“Proposition,” I corrected. “And I know you will. I was only pretending to give you a choice.”
My hands found their way beneath her dress to cup her ass and her whole body tensed. My dick strained in my slacks, stiffening at her helplessness.
Declan now had his favorite tool of choice, a blue hoof-pick that used to belong to his mother.
“Ready?” he double-checked.
“Are you ready?” I murmured in Katie’s ear. She choked out a no.
“We’re ready,” I confirmed, sliding a hand around Katie’s waist to feel her pussy.
“You shaved for me, Katie-Kat,” I marveled, tracing her smooth lips with my index finger. I thought she might have at dinner, but I wasn’t entirely sure.
Roy’s pained scream made her jolt against me. Her ass pushed into my erection and she pulled against her restraints. A small whimper, almost inaudible thanks to the pathetic man having his face gouged open, slipped from her mouth.
Declan was wiggling the hoof-pick back and forth on Roy’s left cheek.
His face was set in a determined scowl as he attempted to push it all the way in.
If Katie wasn’t there, I’d have been helping him.
I grabbed her face and forced her head to turn to the side, crushing my mouth to hers.
She refused to open for me so I bit down on her silky lips and pushed two fingers into her cunt. Roy’s shrill screams became the soundtrack to my assault.
All I focused on was the metallic taste of her blood filling my mouth and the way her pussy was gripping my fingers.
“Isn’t it insane how wet you are for me right now?” I pulled my face back to watch the tears leak down her cheeks and lick the red tinge from her lips.
So afraid of the truth, she was willing to suffer for a lie.
“Got it!” Declan whooped, finally tearing a hole in Roy’s cheek.
I glanced over in time to see crimson spraying out the side of the man’s face.
His screams made my last bit of self-control dissolve.
I grabbed Katie’s clit and began to roll it with the pad of my thumb. She squeezed her eyes shut and cried out, only encouraging me to keep going. I had this mindless need to consume her entirely. Within seconds, I had my dick out and was repositioning us.
Without caring that my cousin was killing a man across the room, I snagged an arm across her lower waist and lifted her up so that I could push into her.
I heard her soft cries over the blood roaring in my ears as I began thrusting into her.
She was so tight, suffocating my cock with her inner muscles. One little taste of her was never enough.
I would gladly overdose on whatever this feeling was, the high being inside her gave me; nothing had ever felt this amazing.
It had never been like this with anyone else. And this crazy woman thought I would let her leave me? The only place she would be going was a grave in my backyard. At least then I’d still be able to see the sun shining down on her every morning and no one else would get to touch what was mine.
Her screams clashed with Roy’s, bouncing off the walls of the room.
Her body tightened around me as I fucked her harder, faster, feeling my balls rising and ready to burst.
Declan continued his own assault, gouging Roy’s other cheek open before placing a blade at the man’s throat.
His silver eyes flashed to mine, not at all surprised by my show of brutality. He knew what needed to happen.
“You’re going to come for me, Katie,” I groaned in her ear, burying myself as far inside her as I could, forcing her ass to grind down on my cock. I pinched her clit and felt her contract around me, screaming my name. I didn’t move, relishing in how perfect the moment was.
If this was a competition, we would have gotten a perfect ten for formation. Declan had pushed his blade into the side of Roy’s throat just at the right time.
She was coming as he sat dying. A scream of pleasure drowned out a scream of death. If that wasn’t insanity, what was?
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I turned to the left and then to the right, eyeing my naked body in the bathroom mirror.
You’re sick like he is, my mind gleefully pointed out. And I was. I had one of the strongest orgasms of my life as a man had his life snuffed out right before my eyes.
Mason restrained me so I couldn’t fight him and then fucked me like I was a whore.
I reacted like one, pushing myself at him, moaning with pleasure and screaming his name.
I was left with a trembling body and a corpse staring right at me. It felt like Roy’s lifeless eyes were judging me for the predicament in its entirety.
I felt dirty, vile, and wrong. All the hot water and soap in the world couldn’t wash the grime from my soul. I should have felt traumatized and broken; instead, I had a fresh perspective on what needed to be done.
There was power in words—I knew that better than anyone. Mason said I belonged to him and he belonged to me, unknowingly shifting a bit of control in my direction. I was tired of scrambling to pick up the pieces of an impossible puzzle, tired of being the Katie who was weak enough to slice her wrists open.
Mason would never give me a straightforward answer.
He may not have been a liar, but his words were nothing but carefully woven riddles that took truths and twisted them. My captor liked to play games, and if I wanted to figure out the answers behind his obsession, I’d have to do the same.
That was easier said than done when I was up against someone who seemed to know me better than I knew myself and could set me off with one little touch.
Sighing, I grabbed the soft robe Mason had given me and slipped it on before padding out into his room.
The only light came from the bathroom behind me. Mason was sitting on the edge of the bed in nothing but a pair of black briefs, looking deep in thought.
We hadn’t spoken a word to one another since he’d carried me back to the bedroom.
