by Trisha Wolfe
Because of her, I no longer crave the pain that has always correlated with pleasure. Never one without the other. My body wears the scars of every agonizing slash I inflicted while my victims suffered.
“We can be free,” she says, tempting me further.
And like that, the tension coiling my spine snaps, releasing the pent-up rage. My hand clasps her throat as she pushes her ass up against my pelvis. Christ. A low growl is set loose.
Sweet. Fucking. Perfection.
We can be free. Free to experience every beautiful sensation that was denied to the both of us.
The music crescendos as multicolored lights swirl amid the smoke-filled room. We’re hidden beneath the haze of it all—a part of the scene. And yet we’re right out in the open. Above every boring fuck here, taking what we want. Owning this life.
We are gods.
I push her fake blond hair aside so I can claim her skin. My teeth sink into her shoulder, my fingers branding her thigh as I force her closer, rocking against her harder and faster, frantic to be inside her with each hungry thrust.
Her soft moans vibrate against my chest. “Choose,” I say.
Fucking hell…as her gaze swings around the club, searching her victim out, I swear to God she soaks my hand nestled between her thighs.
“Him,” she says.
Gaze narrowed, I locate her victim right away. He’s easy to spot. I’ve noticed him, too. I draw London even closer as I watch the man dressed in a sleazy metallic V-neck grab a short blonde by the arm. He doesn’t manhandle her; not bold enough to draw attention. But his intentions are clear in his rigid frame.
“Perfect.” With great difficulty, I separate from London. I put enough space between us to adjust myself with a harsh groan. I’m still too tempted to pick her up and take her right against the wall of the club.
Her sound of protest sends a fiery ache down the length of my body, and I turn her around and pin her to the brick, breaths searing my chest. “The bad things I’m going to do to you…” I assure her.
Her eyes glisten with lust as she looks up at me, then she kisses my neck with the softest caress. I bite my lip, letting the pain ground me. “Don’t make me wait. Again.” She slips under my arm, and I catch her hand.
“Make a scene, baby,” I say, letting her fingers go one by one.
I brace my hands behind my neck as I lean against the wall. London’s hips sway, effortless sex appeal radiating off her like a neon sign inviting every man here to take notice.
London is sexy. She’s sultry sophistication. A breathtaking goddess. But London in disguise…with smoldering makeup and tight, formfitting clothes…is downright evil. If I didn’t already know what masquerades beneath, I’d have no willpower to deny her.
I have no willpower now.
Our target has little chance in escaping her snare. She stumbles right up to him, placing her hands on his chest. A drunken display as she laughs off her embarrassment. She’s too sloppy to stand on her own, using his arm to keep herself upright.
He offers her his drink, and she groggily waves it away. She’s had enough. His dark eyes gleam in the bouncing lights. She gives him one more drunken stroke along the arm before she staggers off.
His gaze never leaves her backside.
He looks around the club, taking note of anyone who could’ve witnessed the interaction before he sets his drink on the bar with a crisp bill. Within seconds, he heads toward the exit after London.
I push off the wall. Keeping my distance, I follow him through the club and out into the humid summer night.
My pulse speeds with lust for the hunt, my adrenaline surging with the power.
Alive.
The feeling only a truly free person can feel.
London is the music awakening my soul. She’s the reason my heart beats. I’m alive for her—I’m free because of her, and now we’re unstoppable.
2
Wicked Game
London
The balmy night air sticks to my skin, causing my silk blouse to cling to my chest. I stagger my steps, making sure I appear the helpless, intoxicated victim. The closer the heavy footfalls sound, the more my heart rate ramps.
The man behind me is not a victim.
He chose his fate the second he followed me out of the club.
During one of our first sessions, Grayson said his victims were akin to predators stalking the woods in search of prey. If they fell into the hunter’s trap, they were in the wrong place to begin with.
For us, this moment is predestined. It was never a question of if we would hunt together but when.
