Rose didn’t know what to make of it, and only stared, too overcome by surprise to have any other reaction.
“I want so many things,” he breathed. “And in time I’ll take them all. A kiss will do to begin with, though.”
Before she could properly comprehend what he had said, his mouth moved to cover hers, scorching, rough, insistent, and above all, demanding. His free hand came up and pressed against the back of her head, preventing her from breaking away.
Rose had never been kissed in her life, for two very specific and, in her opinion, plausible reasons. The first was her desire to not be like Millie. The second was her awareness that she wasn’t enough like Millie to get away with being like Millie. If she ever tried to kiss a boy, she would do it in a fumbling, Rose-like way, and be immediately discovered. And then Mrs. Cross would give her an hour-long lecture, drop a bucket of holy water on her head, and throw her out.
She had, of course, thought about being kissed. A lot. She wasn’t a saint, after all. Sometimes a good-looking young man would throw a compliment her way or ask for her name, and she would blush and giggle and spend the rest of the week daydreaming about what his lips would feel like. Those kissing scenarios were inaccurate by default, since she had no physical experience to draw sensations from, but she had done her best to compensate for that.
This kiss wasn’t the sort that she could have made up.
It was sudden, although she felt sure that he’d planned to land it on her lips ever since he’d appeared, the cad. There was no sweetness in it, no care, only desperate hunger. Rose held a fairly solid conviction that a man should always touch a woman’s lips as if they were the most delicate flower. If the killer’s thinking was in any way similar to hers, then he was the sort who trampled over flowers, ripped off the petals and ate them afterwards.
He pushed down the hand he had entwined with hers, forcing it inside his breeches, then let go and looped it around her wrist instead. Rose’s face caught fire. She tried to pull it out, but her resistance only made him tighten his grip and thrust her palm against his groin. She balled it into a fist, intent on touching as little of him as she could, but was unable to hold back an outraged yelp when her knuckles brushed against his . . . well, his instrument.
He laughed, as if reading her thoughts — although he probably didn’t need to, as her embarrassment was much easier to read and was written all over her face — and brought his mouth down on hers again, tugging at her lower lip with his teeth to get her to part them. When she refused, he leaned away from her, scowled and dropped his voice a tone lower.
“Touch me.”
“No,” Rose replied, breathless, and stomped on his foot as hard as she could.
As she yanked her hand away and turned to flee, she was hit by the certainty that whatever miraculous force had allowed her to keep her wits about her wouldn’t sustain itself much longer. She knew she was already beginning to slip into madness. Nothing sane could explain the feelings that assaulted her.
She ran, out of the darkness and into another world. Or perhaps it was the darkness that changed into something else as she tried to leave it. Unfortunately, it refused to change into something soothing to look at. Instead it became a stone hallway, with seemingly no end in sight. Dozens of torches flickered evilly as she stumbled past them. She couldn’t hear the killer’s footsteps anymore, but it was impossible to think he’d given up.
Finally the corridor ended, becoming a room. It was wide and round, with a high ceiling and as solemn and sparsely decorated as a chapel. It was also empty. She stopped and spun around, panting, then pinched herself and felt betrayed when she failed to wake up. She took a step back and glanced at the arch she’d come through. Everything appeared quiet.
Too quiet.
She didn’t want to turn back around. Somehow, she already knew who she would find.
His breath was warm against the base of her neck, and that was enough to make her shiver, but the kiss he left there not a moment after was more of a shock. It burned her as if she’d been branded, and the sweet, fleeting pain shook her free from whatever temporary insanity had caught hold of her.
She fled again, tumbling forward and tripping over herself in her haste to get away. He followed, and she knew at once that she couldn’t escape him, that she was too tired, that whatever shortcut he had taken to appear behind her had allowed him to conserve his strength, that he would catch her at once. Soon, he had her backed against a wall, where she found herself as unable to move as on that night in the alley.
The knowledge that her life likely wasn’t in danger this time around did little to cheer her up.
