by Dark, Aubrey
“You destroy me,” he whispered. His face looked so sincere that for a moment I wanted nothing more than for him to kiss me. He bent over me, the head of his cock probing at my entrance, then retreating. He reached for the bedside drawer and I heard the crinkle of a wrapper fall to the bed. I whimpered for him, lifting my hips in ready anticipation.
He filled me with one violent thrust. His eyes widened as he plunged into me, and I don’t know what I looked like but I was screaming, screaming, already falling over the edge into an orgasm that shook my body to pieces.
He rocked back, then forward, rolling his hips deeper into my flesh. I felt my body stretch for him, clenching around him even as the climax shivered me. My legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him deeper.
I wanted him. I wanted him inside of me. I wanted every bit of him. He was a monster, yes, he was a villain, he was evil, and yet right then I needed him to take me, to own me. I wanted him to give me back my desires.
Sweat beaded on his lip as he plunged into me again and again, rolling his hips against mine. And I hadn’t yet recovered from my first orgasm when I felt my body responding again with need, aching for another release that only he could give me.
The room was bright and now I could see clearly the blue and green and gray in his irises, gleaming brightly. His hand pinned down my hip as he thrust and I bucked against him, wanting him to control me. The ropes were tight around my wrists and I loved it, loved the feeling of giving myself over to every sensation that was happening at that very instant.
His rhythm grew faster, more insistent. I had thought that he had filled me entirely, but as he thrust he grew even stiffer, larger. His body rocked against mine, crashing body onto body in a whirlwind of slapping flesh, slick and ready.
“Ohhhh,” I moaned, feeling myself grow ready for release. I twisted under him as he jackhammered between my thighs. His cock slammed into me again and again, harder and faster until I felt him jerk upwards, freezing at the apex of his thrust in a spasm.
I came at the same time, my body rippling with pleasure as he jerked once, again, again, groaning in my ear. The sweet sound of his release. We clutched at each other needily, two dark souls in the middle of the strangest redemption.
He collapsed against me, his body almost crushing mine. I could feel his heartbeat racing against my own chest, our hearts trying to outdo each other. His lungs pressed against me with each breath.
And for the first time in a long time, I thought to myself:
I’m alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Gav
The darkness receded as I spilled myself inside of her. The world brightened, the shadow gone.
For how long? I didn’t care. What mattered was here, now.
What mattered was her.
She reached up to me and touched my lips. On her face was something like wonder.
“I love you,” she said, and began to cry.
Kat
“I love you.”
The words tumbled from my mouth and I lay there, more surprised that I had said them than surprised that I had felt them. Was it shock that drove me to tears? No, something else. A desperation that had grown inside of me until now, it showed itself.
He didn’t say anything. Instead he stood up, stumbling at the edge of the bed.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I’m sorry? I wanted to reach out to him. Why are you sorry? Tears streamed down my cheeks and I was unable to stop them. I felt completely melted, unraveled. He had torn me apart inside and out, and I wanted him to turn to me, to hold me together. Instead he put his head in his hands.
“Please…” I whispered. “Gav?”
“Why are you crying?” he asked, a hint of frustration in his voice.
I shook my head. Strands of my hair stuck to my cheek, hot and wet as it was with tears.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It was wonderful. Gav—”
“And you’re crying.”
“This isn’t real!” I sobbed.
There. That was it. That was the thing that made me cry right now. He had split open my heart, and I had given it away to an illusion.
The realization shattered me. All around me, the walls spun. He was there, sitting right there. He had touched me, made me feel alive. He had made me feel wanted. He had made me feel loved.
“This isn’t real,” I repeated. Trying to make myself believe what I knew to be the truth. “None of this is real.”
“What isn’t real?” His voice was blank, empty. It made me even angrier. I brought my fists down hard, but against the mattress they didn’t even make a noise. My sobs were hoarse and angry.
“You!”
“I’m not real?”
He turned his head slowly, carefully meeting my gaze.
“You’re a psychopath,” I whispered. “The only guy who’s ever cared about me is a psychopath.”
“Does that make it not real?”
“But you don’t care, not really. You don’t care at all about me. I’m just a pet to you. I’m a prisoner. It’s not real.”
“You think you have it all figured out, kitten.”
“I do.”
“You’re wrong.” His voice lilted upward, as though teasing me. My throat burned.
“Tell me it’s not true, then. Tell me you care about me.”
“What would that serve?”
“It would help me be less lonely.”
He turned, stood, his hands loose at both sides. He was naked, but standing over me I thought he looked for all the world like a warrior at the ready. The only thing missing was a knife in his hand.
“I care about you,” he said.
“I don’t believe you.”
He spread his arms out, palms upward.
“What do you want?”
The air in the room was stale. My whole body rejected it. I curled up on my side, pulling the sheets over my shoulder. I had been so stupid. I had thought that when I reached out to him, he would reach back. But he wasn’t human. He was a monster. And because I loved him, I was a monster, too.
“Nothing. I don’t care.”