Grayson understood our dynamic—what we would mean together—before I could even conceive my own truth.
We’re an inevitability.
Once I shed every lie, severed every anchor weighing me down, it was like being reborn. I walked through the embers of one life to another; a new start. A new woman—one who no longer fears the dark corners of her mind.
Rather, the time I spent apart from Grayson only solidified my resolve. Strengthening the bond between us, knowing with each sign I gave him, he was waiting. Waiting for me to fully accept my new reality. Waiting for the FBI to look the other way. Waiting for the perfect moment, when every mechanism he set into motion aligned, bringing us together.
A skillfully planned and manipulated moment of chance.
Always a step ahead, my patient has this world twisted around his finger…and we’re all just trying not to be left behind.
Like the man gaining on me now, he’s desperate not to be left behind, dominated by a world that no longer belongs solely to the male gender. Anger seethed in his eyes as he scoped out his choice victim in the nightclub. Maybe he’s unaware of why he’s so hostile toward women; maybe he despises his mother. Maybe he recently suffered a stressor that sent him over the edge—a wife or girlfriend left him. Humiliated him. Perhaps these slights have happened to him all his life…and now he’s ready to set it right with me.
No matter what his reasoning, his justification, he won’t be given a second chance. Grayson no longer manufactures redemption just as I no longer suggest rehabilitation.
Rehabilitation for the truly deviant and disturbed is not possible.
I feel the man’s presence looming, a dark shadow growing and swallowing the light. And when the blackness descends over me, he’s there to claim his prize. His arm bands around my waist in a tight vise.
“Shh,” he coos as he places a sweaty hand over my mouth. “We’re just going to have a little fun, baby. Didn’t think you’d put me on frustrate like that and just walk away, did you? Get me all hot”—he rubs his crotch against my ass—“then leave. You know what happens to little cock teases?”
His sour alcohol breath twists my stomach. I shake my head against his hold, maintaining my helpless disposition. Giving him the guise of being in control. Although I’m not sure he needs the reassurance. This isn’t his first time.
There’s no hitch in his voice. No tremble or stutter to convey the usual nerves that accompany a first-time attack. He’s aroused, with no inhibition or worry that he might not be able to perform due to inexperience or his alcohol consumption. Rather, he appears confident. He knows he has enough time.
“Cock teases get punished,” he says. His arm is suddenly gone from around my waist, and I hear the snap of a weapon—a knife. His elbow digs into my back. He smashes my body against the brick building. “Now, I want your palms planted against the wall. You got me?”
I whimper against his hand in affirmation.
“Good. Make this real nice and easy, and I won’t have to mark up that pretty face.”
He moves back, allowing my hands to reach for the brick. The sound of his zipper lowering rebounds off the building.
“Make all the noise you want,” he says around a grunt as he tears a condom wrapper open, “but if you scream, I’m going to make it hurt so much worse.”
My nails dig at the brick. He plans to make it hurt regard
less. This is the control he craves. Rape is never about sex. It’s about stealing ownership. Dominating the victim. Asserting ones power over another.
And knowing I ultimately have the power…?
I’m humming. My excitement buzzes beneath my skin, thrilling.
He gets as far as fisting the hem of my skirt before he stills. I feel the tremble then, the hesitancy. The loss of his power.
“I’m afraid I can’t allow your filthy hands to mar this beautiful creature.”
Grayson’s voice is deep and steady. Outside the club, with no loud music or interference, I can hear the lilt of his Irish accent and the subtle, sensual bass notes that slip over my skin like the silkiest material.
“Turn around, baby,” Grayson says, and I spin slowly to face my attacker.
The man who threatened to punish me appears much more docile now. His arms hang limply by his sides, a crumpled condom wrapper clenched in one hand, a knife in the other. Grayson relieves the man of his weapon, then presses another blade to his neck—a switchblade. The fact that Grayson carries a weapon with him shouldn’t surprise me.
