It wasn’t hard to think about. How he’d touched me, kissed me. I blushed hard.
“Think about how much you wanted it, kitten.”
His finger touched my bare knee, traced a line up the outside of my thigh, rested two fingers on my hipbone. My body clenched inside and I twitched my head violently back, shivers of desire taking hold of me instantly.
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t lie!” His voice was a roar in the quiet room. Then he became soft again. “You wanted it so badly, kitten. Think of that desire, that want. Think of it multiplied tenfold. How torturous it would be to deny yourself. Especially when the answer to your problem is as easy as…”
With this he leaned forward and kissed me. I ripped my lips away from his, but not before the warm wet touch of his mouth drew the desire back to me in full force. He smiled.
“Pretend you want me to stay away from you, kitten, and I will continue giving you what you pretend you want.”
What did I want? I couldn’t tell. My body had turned traitor, sided with him. Hot, wet, ready, it ached for his touch again.
“You’ll sleep here from now on. With me.”
My eyes met his and quickly looked away. I thought that he could see right through me, into the depths of my being, where I was beginning to convince myself that I needed him more than I needed to stay away from him.
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll try to kill you again?” I asked. I didn’t care. But the temptation of sleeping next to his hard and muscled body… it would kill me before he did.
“Good point. We’ll have to leave these ties on.”
“I can’t fall asleep next to a serial killer.” It was useless. He had decided. Still I protested, aware even as I spoke of the futility of my demands.
“I know a remedy to help you fall asleep.”
“Sticking me with a sedative again?”
He looked up at me with pure desire, fierce and hungry. His eyes were a panther’s eyes, watching a helpless rabbit caught out in the open. If he had licked his chops, I would not have been surprised.
“No. Not the syringe. Something a bit more…natural.”
His hand moved up from the bed and slid over my thigh, touching me where I was already slick with lust. Flames shot from my core through my limbs.
“No!” I shouted, and he removed his hand so quickly that I was left with only the memory of the pressure. I bit back a sob. God, how I wanted him!
“Have it your way, kitten,” he said. He smiled at me. He knew he’d caught me already, that in my mind I was playing out the scene as I wanted so desperately for it to happen. The towel falling to the ground, his naked body hard against mine, his cock erect and pulsing between my thighs, filling the part of me that was empty, God, oh-so-empty and willing, if only my mind would play along.
He turned off the light, and we were thrown into a dark broken only by the moonlight coming through the window. My eyes adjusted to the dim blue light as I watched him pull on a white shirt, dark briefs. His muscled backside gleamed, curving, and then was covered with fabric. He turned abruptly and I looked away, not fast enough.
Kindly, he didn’t mention my watching him. Kind? Was he kind? Maybe.
One by one, he loosened the ropes at the bedposts, giving me just enough slack to be able to move my limbs, not enough to bring my hands down to my mouth, or anything else that would let me undo the knots.
“Don’t move too much,” he said quietly. “The ropes tighten when you pull on them.”
The blanket he’d knocked to the side of the bed was light, and he tucked in the top of the blanket under my chin. He was only a shadow above me, blocking out the moonlight from the window, when he caressed my cheek with one hand. Then he kissed my forehead and slipped under the cover next to me, lying on his back, just out of reach.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Gav
My kitten lay beside me in the darkness, trying not to move. And in the darkness my heart beat underneath the bandage, pumping blood to the place where she’d cut me. In the darkness, too, my shadow waited. It was there even when I could not see it, darker still when I turned off the light. I could not hide from myself in the nighttime.
Peter Pan cried when his shadow left him. It was up to Wendy to sew it back on, to make sure that his shadow would never leave him again.
If I could leave my shadow somewhere and never see it again, I would.
My shadow. It’s a darkness that creeps in, shutting out anything bright or good until all I can see is the one thing that will satisfy it and drive it away. It begins to take me over, and then all I see is evil. When I kill, it retreats.
I’m not crazy. I’m not schizophrenic. This isn’t a second self or something ridiculous like that. I’m not abdicating responsibility. My crimes are my own, and I wield the knife. My stomach growls for food, but I’m the one eating. My heart aches for relief, but I’m the one murdering.