“You don’t care? Not even if I leave the house?”
I knew what he was saying. And yet my voice came out monotonous, uncaring. I didn’t know if it was me who was speaking, or someone else.
“If you need to kill someone,” I said, “kill me.”
Gav
I wanted to vomit. I had defiled her, poor girl. I had poisoned her with myself, poisoned her with darkness.
And now she wanted to die.
I pulled my pants back on. Then I took the knife from my drawer. Her eyes didn’t widen, but her pupils dilated as she looked at the blade in my hand.
Did she still think that I could kill her?
“I’m sorry,” I said again. And yes, I was sorry. Guilt wracked me inside, made me sick with dread. She lay there still and naked, tear-streaked. Dirty with my sins. I went to the door.
“No,” she said. “Gavriel.”
“I’m sorry.” The door closed behind me. And the padlock went on the bedroom door.
“No!” she yelled from behind the door. The lock snapped shut with a thick iron clank. Her steps to the door. Her fist pounding.
“No! Gav! No!”
“I’m sorry.” This I said to myself as I walked down the stairs, down again to the basement, down, down.
It was dark on the floor of the basement where I lay down and closed my eyes. The shadow would always be a part of me. I wrapped myself up in shadows and I would not touch anything again. I wouldn’t mar the outside world. Hours passed, hours and hours, and I did not eat, did not drink. I did not deserve release. I’d lied to myself about what I did. The men I killed were monsters, but I was worse than any of them.
I did not deserve anything but darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Kat
When he took the knife out of the drawer, I froze.
Would he give me what
I had asked for? I had told him to kill me, but as I spoke, watching him, I realized that I didn’t want to die. He had made me feel alive, more alive than I had felt since I was young. And I wanted to live.
I almost smiled, weird as it was. Only after being threatened with murder, only after everything he had done to me… only now did I want to live.
But he didn’t kill me. He didn’t threaten me with the knife. Instead, he tucked it into his belt and left. I scrambled for the door as soon as I realized what he was doing.
“No! Gav!”
He was going to kill someone, I was sure of it.
I pounded on the doorframe, screaming at the top of my lungs.
“No! Don’t do it!”
He heard me, I was sure of it. His footsteps walked away from the door, down the hallway. I pressed my ear to the door and heard him start to go down the stairs.
“GAV!”
If he killed someone because of me…
“No,” I whispered. It was stupid of me to taunt him. Stupid of me to tempt him to kill. And if he wouldn’t kill me, he would kill someone.
“Gav—”
His name caught in my throat.
He was my entire world right now. And I was just a toy for him to play with. He never loved me. I didn’t even know if he was capable of love. But the emotion inside of me swelled and swelled, and I couldn’t get rid of it.
How could I love someone like that? What kind of horrible person would I have to be, to love a serial killer?
He was the angel of death, but he had brought me life again. He had shone a light onto the things that mattered. It was only after losing everything that I realized what was really important in life. And what was important to me?
Him, a small voice whispered. Only him.
He had played the game well. Trade by trade, I had given him the shattered pieces of me. And he had taken those pieces, put them back together. He had shown me a side of life that I had never seen.
Was it a game? I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Forget everything the rest of the world cared about. I didn’t need to be beautiful, or wear pretty clothes. I didn’t need to lose weight or go to parties. I didn’t need to tally up friends one by one until I was popular. Here I was, naked and alone, and my mind was clearer than it had ever been before.
All I needed was myself.
“Good,” I mumbled. “Because all you have right now is yourself, you idiot.”
I left the door and curled up in the bed, hugging my knees to my chest. I couldn’t think about it. Wouldn’t think about it. Wouldn’t think about him, how he might be out there right now, bringing someone back to carve them up…
No. Stop.
I lay there for hours, willing myself to shut off that part of my brain. I didn’t have a panic attack, though. Whenever my anxiety threatened to bubble up, I tamped it back down, thinking about the way the tree branches had waved above our heads. Thinking about the newts I had seen, trying so desperately to get away.
My thoughts drifted back to him, over and over again. To the bruises I’d seen in the photographs. To the way he looked when he plunged inside of me, and then afterward. His eyes had sparked bright, and I thought that I might have saved him from that awful blankness that he called the shadow.
I blinked at the realization. It wasn’t just myself that I cared about. I cared about him. I wanted to be his, to be the one to drive away the darkness inside of him.
I didn’t realize that I had drifted off into sleep until the bolt outside the door snapped open and I raised my head. My cheeks were wet with tears. I was terrified to see what was on the other side of the door, but worse than that was not knowing.
The door swung open and he walked in, still holding the knife. His hair was mussed and there was a streak of dirt on the side of his face. His pants were dusty, cobwebs lacing his ankles.
But the knife—
The knife was clean. There was no blood on the blade.
He sat down silently next to me on the bed, staring down at the knife in his lap.
“Where did you go?” I asked.
“The basement.”
The basement? He had locked me up and terrified me, all for nothing?
“Why?” I asked, my heart beating fast.