By the heated look in Grayson’s eyes, he’s wondering if it excites me. Yes. Yes, it does.
“What are you…undercover?” the man spits. “This is entrapment.”
Grayson jabs the point of the knife deeper. “Come on, you’re smarter than that. Would a cop use a switchblade?” The guy says nothing. “How’s our friend doing?” Grayson asks me.
I let my gaze rove downward. “A little wilted.” His once-erect penis now flops flaccidly over his open jeans. Grayson has stolen his power, his control—his virility.
“I don’t want any trouble,” the guy claims.
Pressing closer to his back, Grayson says in a low tone, “Neither did she. Guess trouble just knows where to look.” Then to me: “Where is the jugular? Here or here?” He repositions the point of the blade. “Or is this the carotid?”
He winks at me, and I’m like a smitten schoolgirl. Sharing an inside joke with her crush. It’s exhilarating.
“I get them confused,” Grayson continues. “How deep do you have to cut to sever the carotid? Have to slice through tendon and muscle. That sounds messy.” He nudges the man’s shoulder. “Let’s take a walk.”
Squeezing his eyes closed, the guy pleads, “Please—”
“Don’t.” Grayson delivers one word to silence his attempt. “You don’t want to go there yet. It’s far too early.”
A few paces down the alley, Grayson glances at me, an unspoken question in his eyes. He wants me to pick the kill site.
This is too spontaneous. How many times have patients told me that rash decisions were their downfall? I’m not sure if this is another test, if Grayson still doubts my transformation…
“There,” I say, pointing to a darkened warehouse.
Grayson nods his agreement, and a smidgen of relief settles over me.
“It’s not that I don’t like the alley you chose,” Grayson says to our captive. “It’s a good location. Nice and secluded on a dark night. It’s just that I would’ve chosen differently.”
Kill sites are Grayson’s specialty. Over the years, he’s perfected his methods. Selecting places that allow him plenty of time to torture his victims. I diagnosed Grayson with a particular psychopathy: sadistic symphorophilia. He experiences gratification from staging disasters.
Yet there’s so much more beneath his disorder. The man is methodical. His high intelligence alone adds layers of complexity to his psyche…and then there’s the development of a disempathetic type.
I’ve rebuked its claim in academia and all through my professional career, and yet I can’t deny my own yearning to accept the impossible—that a psychopathic criminal has developed feelings for one woman.
Not just feelings. Love.
That all-consuming, elusive emotion the world revolves around.
It’s possible I’m as delusional as the women who write to serial killers in prison. Believing they’re the special one—the one who has penetrated some protective layer of their hardened heart.
No, I’m not that delusional. Not anymore. There is some unique chemistry between Grayson and I that can’t be summed up with blanket terminology or compared to love. It defies reason. And as I watch him guide our victim into the abandoned warehouse, I admit, I even fear him.
For the average mentally healthy person, the emotion of love can make them do the unthinkable. What is Grayson capable of?
He pushes the man down on the cement floor, then looks at me. That sinister spark in his eyes. It’s like foreplay, the anticipation building, and I sense something in him that wasn’t there before.
He fears me, too.
Grayson forces the man to remove the tacky metallic shirt and, once he has the man’s wrists and ankles Zip-tied behind his back, Grayson unloads the rest of the tools on his person. Another knife tucked in his boot. A sculpting wire in his back pocket. A slim roll of masking tape. I filed-down key. I raise an eyebrow.
After he tapes the man’s mouth, he approaches me slowly, stealthily. He removes my blond wig, letting it drop to the floor, then steps close to run his fingers through the escaped wisps of my brown tresses.
“There you are,” he says. He trails his fingers over my shoulder and up my neck, his breathing becoming labored. “I never knew how enjoyable touching could be.”
I take his hand from my neck, bringing both his arms before me. I undo the buttons of his cuffs and roll back the sleeves of his dark-gray button-up, exposing the scars and tattoos that cover his forearms.
“There you are,” I whisper.
