’t believe he tested her by letting her see Jessica’s body.
I should’ve killed Stella last night, barged past Ed and went into my room. Put my hands around that frail, thin neck of hers and squeezed with all of my might. Watched as her eyes popped out from the pressure and blood vessels broke under her skin. I wanted to feel her take her final breath beneath me.
God, Stella deserved nothing less than my hands around her throat. At the rate she was going, she’d have Ed wrapped around her pinky before the week was out—and it was already Friday morning.
Fuck.
Why the hell did I listen to Ed? Why did I stand back and participate last night when I should’ve been lugging her body down the stairs too? Fuck, fuck, fuck. I wanted to bang my fists against the tile and scream into the water pounding my back. Stella was a snake, coiling around the Garden of Eden Ed and I had built, and I wasn’t about to let her ruin it for us. I wasn’t about to let her take him from me.
He was family to me, even if we weren’t related. Even if I’d only met him when we were teenagers. He was practically all I had, and I thought we had a good system going—bring home our conquests, share them, dispose of them. Bring home our prey, share them, dispose of them in a different, methodical way. Then Miss I love Serial Killers walked in and fucked the whole thing up.
Stella and her goddamn obsession with serial killers.
Ed and his goddamn obsession with Stella.
Me and my goddamn obsession with keeping Ed sane. Really, I was the only one here with a lick of sense. I was the only one who knew what had to be done to fix this situation.
Stella could not continue to be in our lives. She would mess it up more, and I liked my messes just the way they were, and unlike Ed, I had not completely fallen for her two-colored eyes and her creepy, emotionless face. She had a nice pussy, but so did a lot of other women. She was nothing special. Nothing near special enough to warrant Ed’s fascination.
I still didn’t understand his obsession with her. I knew it had something to do with the focal point of her articles, but beyond that, there was nothing special about her. So what if she was enraptured with serial killers? A lot of people were, they just didn’t freely admit it as often or as publicly. Just because she was a lover of serial killers did not mean she was automatically right for us.
And did Ed ever ask me if I liked her? No. No, he’d just decided she was good for us and that we were keeping her. I had no say in the matter, no opinions that meant anything. Why the fuck did he just assume I’d want her as much as he did? I couldn’t look into her eyes without wanting to blow my own brains out.
Her eyes were like the fucking devil. One told a truth, the other told a lie, and no matter how hard anyone tried, no one would be able to tell what was what. I was never a superstitious person—I was the most logical out of the two of us—but with eyes like that…they almost made me feel superstitious and silly.
Ed would understand what I had to do. He would realize eventually I only did this for his benefit, for his prosperity. We couldn’t live a long life if Stella was included, I just knew. She would drag us down, separate us. I couldn’t live a life without Ed in it. No bitch, sweet pussy or not, was going to get in between us. Ed would forgive me for what I had t
o do.
As if it hadn’t already seen enough action last night, my dick throbbed, my balls aching as it grew hard. Just thinking about all of the possibilities, all the different ways I could do it, made me excited. In more ways than one. That bitch better enjoy these last few hours of her life, because I was going to kill her.
I had to kill Stella.
Chapter Eighteen - Stella
When Ed dropped me at the bar, I called Callie immediately. I needed to talk to someone, though I guess I couldn’t really get into too much detail about what happened last night…and then again this morning, quickly before we left. Lincoln had still looked at me like I’d grown horns, but I was hoping that with time, he would loosen up.
Maybe he’d loosen up after he realized I wasn’t going to rat him out to the cops, even if I should have.
Callie didn’t answer. I knew it was because she was probably sleeping, so I let it go to voicemail before hanging up. I’d just tell her later, when I saw her. Maybe she’d be up by the time I made it to the house.
She wasn’t.
She was still asleep, passed out in her bed, snoring loudly. I could hear Callie’s snores even through the walls, and I actually felt a smile growing on my lips as I hurriedly ate breakfast. I wanted to hit the cafe before clocking in at the Tribune, respond to the latest comments on my blog, and of course email Killian the article for Sunday’s paper. It would go online tonight, a few days early.
I didn’t even shower. I felt rushed, even though I really wasn’t. All I did was change, throw on some deodorant and brush my teeth. My fingers were the only comb that ran through my hair, and I grabbed my bag before I was out the door.
I felt…oddly at ease. Oddly happy. Like for once, my life had taken the right turn. Ironic, considering that turn led to a dead body and two murderers, but it was a good turn for me anyways. I wouldn’t go back if given the chance. I would stay right where I was, because Edward and Lincoln made me feel things I’d never felt before.
Cruel Black Hearts: A Dark Reverse Harem Romance Page 12