“To see what it was like. I was curious.”
“And?”
“It was dark.”
He turned, raised his eyes to me. I saw emotion in there, a stark sadness that scared me.
“Gav?”
“Dress. Come with me.”
He watched me quietly as I pulled on my clothes. Every glance of his felt like it bruised my skin. I wanted him to tie me up again. I wanted his arms around me. I wanted his touch. But he didn’t touch me, not at all.
When I was dressed, he stood up and walked out of the room, the knife hanging loosely at his side. I followed him nervously. He had always had a hand on me before, and I wondered what he had decided to do with me.
Was he leading me to the kitchen? Was he going to hurt me? Had he decided, after all this, to kill me?
Before, he had put a hand on me to guide me. Now, he walked down the stairs. I paused at the statue before following him down the steps.
“Come on,” he said, calling up to me. “Don’t be afraid.”
Those words chilled me. I came down the stairs slowly and followed him across the living room, down the hallway to the front door. He opened the door.
“Go on,” he said.
I stepped past him with my breath held. When I was in front of him, he could stab me from behind. He could slit my throat. He could—
“Kat.”
I turned around to see him standing in the doorway, his knife hanging limply from one hand.
“Gavriel?”
“I’m sorry, kitten.” His eyes were sad, so sad. It was all I could do not to run back to him, to take him in my arms, to comfort him. “Go on, now.”
“What…” my voice trailed off as I realized that he wasn’t following me out onto the porch. “What are you doing?”
“I’m letting you go.”
The words buzzed around my ears, but I didn’t comprehend what he was saying.
“For a walk?”
“Forever. You’re free.”
“Wh—Why?” I stammered. Every muscle in my body felt like it was made of lead. I stood on the porch, dumbfounded. I was still convinced that if I turned around, he would raise the knife, fling it forward into my back.
“You’re right,” he said, gesturing outside with an expansive wave of the knife. “This. All this. It doesn’t matter. It’s not real. I can’t take your life away from you.”
You’ve given me back my life, I wanted to say. You’ve given me the only reason to live. But my voice caught in my throat. Stupid, stupid. I should have turned to run before he could change his mind. Something told me that he wouldn’t change his mind.
It’s not real, he had said. What I had thought was something between us was nothing. And now he had pulled the rug out from under my feet. I had just accepted my fate, and now he was handing me another one. As ridiculous as it felt, I wanted nothing more than to run back inside, to stay with him.
“You’re really letting me go?” I croaked.
“Yes. Stupid, I know. Maybe I am a stupid person, after all.”
“That’s not it.” Why was I still there? Why was I not running away right now?
“It’s because I’m bored, kitten,” he said. His fingers tightened around the blade. “Bored with all of this. You have to go now.”
He opened his mouth to say something else, then closed it. Stepping forward, he reached up and cupped my cheek in his hand. His palm was hot against my skin.
Don’t do this, I cried inside. Keep me. Want me. I need you to want me.
But I said nothing.
He bent his head and brushed his lips against mine. The kiss was so light, and yet I felt electricity arc through my nerves at the barest touch.
I wanted him to sta
b me with the knife he held. I wanted to die in that moment, wanting something that I could never have. But he didn’t raise the knife at all. I believe he had forgotten it was there.
“Goodbye, kitten.”
“Goodbye.”
He stepped back and closed the door behind him. I could hear the snap of the lock.
I stood on the porch for another moment, my body shaking, unsure what it was that had just happened. Then I turned and began to walk down the driveway, the sun shining brightly overhead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Gav
The world closed in on me as the door swung shut behind her. Closed in - the walls disappeared into black. My body went numb.
She was gone.
Everything I’d worked to keep secret was out, the walls were broken. In my mind, I saw her running out to the road, sticking out her thumb. Catching a ride to the police station. They would come, they would knock down the door. What would they find?
As if underwater, I went to the bedroom. Pulled the arm chair around to the foot of the bed. Untied the rope from the bedposts.
The rope, useless. I would never tie her up again. Useless, useless, except for one thing. My hands moved automatically, looped the rope around itself. The knot tied itself, it seemed, and before I knew it the noose was finished, hanging limply from my hand.
Still in the bedroom, the rope slung over the high rafter, scraped the wood as I pulled it tight. Tied snug against the foot of the bed. The chair under my feet held steady, although my hands shook.
Me? I felt nothing. It wasn’t me who took the noose and draped it around my neck. Not my hands which tightened the knot fast. The rope scratched the skin at my collarbone, but the sensation came from a distance, not from my own nerve endings. I was watching myself commit suicide.
Before, in the tub, I’d held the knife to my skin and recoiled. Now, though, there was nothing for me to recoil from. Just an empty room.
I took my last breath and stepped forward into nothing.
Kat
At the end of the driveway, I caught the motion sensor. The iron gate rattled open in front of me. I stared out at the curving road.
I didn’t want to leave.
So ridiculous. Insane. But there was something at the back of my mind, something that was nagging at me. I didn’t know what it was.