As I drag my palms along his arms, feeling every beveled and smooth scar, Grayson towers over me, a formidable force pressing against my senses. His touch, his scent, the suggestive allure in his intense eyes… I’ve always been his captive.
Nothing and no one could’ve prevented our collision. Just like now, as he closes his strong arms around me, his hand trapping the nape of my neck, and crushes his mouth to mine.
An unstoppable force.
His hands seek lower to grasp beneath my arms, then he lifts me above him. I’m a doll in his hands. Fragile and breakable. He keeps me suspended as he backs me against a shipping container. My calves hit the steel edge as I’m seated atop the unit. Grayson’s hands move to my thighs, hiking up my skirt an inch, before he finally breaks the kiss.
A pained expression creases his features. He doesn’t have to say a word, because I’m feeling the same constriction in my chest. The unbearable affliction of not enough.
This is the danger—our danger. Not the threat outside this warehouse; the FBI and police officials closing in on us. Not the judgmental world that would bow to hypocrisy to see us dead for our evils. No, nothing beyond these walls is powerful enough to really threaten either of us.
The danger lies in whether or not we’ll survive each other.
The overbearing desire to consume and consume and consume until we’re sated…but we’ll never be sated. We’re an endless abyss, demanding replete gratification, our disease our enemy. We’re afflicted with an insatiable hunger.
“My sick matches your sick,” I whisper to him.
Burning recognition ignites in the depths of his eyes. He lunges, wild and mad, seizing my wrists. He crawls over me, his knee spreading my legs, as he prowls my body like a feral animal. Every erogenous zone comes alive with the pledge of his cruel touch.
A sharp clatter draws Grayson’s attention, and he releases a low growl. He nips my lower lip, a promise simmering in the dark pools beneath his contacts. Then he releases me and stands. He situates the bulge in his denim before he turns to address the rapist in our presence.
“You know, I wanted to drag this out,” Grayson says as he rounds the man trying to squirm toward the roll door. He drags the guy back to the center by his ankle. “This was supposed to be a reunion present for my girl. I’ve been fantasizing about this moment for a while…watching her get the ch
ance to play…”
Grayson is not a spontaneous killer. Everything he does has been planned out in meticulous detail beforehand. He rarely has any physical contact with his victims. The one thing he does know more than intuitively is if the victim is guilty of a heinous crime.
That’s important to him. It means authorities won’t be inspired to vindicate the victim. There are more deserving victims who warrant the time and effort—not pedophiles. Or corrupt doctors who torture their patients. Or rapists.
Is this all for me? Is his sudden shift in method a way to fuse our two techniques together? Or is it really proof he requires. I killed for him once, but it was Grayson’s hand that pulled the lever. Not mine.
“But,” Grayson adds, groaning as he drags a clear plastic tarp to the center. He then reaches into the man’s back pocket, alleviating him of his wallet. “But, Larry Fleming—” he glances down at the man “—really? That’s unfortunate. Well, Larry, I’m sure I could do a quick search on you. Find all sorts of other unfortunate things, like the fact you’ve probably been convicted before.”
Larry stammers as he gets to his knees. He’s muttering against the masking tape. Grayson yanks it off, his blade pressed to Larry’s neck so quick the man swallows his cry of pain.
In a shaky voice, Larry says, “I was falsely accused, and I still served my time!”
Grayson rolls his shoulders back. He grabs Larry’s phone he placed out of his reach from one of the crates, silent fury radiating from his body. He drops the phone to the tarp and smashes it. With a forceful yank on the guy’s collar, Grayson pulls Larry upright. He drops closer to his ear. “She is beautiful, isn’t she?”
Larry doesn’t answer.
The click of the switchblade reverberates around the warehouse, then the blade is once again at Larry’s throat. Larry stutters out a “Y-yes.”
Grayson looks at me. “Spread your legs, London. Just like you used to in your therapy room. Nice and slow…but leave them parted.”