I approached him like a cautious animal would, thinking of him as a viper ready to strike. When I paused right beside him, he surprised me by simply wrapping his arms around my waist and laying his head against my stomach.
“Mase,” I sighed, hugging his head.
“Mase?” he repeated, amusement evident in his tone, pulling back to look at me. And may the Lord have mercy on my soul for smiling down at the devil.
This was one of those pivotal moments where I needed to realize that it was officially time to give up believing I was just like any other girl. Other girls would have burned me at the stake for the way my heart accelerated when he looked at me.
We’d gone from screwing in what looked like a room for an asylum patient, to dinner, to watching his old gardener be murdered as he took me from behind.
It was truly disturbing.
“What’s wrong with us, Mason?” I searched his eyes for an answer I knew he wouldn’t give.
“You’re exhausted,” he frowned, easily lifting me up and setting me down on the bed. Figuring he wasn’t going to answer me, I climbed up to the headboard and flopped down like a beaten rug.
I’d just started to doze off when I heard the floor creak; a second later, a fleece blanket was covering me and a pair of soft lips skimmed over my cheek.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I watched the life begin to leave her body. The blood vessel in her left eye burst and her pale skin turned blue. Just when she was about to pass out, I let her go.
“Please…stop,” she gasped for air, wheezing out a plea for a life that was now mine to get rid of.
“But what if I don’t want to stop?”
I smiled down at her and wrapped my hand back around her throat, squeezing harder.
Her eyes turned glassy before mine; her lips opened and closed until she went limp.
“Katie seems nice,” Declan commented from his spot on the sofa across the room, propping one arm behind his head. Now that my concentration was broken, I gave him a withering glare that he laughed off
.
“She’s more than nice.” She’s mine.
I picked up a pair of scissors from my metal trolley and started cutting the brunette’s hair off her head in thick, uneven snips.
“Calm down, killer. Don’t go pissin’ on the girl to mark your territory,” he laughed.
“Did you move Annie?” I asked him, trying to determine the best way to remove an eyelid.
“Yeah; how do you think that’s going to go?” He stood up and made his way over to watch me work.
I shrugged, not all that concerned about it. The little reunion had to happen. It was the least I could do for Katie, even if her sister did hate her. I couldn’t reunite her with her parents; all I had left of them were their skulls.
“Are you going to tell her the truth?” he asked, handing me a scalpel.
“I’m going to let her discover the truth on her own.” I took the scalpel and cut into the right upper eyelid, exposing the pink fleshy tendons underneath.
“Katie…is young. She’ll be fine.” I flicked the piece of flesh through the air and repeated my actions on the left eye.
“We were young once. I guess we didn’t turn out too fucked up,” he sighed, sarcasm dripping from his every word.
If he wasn’t my cousin, he wouldn’t feel comfortable joking with me the way he was. Declan was the brother I never had, my uncle Luca’s first son.
We grew up the same, inseparable from the beginning. I just happened to love women, and he liked to switch sides every now and then. I saw nothing wrong with it, I just wanted him to find someone for himself so he could stop bothering me twenty-four seven.
“My father is entrusting us to run his business. I want Katie by my side. I…need her,” I told him, pulling the brunette’s ear forward and slicing into it. Blood ran over my fingers, drizzling onto the floor.
Should I remove her lips? Her nose?
I finished cutting the ear off and tossed it to the side, staring at the place it used to be.
“What is it about her?” Declan walked to where the ear had landed and picked it up, holding it in the air to study it.
“Do you know we’ve technically known her for her whole life? She was at our house for four months before her dad and Glenda decided to raise her as their own,” I reminisced.
“I remember the little fucker never stopped crying,” he grinned. “Does she know anything?”
“She knows I own her house. Knows her mother owed me money. She doesn’t know the debt started with her father. Not yet, at least. The money doesn’t matter to me at this point; I have Katie.”
Declan shook his head and smirked at me. I knew what he was thinking. How the fuck did I decide to settle down before him?
I wasn’t a relationship kind of man. I was a fuck ’em and kill ’em kind of man.
An odd twist of fate had Katie coming back in my life. I watched her grow and I watched her fall. It took a lot to move me in terms of imagery, and the one of her naked in a tub of bloody water always did just that. She was ready to do it again before I stepped in and took her. If I could slay the demons inside her head, I’d do it in a heartbeat. At this point though, they were my closest ally.
I knew what it was like to feel trapped by your own mind. I’d overcome that long ago, thanks to my father.
I still had small slivers of empathy, though. Sometimes, I felt as broken as the corpses I decapitated. The art I created helped me pretend I was doing something to fix it.
Each swirl of a paintbrush dipped in a new color and swiped across my canvas filled an invisible crack and made me feel better.
I looked at the blood staining my hands and pooling on the floor.
The mirror hanging on the far wall caught my eye and I looked up, taking in my put-together appearance. There was no changing who I was, and I didn’t really see a need to. There was no eradicating the evil from my soul. I was my father’s son.
