by K. Webster
My eyes dart open and I glower at the woman who is not Lauren.
She is evil and a monster.
Who feels good on my cock.
“That’s it,” she murmurs. “Come inside me, soldier.”
She fingers her clit as she rides me and when her cunt clenches with her orgasm, I let out a howl. My cock jerks inside her as I release. I’m spent and weak.
“Good boy,” she says. “They’ll eat because of you. See how good I reward you when you play nice?”
“Go to hell,” I rasp out.
She grins. “So much fire in you. You should give me what I want and then stay with me. I quite like fire. I like your dick too.” She gets closer, her hot breath tickling me. “If you proved your loyalty, I could reward you more often. Perhaps even let you roam about freely. Of course you’d have to spend your nights in my bed. What do you say, soldier?”
I head butt her so hard, it knocks us both out.
A choked sound drags me from my nightmares into the present. For a moment, I stare down in confusion at Anta thrashing in the bed. How did I get the upper hand? How did I break free of my restraints and overpower her?
Her hair covers her face and my grip on her throat is tight. She struggles and fights with all her might. I stare down at the knife in my hand. It’s not the gold and ruby one. It’s mine. How did I get my knife? I watch in fascination as the tip of my blade cuts between two of her ribs. Her skin parts and separates easily. How simple it would be to cut every inch of her flesh from her body.
One, two, three, four, five.
Five slices down the side of her body.
So much blood.
Anta is beautiful when she bleeds.
I can’t bring myself to cut her a sixth time when my eyes lock in on the familiar heart at her hip. The knife falls from my grip and my palm smears over the blood. I spread it over the heart, trying to hide it. My brain is playing tricks on me.
It’s not Anta.
Untrue.
It’s her and she will pay.
“C-Cole,” she chokes out, her words making their way up her throat when my hand relaxes its hold on her neck in my confusion. “It hurts.”
So familiar.
Not cold and cruel.
Not Anta.
“Natalie?” I whisper, jerking my hand away from her neck. Reality spatters me in the face like icy rain.
“It hurts,” she wails. “Why did you hurt me?”
Pain and accusation.
My heart squeezes inside my chest. With jerky movements, I slap away the hair in her face. Gray eyes, flooded with tears and bloodshot, bore into me.
“W-Why?”
I gape down at her in horror. So much blood. Why? Why? Why? “Because I’m fucking crazy!”
She blinks rapidly, sending tears racing down her temples. “Help me.”
My hands are shaking as I frantically tug at the belt on her wrists. The blood continues to ooze, soaking the bed below. Despair claws its way up inside me.
She can’t die.
I won’t let her.
Not Natalie.
“Honey,” I choke out.
She trembles but reaches for me. Reaches for the monster. Tries to pull him to her. Confusion warps my mind and fragments my soul.
Why does she want me after what I’ve done to her?
“It hurts,” she sobs. “It hurts.”
I’m jolted into action, my mind clearing as my brain recalls my military training. I rush from the room, hating how her lonely howls threaten to rip my heart from my chest, and seek out my medical supplies. When I return, she is exactly how I left her. Paler. Sadder. Emptier.
“Honey,” I murmur as I sit beside her. I have nothing else to say. I’m sorry? How do you apologize for cutting up a person because they remind you of someone else?
“Cole,” is all she says back. Broken, ragged, devastated.
My chest aches, but I put all my focus into cleaning her cuts. Carefully and gently. With soft, steady fingers, I stitch her up. Natalie is strong and brave, uttering only a few curse words as I stab her over and over again with the needle. After a good half hour of hard work, I finally have her put back together again. Once I cleanse away the blood from her body, I wrap her in bandages.
She groans when I scoop her into my arms. I’m careful not to jostle her, but she has so many stitches. Wounds I caused. The ache inside of me is worse than anything Anta ever did to me. It’s an ache I’ll never get rid of.
