by Anne Malcom
“What the fuck are you doing out here?” he demanded as I reached him. “Your car is parked at my place but no one had seen you.” He gripped my hips. “Do you know how dangerous it is to fucking disappear when every time you’ve done that before, you’ve been in some kind of trouble?”
For once, I was thankful for Thorne’s stupid alpha male temper. It was doing me a huge solid and making him blind to everything but his stupid concern about me running off and dying. So much so that he didn’t actually see the dead person behind me.
I fluttered my lashes, painting my face with an innocent expression. “I was out walking. In nature,” I said. “You know, to find peace. Be amongst the trees.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You hate peace,” he pointed out. “And nature. And walking.”
Fuck. I took it too far. And he knew me too well. Couldn’t he just get distracted by my good looks and great rack like every other male and not care about my personality?
No, Thorne just had to be different.
Then his eyes left mine and his whole body tensed as he caught sight of the body in the clearing.
“What the fuck have you done, Isla?” he bit out, letting me go to stride toward Stacy.
I followed him with a long sigh. It wasn’t like I hadn’t planned on telling him. At some point. I’d just hoped I wouldn’t have to do so for a long while. Or at all, actually. Surely if someone found Stacy dead in the woods, I wouldn’t be the first suspect. The bitch must’ve had more enemies than that.
I also counted on the war amping up enough to hide any and all of my transgressions. That was what wars were for, right?
I joined Thorne, getting more dirt on my fucking boots. I prepared for him to start yelling, folding my arms.
There was a long silence in the clearing. Well, not exactly silence. We were in fucking nature, after all, so there were all sorts of birds chirping, animals skittering amongst fallen leaves. Positively awful. Especially when vampire hearing made the sounds akin to nails on a chalkboard.
Thorne’s hands were clenched into fists at his sides, his jaw granite, as it was in situations where he was pissed at me—in other words, every day. His eyes ran over her splayed body, the sightless eyes accusing in death. Then they moved to regard not-so-sightless and much prettier eyes.
He gaped at me. “You killed her.”
I glanced down at her corpse once again, getting really sick of it already. I’d have to be there for a while since it was apparent Thorne was going to make this into a whole thing. “Ugh, I know. I would say it was an accident, but that would be a lie. I totally meant to kill her,” I said honestly.
“Why?” he demanded through clenched teeth.
I shrugged. “Why not? It’s a Wednesday. PMS. I was bored. Pick one.”
I wasn’t too hot on telling Thorne that my specific reason for killing her was in order to punish her for being a very bad babysitter to his little sister—obviously for being a traitor to his little faction. That would give him the wrong impression.
Namely that I cared about the little brat, and then, worst of all, that I cared about the group of slayers even though I kept informing him that I didn’t really care if they lived or died. Apart from Chace, of course. And Silver. He was handy. And I was sure he was going to give me some entertainment with his feelings about Sophie and anger about a particular wolf landing him firmly in the friend zone.
Also, I didn’t want the female slayer Duncan was tangling with to die either. She was looking to teach him a lesson he’d needed to be taught for centuries.
The rest, of course, could all go jump off a cliff.
“You didn’t need to kill her,” he gritted out. He started pacing as fury and stress leached off his body and into mine. I tried to shake it off, but the stupid blood connection that was only getting stronger between us made it stick to my bones like superglue.
“And you didn’t need the second Taken movie, or the third, for that matter. It’s not about need, Thorne,” I said. “It’s about excessive consumption and the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure.” I shrugged and continued to watch him tear around the clearing. “I didn’t write the rules, I just break them.” I screwed up my nose, thinking about how the vampire rules dictated that we kill slayers. “Though in this case, I guess I’m playing by them. Shit. Maybe I shouldn’t have killed her.” But I couldn’t change it. Once you killed someone, there were no takebacks.
Thorne stopped his pacing to glare at me, running his hands through his hair in frustration. “Let me get this straight. You’re not upset that you killed a relatively innocent being. You’re upset that by doing so, you might have unwittingly been doing something in line with the status quo?” he clarified with distaste.
Then he started pacing again. It seemed to be his go-to lately when he was stressed. Especially since we hadn’t been able to have sex, which was usually my go-to with him when he was stressed and angry with me.
“Innocent?” I repeated with wide eyes. “She was hardly innocent. Did you see those bangs? Criminal.” I sighed long and hard, as Thorne didn’t seem to look like he was going to stop pacing.
He actually looked like he might start pulling his hair out. And I couldn’t let that happen. He had excellent hair. “Look, I don’t just go around killing skanks for no reason,” I said, glancing down at the aforementioned skank and thinking back to a time when I didn’t have such a strong moral compass. The time when I thought Jonathan was dead. “Well, okay, I don’t anymore,” I amended, shaking off those thoughts. “But she had it coming, and not just because of those chunky streaks. They weren’t okay in the nineties, and they’re not okay ever.” I moved my attention to Thorne, pretending the horror and accusation in his gaze didn’t affect me.
“You do realize that half this fucking faction is going to ask for your head?” he demanded. “That they’ll likely try to go for it themselves because they know that no way will I pass any ruling that will damage a strand of your beautiful fucking hair?” he yelled.