“Get away from me!” she whimpered, wishing with all her might that the rock behind her would vanish, or that she would sink through it into a world where he couldn’t chase her. It remained, however, as stubbornly solid as any real wall. “Begone, demon!”
“Demon?” he stopped and cocked his head. The corners of his mouth went up, but the motion seemed more perfunctory than amused. “Me, a demon? My darling Rose, I had credited you with more imagination than that. I’m farther from anything described in your holy book than you could possibly imagine.”
“What are you, then?” she demanded, conscious of her racing heart, of her pathetic attempts to stall him. She pinched herself again, as deep as her nails could go without breaking skin, as she suspected that drawing blood in front of him would be no less dangerous than it would be if done while swimming with sharks. “If not a demon, then what are you?”
“There is no name for what I am,” he replied, reaching out and trapping her neck between his outstretched thumb and index finger. He watched her silent struggle to break free as patiently as someone waiting for dough to rise. “I’m beginning to think that we should have started this in media res. It was a mistake to give you so much time to think things through. Thinking never does your people any good. It just makes you hesitate.”
“Let me go!”
“Why? I already told you that I’m no demon, and that I mean you no harm. Yet you deny me when I try to offer you pleasure beyond belief. Why is that?”
Even in her state of shame and stress, Rose found the energy to offer him an incredulous stare.
“You, sir, if you are indeed not a demon, certainly have a very high opinion of yourself!” She spat out the words, and felt slightly better for having said them that way. “Can’t I simply deny you because I do not desire you?”
He seemed bewildered. It wasn’t a look that suited him. His face didn’t seem used to it.
“No,” he said, taking another careful step back. “That . . . never happens.”
“Well,” Rose said. The part of her that was growing closer and closer to her waking self with every inch he put between them wondered, somewhat nastily, about what sorts of women he had been meeting before her. Likely they had been worldly and loose. Certainly they had never had a Mrs. Cross in their lives. “I do mean it. I met you in an alley, killing and taking eyes. There isn’t much about killing and taking eyes that should cause a young lady to swoon, is there?”
“I have met many women who knew me as a life-taker, none of whom denied me.”
“Perhaps you should visit them, then?”
He didn’t look like he was listening.
“There is, I am told, an allure to darkness. A power of attraction never achieved by those who walk in the light. Most pious men are prone to becoming so enamored with their ideals of feminine purity that they never even consider that their virginal lovers might have desires of their own. Desires far darker than they are prepared to think about, let alone meet.”
“I wouldn’t know about any of that, I’m sure,” Rose told him, and because the curse of civility had fallen upon her again, she refrained from adding that the reason why she wouldn’t know about it was that to her ears, it sounded like a load of nonsense. “Nevertheless, it’s my desire that you leave. I’m glad that you didn’t murder me tonight, but you still reek of death, an
d I find it unpleasant to have you around. Please go.”
“You deny me because I reek of death?” That wasn’t at all what she had said, or even close, but now that she had regained her wits, Rose felt charitable enough to let it slide. He had the look of someone who was grasping at any possible straw to recover from the blow she had dealt him — and, she was sure, to his manliness. “That is ironic, considering.”
“Considering what?”
“Nothing.” He said it the same way Millie would often reply whenever Rose made an off-hand comment about her bed not looking like it had been slept in. In that sort of brief, clipped tone that was like ice over water in that it betrayed many hidden depths. He shook himself, then put his smile back on. “I propose a deal. I refuse to believe that you aren’t at the very least tempted by what I have to offer. Rather, I believe that I haven’t tempted you enough. If you allow me to continue and resist me, you have my word that I’ll leave, and you will never have to see me again.”
“I . . .” Rose’s voice trailed off. There was no doubt about what she should reply. His offer was unacceptable in every sense. He had proven to possess a measure of control over her, over when she moved, over how rational her thoughts could be at any given moment. She couldn’t hope to win against him, so what would be the point of agreeing? “This isn’t a fair deal. You know I cannot hope to resist your . . . your hellish trickery!”