I reach my room and look down at Natalie. My voice cracks when I say, “I’m sorry you had to find out this way. I’m…”
“…cLINICALLY INSANE.”
I stare up at him. The unreachable psychopath who was murmuring nonsense as he cut into my flesh is gone.Cole stares at me with his sad brown eyes, guilt flashing in them. Blood is smeared on his face—my blood—and I’m desperate to clean the monstrous act from his skin. I scrub with my thumb on his scruffy cheek in a frantic way. His brows knit together shamefully.
“I was this person…” He lays me down on his soft, warm bed. “One person. For a decade I’ve been carefully weaving these two parts of me into one.” His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “You ripped me in two again. You started a war.”
Tears spill from my eyes as I regard the man fighting the demons within him. When he was cutting into me with the wildness of a feral animal, I thought I’d lost him. I thought I was alone. I thought I was going to die.
But then he came back to me.
Cole.
The one I desperately need and want. I want to keep him here with me—to keep us both safe from that bloodthirsty entity who seeks to destroy.
“I, uh, I need to clean up,” he says gruffly as he pulls away.
“Don’t leave me,” I sob, reaching for him despite the pain in my side.
His face crumples into the most heartbroken expression. “Let me clean your blood from me. Please.”
All I can manage is a nod. He stares at me for a long moment and then disappears. I roll over onto my good side and stare out the window. More rain. All it does is rain. I thought I loved the rain, but now I’m starting to hate it. I want sunshine and happiness. I want a new beginning.
I grow sleepy and yawn so wide, my jaws ache. I’ve long since burrowed under his covers that smell just like him. Masculine and clean. A man who isn’t a monster. I’m lulled into the false sense of security as sleep steals me.
I wake to warmth curling around me. Possessive and protective. It’s dark now—the lights having long since been turned off—and I can’t see him. He can’t see me. Worry niggles at me that he’ll lose himself again.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers against my ear. Hot and breathy. “I’m so sorry.”
My tense muscles begin to relax as I let him envelop me. His palm splays over my stomach, careful to avoid the stitches that now burn.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he admits. “I wanted to stay with you.”
Desperate to understand him, I roll onto my back, searching for his face in the dark. There’s no moonlight to show me his face, so I have to imagine it. Strong nose. Deep brown eyes. Scruffy cheeks. Sharp, defined jawline that could cut glass.
“How do I keep you with me?” I ask, my voice shaking with nerves.
“I don’t know,” he admits in a broken voice. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Are you really sick?”
“In the mind, yes,” he murmurs. “So sick.”
“Can you be healed?”
His lips brush against mine—soft and eager. “Sometimes with you, I think it’s possible.”
“I thought I was going to die,” I tell him, a tremor in my voice. “I know you killed the others and did horrible things, but…I didn’t want to be like them. I wanted to be different.”
His lips press to mine hard. He kisses me fervently before breaking free to speak again. His words are ragged and breathless. “You’re not like them. You are different.”
I reach up an
d latch my fingers into his hair. “Me wanting you is sick too. I shouldn’t want someone who tries daily to kill me. We’re playing a cat and mouse game, but I’m no good at it. One day you’ll eat me. The game will be over. I don’t want to play games. I just want to be yours.”
“You. Are. Mine,” he growls. Possessiveness punctuates each word. They tickle over my skin, burrow between my stitches, and dive straight to my heart. His words poison and infect me. They make me his.
“I’m yours,” I agree, lost in his madness right along with him. “Don’t cut me again.”
He lets out a grieved sound—aching and full of despair. It makes me want to fix him. To fill him up with something good. I kiss him as if I have this power. Despite the pains and burning in my side, I pull him on top of me. I urge him inside me.