He came to stand right in front of me, his fury burning so hot that it must’ve singed that beautiful hair he was so damn passionate about. “And you know that fucking truce that was tenuous, at best?” he demanded. “Well, that’s blown to the wind, and Alexus has been waiting, searching for a fucking reason to fracture the faction and lead an attack against me, and more importantly, you,” he hissed, snatching my hips and yanking me to him.
I thought he was going to yell some more, but instead he jerked my head to crash into his, kissing me with the same fury that he used to scream at me. His hands tangled in my hair as he violently took my mouth, slamming our bodies together in desperation, in a fever that took over my whole being and made that pesky heart of mine beat with the force of a meteor against my rib cage.
His hands were everywhere, running over my body like a hurricane, squeezing at my sensitive breasts, kneading them, tweaking my nipples over the thin fabric of my top.
His hardness pressed against my aching core, and the friction from it alone was enough to tip me over the edge. So naturally, Thorne chose that moment to release my nipple, my mouth and lean back enough so our eyes met.
I let out a little moan of protest, unable to get thought process back in my mind to swear at him for stopping.
He laid his palms on either side of my neck, eyes flickering silver. “I will not lose you, Isla,” he promised. “You make decisions based on impulse, the beautiful chaos inside you, and those decisions more often than not include death.” He moved his eyes to the corpse beside us. “And fuck, if I love that about you. But it also means more fucking people are gonna line up to kill you. You can handle a lot of things, Isla, but you’re not invincible.” He laid his palm over my chest, and it vibrated with the power of my heartbeat. “Especially not now.”
I blinked at him, entranced by the equal parts fury and love in his tone. He was pissed that I’d killed one of his merry slayer gang, obviously. Especially since he thought I did it with no reason. But he lo
ved me. For the monster I was. For the vampire I was. For the woman I was. And that continued to warm me as my stupid heart pumped blood along with love across my body.
Thorne’s jaw hardened. “So, before we try to figure out how the fuck we’re going to deal with this, you’re telling me the real reason you killed her,” he continued, voice hard. “’Cause I know you, baby. And I know you like to talk big talk, and play big game, and you’re thirsty for blood and violence, but you’re not going to hand it out to someone who doesn’t deserve it.” He regarded me. “What did she do?”
He caught me by surprise with his words, much like he had with his kiss. Before, I’d thought his anger, his accusation was because he thought I was wandering around the slayer compound killing humans for no other reason than I was a vampire. But no, that was just his anger and fear poking through and distorting the truth.
He fucking believed in me. Thought I was good.
Okay, not totally good, since a technical ‘good person’ didn’t murder people, even when they totally deserved it. A good person would’ve likely gone to the proper authorities—Thorne, in this case—and explained the situation. I didn’t answer to authorities, even if I happened to be in love with this particular one, and I despised explaining myself, hence the killing.
But there was Thorne, trying to push past his natural reaction to the murder of his kin… for me.
Maybe I could try to do at least a little bit of explaining to him. It wouldn’t kill me. In this case, it might actually help with the people who might try to kill me as a result of this murder.
I might not change a little, or at all, for the universe at large, or society, or a king, but maybe I could budge a little for the man I couldn’t live, or die, without.
I sighed.
“See, some people pick the lesser of two evils, and I choose the bigger,” I said, looking from the corpse to Thorne. “Mainly because the bigger the better, but something, if it was truly evil, would never show itself for the huge thing it was, would it? It would disguise itself as small and perhaps insignificant.” I looked at the corpse again. “And what is more insignificant than a skank who wears criminal clothes, drinks crappy booze, and who looks after the sister of one of the most powerful slayers in the faction and the central character in this whole ‘end of the world’ prophecy,” I said, my eyes back on Thorne.
“She was dirty, Thorne. And I mean this both literally and figuratively. I was already going to kill her, because she was the reason your brat kept escaping and letting herself almost get killed.”
Thorne’s body turned wired at the mention of his little sister. He was plagued with worry about the little cretin, I knew. Despite the fact that she wasn’t his technical sister. But she had enough fight and brass in her to be. She was convinced that she should be involved in battles for the fate of humankind. It was better, in my opinion, than demanding we take her to a Miley Cyrus concert.
But Thorne might’ve disagreed there, since she kept almost getting killed when she ran off to fight monsters.
“At first, I thought it was because she was incompetent and too busy chasing after her next orgasm and hangover to worry about the life of a child,” I continued. “Hence me planning on killing her. Usually, unless it’s in the middle of a battle or someone insults my hair, I do my research on the people I kill. So I got Scott to look into her, as more of a formality than anything else. The kid is good at digging up dirt, uncovering skeletons, even if he isn’t as great at creating them. She was working with Alexus, babe,” I said, my voice softer than before.
“She was not only plotting with him, I think she might’ve been selling secrets to the fucking rebellion. For reasons unknown. Most likely money, or maybe she was promised some kind of power she’d never get without betraying everything she knew.” I shrugged. “The details didn’t much matter, and I haven’t exactly had time to do more digging, since the second I got the information from Scott, I came out here and snapped her neck.”