Katie would one day be my wife and help me extend the Andreou bloodline, which was why I had to do whatever was necessary to break her down so I could rebuild her again.
If the voices in her head won, then Katie would become like my mother. I refused to lose her like that. As my father kept saying: history couldn’t repeat itself.
Chapter Forty
I woke up to a dark room with something wet between my legs. It took only a second for sleep to evaporate from my brain and to realize it was Mason’s tongue.
His hands were holding my thighs open. The robe I had fallen asleep in was barely covering my nude body.
“Mason,” I groaned, pushing up onto my elbows.
His bold green eyes flickered to mine, reminding me of a feline in the night.
A wicked smile had his mouth tilting up at the corners. Keeping his gaze locked with mine, he suckled my clit into his mouth and slid three rough, callused fingers into me, curling them up towards my sweet spot. His movements suddenly turned rapid and hard.
“Mas—” His name died on a sharp gasp. I dropped my head back to the pillow and fisted the sheets. I tried to say his name again and wound up moaning loudly instead.
The tip of his tongue battered my swollen nub and his fingers continued their rough delving in and out of me. He let one of my thighs go to push down on my lower stomach, right above my G-spot, magnifying my pleasure.
Something was happening. Something…different.
I didn’t understand what it was until it no longer mattered. A dizzying pressure exploded inside me and a sound that was inhuman tore from my throat. Something streamed from between my legs and it wasn’t until I lay trembling and trying to breathe again that I realized what had happened.
The sheets were soaked.
Mason gave me no time to feel embarrassed about it; he was lifting my hips and driving into me before I could utter a single word.
I came again on a soundless scream, digging my nails into his forearms. His bare chest was wet and, when he leaned down to savagely attack my mouth, I could taste myself all over his face. This wasn’t sex; this was primal fucking.
His fingers dug into my flesh so hard I knew I’d be bruised.
Our teeth clashed and I found myself grabbing at his broad back.
When he finally found his release, the mattress was hanging off the bed frame and we were both drenched in sweat. Still inside me, he propped himself up with one arm and used his other to brush damp strands of hair out of my face. His chest rose and fell in silence. He was looking at me with such intensity, I felt my cheeks start to heat.
I’d licked this man’s come from the floor and still felt impossibly coy around him at times.
I stared up at him in awe. How was it possible to love someone irrevocably, and whole-heartedly despise them at the same time?
This tortured, sadistic man had managed to pull my heart from my chest and now held the bloody organ hostage.
In its place was a hole he was slowly filling with everything that was him, sinking me further into his sea of darkness.
My resolve threatened to crumble right then, before I could even attempt to find my backbone for once. Love him or hate him, he owed me answers, and I was determined to get them.
At breakfast, it was just Mason and I. The large home was quiet and no one else was in sight.
As I devoured my scrambled eggs under his watchful eye, I briefly wondered if I should feel guilty that Annie was somewhere being hurt.
On a positive note, at least I wasn’t on my back anymore, being taken to depths of pleasure that should have been illegal.
The whole morning had my emotions playing tug-of-war, pushing and pulling in two completely different directions.
Sitting at the table, him working and me enjoying a delicious meal, made me see that we were just like everyone else.
It was the extracurricular activities that made us differ. I studied Mason from the corner of my eye. He was so stylish, eloquent, and handsome.
You truly could never know who was a killer and who wasn’t.
“Maso
n,” I softly said to draw his attention from his iPhone screen.
His green hues immediately locked with my blue ones. I hated that he could trap me with a single look.
I was well aware how unhealthy this—whatever this was between us—had become. Was becoming. There was home in his eyes, but he kept setting fire to my heart.
You want a killer—period. Accept it.
Rolling my lips, I told myself I would never be enough for a man like Mason, so it wasn’t worth debating in my head. It didn’t matter how unhealthy this was.
Clearing my throat, I opened my mouth to broach what I hoped wasn’t a sensitive subject, but he interrupted me.
“You can’t get pregnant,” he said, not batting an eyelid at my surprised expression.
“How did you know what I was going to say?”
“I know you.” He shrugged. “And before you ask, I had an implant put in your arm the night you came with me. That’s why the cotton was there.”
I knew I could either be upset or be relieved.
I tried not to let the second emotion broadcast on my face, but it was too late—he saw it. The same look I’d seen before that almost seemed like hurt flashed across his face again.
“Don’t worry, Katie-Kat. When I want you pregnant, you’ll know.”
“You said when I found my sister I could go home,” I reminded him.
“And did you somehow think me sending you home would free you?”
He tucked his phone into his pocket and gave me his undivided attention.
I hadn’t thought much beyond the words go home.
I suppose it was naïve of me to think that Mason would simply give me up. Even more naïve was the ridiculous part of me that didn’t want him to.
Not wanting to dwell on those thoughts, I wiped my mouth with a napkin and told him I was ready to go.
Chapter Forty-One
Mason stood beside me as I looked up and down the corridor, giving me no hints as to what door had what behind it. Twelve doors, and I had to pick seven in seven days.
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