So slowly, so sweetly, he fucks his apologies into me like I’ll finally understand him. As though I’ll be the first person to get the crazed man losing his mind day by day. His cock is thick and stretches me to the point it burns. A delicious burn. I moan and he groans—together making a symphony of confusing emotions. He kisses me like a lover would. Gently but filled with passion. I respond in kind. Back arching, claws digging, screams belting from me. He draws out orgasm after orgasm from me until I’m a trembling, crying mess. And then he comes inside of me. Claiming. Feral. Owning. I allow him to take me. I allow him to make me his. Hope, a cruel emotion, makes me believe I can fix him. That I can help drive out the demons and bring forth the good. That together we can escape this painful life and find one much sweeter. A life that doesn’t hurt so much.
His cock remains inside of me long after our animalistic mating. I stroke his hair. He strokes mine. We hold each other and allow sleep to steal us from our momentary hold on our sanity.
It’s been a week, I think, since Cole cut me. Every day is blissfully the same. We wake in each other’s arms. We fall asleep in each other’s arms. The hours in between are filled with quiet moments where I read and he holds me. Moments where I tell him about my mother or he tells me about his “brothers.” We don’t talk about Alan or Anta. We don’t talk about the other five women he horribly tortured and dismembered and raped. We don’t talk about how he kidnapped me and has held me captive. We certainly don’t talk about where we go from here.
We try to live in the moment.
“Can we go for a walk?” I ask, my words so soft I’m not sure if I even meant for him to hear.
He stiffens from beside me on the couch. “Now?”
I sit up and can’t help the smile that settles on my lips. “We really can?”
“Are you up for walking?” he asks, his palm running over my stitches that need to come out.
“I am. I’d love to get some fresh air,” I tell him softly.
His brown eyes study my face for a moment. “Okay. You’ll have to borrow some of my things.” Again, the shame makes him frown. I’m beginning to read his emotions better now that he’s let his guard down for me. “I’ll buy you some clothes tomorrow.”
“Can I come with you?”
His head tilts to the side. A flicker of the evil that lurks in his eyes sometimes makes its presence known. I run my fingers through his hair, chasing the darkness away and pulling a smile from him instead.
“We’ll make a day of it,” he says in a carefree tone. Boyish and charming. Then his features turn cold. “You can’t leave me, though.”
A shiver rattles through me. “I don’t want to.”
We both relax when he hugs me to him. He may have hurt me and scares me sometimes, but I don’t want to go back to Alan. I want to stay with Cole. It’s been a week since he laid a finger on me. Since then, he’s been lucid and clearheaded. We make love like lovers do. We talk and laugh and when we don’t feel happy, we brood together in silence. Always together.
“Let’s go then before it gets dark.”
When we step out on his porch, the icy wind whips me in the face and sends my hair spiraling up like it’s caught inside a tornado. I let out a shriek. Before I can tame my hair, he yanks off his stocking cap and pulls it down over my head. His fingers lace with mine and he guides me down the steps. My eyes eagerly drink up the surroundings. I don’t see any other homes nearby. Just miles of cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It’s cold and windy and dreary, but it feels great to see the ocean again.
Walking toward the edge of the cliff, I inhale the salty sea air that is biting cold. When I get near the side, his grip on my hand tightens.
“Don’t fall,” he says gruffly. “I don’t want to have to dive in after you.”
I twist my head around to flash him a smile. “I’ll try not to.”
He walks us along the edge until we find an old tree on its side. It makes for a perfect bench. We sit on it and he wraps an arm around me. Despite the layers of his clothes, I’m freezing. But it’s the first I’ve been outside in such a long time. I don’t want to squander it away because I’m chilled. I want to enjoy it.
The wind whips at us as if it’s punishing us. For being wrong. We’re not supposed to be together. Nothing about our union makes logical sense. He clearly has mental illnesses I can’t even begin to understand. And me…I’m not sure I think rationally either, because I want this.
“I’ll look at your stitches when we get back. Maybe they’ll be ready to come out,” he says, his voice pained.
“Can you tell me about your family?”
Silence stretches on and I worry I’ve pushed a trigger button again.
“What do you want to know?” he asks huskily.