Thorne’s entire form was now shaking. I knew he was pissed. Knew he was punishing himself for not seeing it. He had this stupid tendency to take responsibility for everything, especially the things beyond control, whereas I took responsibility for nothing other than the fashion trends I started. The miniskirt? Move over, Mary Quant, that shit was all me.
“Why the fuck didn’t you come to me?” he demanded.
I folded my arms. “I don’t have to come to you whenever I feel like murdering someone,” I snipped. “Is that really the kind of relationship you want?”
Thorne gaped. “Yes, Isla, that’s the kind of fucking relationship I want,” he growled. “I want my woman to at the very least inform me when she intends on fucking killing members of my faction!” he roared.
I rolled my eyes. “You would’ve tried to stop me.”
“Of course I fucking would’ve,” he said, fury curling his words.
“Well then, there’s your answer as to why I didn’t tell you,” I replied, bored of this back and forth already.
My mind went to Sophie and her present. I needed to wrap this up so I could unwrap something. Hopefully that Cartier necklace that got broken in a bar fight. That was technically her fault. Well, the fight had been to capture me, but she chose the bar.
“You want me to tell you more things, stop yelling at me when I don’t,” I said. “Now, is this done with?”
“No, this is not done with,” he snapped. He pinched the bridge of his nose, then focused his silver gaze on me. “Did it not occur to you to keep her alive in order to interrogate her? So we can figure out why the fuck she turned on her faction, on her species? To see if she was working with anyone else?”
I screwed up my nose. “Of course it occurred to me. Just not until after I killed her.” I glanced over to her. “I guess we can’t exactly interrogate a corpse.”
Thorne widened his eyes. “You think?” he asked dryly.
It sucked that he managed to look so sexy when he was so pissed. It was distracting. I lost my train of thought, daydreaming about him taking me against the tree. Fuck, I missed sex. I needed him. I barely remembered what he felt like inside me.
“Stop it,” he snarled, holding his body taut.
I blinked at him. “Stop what?” I asked innocently. “I wasn’t even talking, and there’s no one else around here for me to kill.”
“Oh my God, is that Stacy? Is she dead?” a small and excited voice asked from beside us.
Both Thorne and I snapped our gazes to the edge of the clearing where his sister was standing wide-eyed, staring at the corpse of her babysitter.
Whoops.
“Okay, now there’s someone else for me to kill,” I muttered.
Luckily that little comment was lost in the wind.
Thorne rushed over, snatching her into his arms and covering her eyes. “Don’t look, kid,” he growled.
She fought against his hold, and I was impressed. She was using some of the moves I taught her. “Seriously, Thorne?” she squeaked, kicking her feet. Her bright pink sneakers had fluffy pom-poms on the toes.
Jesus.
“Have you forgotten I was in the middle of a battle with those freaky vampire Frankenstein things a few months ago?”
She successfully got out of his hold by doing a favorite of mine—punching a man in the crown jewels. Didn’t matter how small you were, how strong your attacker was. Chances were, if he were male, you punch him hard enough in the dick, he lets you go.
And Thorne did exactly that, with a grunt.
I gave the little dork a fist pump when she ambled over to me.
She didn’t seem too upset over the death of her babysitter, eyes glazing over the body with a jaded expression. I should’ve been proud at such a nonchalance in the face of death, but something irked me. Something about that innocence and naivety that I’d thought was so annoying. It was leaving her.
What did I expect? We were in the middle of a war. War quickly snatched away precious things like naivety a
nd innocence.
“Why did you kill her?” she asked me conversationally.
Thorne limped over to her, snatching the back of her backpack before she could move closer. “Who taught you to fight that dirty?” he demanded.
She pointed at me.
Thorne glared.
I gave him a look. “Seriously, dude? You knew I was training her. You also knew the only way I fight is dirty. You have no one but yourself to blame for your bruised manhood.”
She ran over to me, yanking from Thorne’s grip once more, and for once, she didn’t attach herself to me like a male dog finding a female in heat. She was too busy trying to catch a closer look at the dead body I’d created.
I was quite happy for her to get a closer look at what I did to people who fucked with people I loved—or in her case, people I was forced to endure.
But I’d already pushed Thorne pretty far today, and I guessed he wouldn’t be happy if I let his small sister get all up close and personal with death. Which was stupid. Death didn’t ask permission to get up close and personal, and it certainly didn’t take youth into account.
I snatched her backpack, yanking her back from the dead body, despite my personal opinion on letting her dissect it if she so wished. Obviously I wouldn’t say that out loud, because Thorne would likely snap something about how only budding psychopaths did that.
I was trying to turn her into a budding psychopath, but the key part of my plan was Thorne not knowing until it was too late.
“I don’t think so, young lady,” I said, holding her in place and shaking my finger at her. “We don’t play with dead skanks around here. You can still catch herpes from a corpse.”
She tilted her head at me, her curls spilling out of pigtails at the top of her head, fastened with smaller versions of the pom-poms on her shoes. Seriously, who dressed her?
At least she was wearing the tee I got her. It was black and had lips with fangs protruding from them, with cursive underneath reading ‘Bite Me.’
“What’s herpes?” she asked.