“Anything. I just want to know you. The you before all the bad things happened. I’m just trying to understand Cole Heart.”
He jerks away from me and paces the ground in front of me. His brown eyes are wild and lost. My fingernails dig into the wood of the tree as I wonder just how fast I can run if he loses it again. Slowly, I rise to my feet with my palms out in front of me like one would do to calm a rabid animal. I take a step away from him, his tennis shoe I’m wearing crushing a twig, causing it to make a snapping sound. His head cocks to the side and his eyes dilate.
I’m losing him.
“Cole,” I say softly. “Look at me.”
He strikes quickly. His grip on my biceps is firm but not bruising. I can’t help but look over the side of the cliff and wonder if he’ll toss me over. When I jerk my head back to look at him, his eyes penetrate mine with his icy glare. And then, miraculously, they soften.
“I used to be close with my mom,” he says quietly. “When I came back, I wasn’t the same. She tried. I didn’t. I couldn’t look at her. Not with the way she would look at me so sadly. As though she could pull the little boy I once was from the wrecked man I’d become. It infuriated me. It fucked with my head. I stopped seeing her. I stopped talking to her.”
“When was the last time you spoke?” I murmur. I would give anything to have another second with my mother. It’s something I can’t truly fathom.
“Six years ago.”
His grip on my biceps loosens, so I take the opportunity to step closer to him. My breasts press against his chest and I have to tilt my head up to stare at his brutally handsome face. With the wind blowing through his dark hair and his jaw clenching, he’s ethereal and vampire-like. Sliding my arms around him, I hug him and offer my mouth. His darkness seems to melt away as he plants a sweet kiss on my lips. It makes my heart dance right out of my chest and flip off the edge of the cliff.
“Do you think she’d like me?” I ask, my brows furling together.
He laughs. Beautiful and carefree. Young. Like a man enjoying a joke with his woman. I’m his.
“She would’ve loved you.” His tone is wistful.
“Maybe one day I can meet her.”
He frowns, but I don’t think he’s angry or sad. He’s watching me in confusion. Like one would as they try to work a piece into a complicated puzzle. He wants to figure me out, but right now he doesn’t see the big picture.
&nb
sp; “Maybe,” is all he says before pulling me into a tight embrace that hurts my ribs.
Hope, that cruel emotion, grows wildly inside my chest.
“I’d like that,” I tell him honestly, squeezing him back. “Can we go back home now? I’m cold and tired and I want these stitches out.”
He stiffens but then releases a heavy sigh. “Home? Yeah, we can go home, honey.”
I smile against his warm chest. For just a brief moment, I can pretend we’ve met under different circumstances. That we’re just two normal, unbroken people.
He pulls away and guides me back toward the small cliff-side home. It’s beautiful but sad. Lonely. The home reminds me of Cole.
My eyes drift to the shed beside the home. Out in front are several large rocks—burial markers. I stop to stare. They’re buried here. The other five women. A shudder skitters up my spine and splinters inside my mind.
It was supposed to be six.
He tugs me inside, but my eyes linger on the rocks.
I wasn’t supposed to live. I wasn’t supposed to change the rules.
But I did.
I squeeze his hand.
He made me his.
I hope he keeps me.
SHE’S BEEN PENSIVE SINCE YESTERDAY’S walk. Quiet and thoughtful. Last night, I pulled out her stitches and her wounds, though angry and red, were healing. Her flesh is imperfect and ruined like mine. But I was the one to inflict hers on her. I’m the monster in her story.
I chance a look at her as we drive. If she’s nervous, she doesn’t let on. Simply looks out the window at the buildings, homes, and shops we pass. I promised her clothes. When I told her I’d take her to buy them, her eyes filled with tears.
“You won’t let him get me, right?”
I grit my teeth at her words from this morning. Alan. She still fears him with every fiber of her being. But he’s not going to hurt her. I won’t let him. No one will ever hurt her again.