“Just quit with this demon nonsense.” He stopped looking deeply offended long enough to heave a sigh. “I swear to resort to no sorcery, no trickery, nothing but my own endowments.”
Rose’s face went scarlet as her mind was launched back to the moment when she had brushed her hand against that thing of his. His endowment, she supposed. Did he intend to whip it out and wave it at her in order to entice her? She’d heard — from Millie, who else? — that men did that sometimes, to attract the attentions of a less discerning sort of woman. If he truly believed that such a crass, gross action would sway her, he had another thing coming.
Nevertheless, she felt intrigued. Rose didn’t have much of an imagination for anything that strayed from the sphere of the everyday, the ordinary, but she was always eager to see new things, provided that they would neither kill her nor turn her disreputable. She could entertain the thought of giving a yes as an answer, if only to see what he would do.
However, there were some details left to sort out before she agreed to anything. Keeping her ignorant seemed to be one of Mrs. Cross’ main goals in life, but the woman had, in point of fact, taught her some important things. Chief among them was that no transaction could be conducted without both parties being aware of the whats, the whens and the how much fors. The principle was more often applied in relation to business orders, but Rose firmly believed that if something was good enough for bread, it should work just as well on men.
Although in this situation, she felt that foregoing the how much fors was not only necessary, but a moral imperative.
“How long do I need to resist you for?”
He threw his right hand away from his chest, leaving his palm turned up. One moment the hourglass wasn’t there, the next it was, as if he’d pulled it out of a secret compartment in the nothingness. Rose eyed it warily. On the whole it looked like a rudimentary thing —glass squeezed between two lumpy panes of wood — but the stuff inside was sand in the same way the killer had eyes. It was what it was by default, because it could hardly be anything else, and looking at it for more than a few seconds made her head ache.
“One turn should do,” he said. She nodded. Strangeness of the substance inside notwithstanding, it did appear to be flowing normally, and it wasn’t that big an hourglass besides. If he kept his word throughout, she might even win. “Shall we start?”
“Not yet! I have one condition.” She swallowed, and when he didn’t interrupt or speak against her, she stayed her trembling and went on. “You are not allowed to lay a hand on me.”
His eyes darkened — or perhaps they had started out dark, and she was only now capable of seeing it. He’d deny her request, she was sure he would. He didn’t strike her as the kind of man who would let himself be deterred by something some girl wanted. He was the sort who took what they meant to take, with a knife or without.
“Very well,” he said instead. It surprised her that more than sounding like he didn’t mind the added level of difficulty, he also sounded elated, like he’d been offered an unexpected gift. She remembered, in haste, being told that the sort of men who took what they wanted tended to overlap with the sort of men who enjoyed a challenge. She didn’t know where that particular nugget of wisdom had come from, as it fit in the narrow chasm where Millie and Mrs. Cross’s views of things agreed with each other. As such, it could have come from either of them. “Now, can we—”
“How do I know that I’ve won?”
“If you are still standing upright when the sand is done running — which you won’t be — you win.”
The terms seemed reasonable enough to Rose, who nodded. He set the hourglass down on a round, three-legged table that hadn’t been near him the whole time, and now conveniently was. Rose knew without looking that the room had changed and filled with scattered furniture, that heavy damask curtains had descended to cover the walls, and that somewhere, there had to be a bed. She turned her head, and there it was. It looked very comfortable. Not that it mattered, she added hastily, as she wouldn’t be lying on it anytime soon. Never, in fact.
The sand began to run. The killer didn’t move.
“Have you ever been loved, Rose?” he asked conversationally. His voice was laden with so many double-edges and hidden meanings that Rose blushed, slightly pinker than she had when he’d put her hand against his most private parts. Or what should have been his most private parts, as he appeared to have no particular desire to keep them private.
“Of course I haven’t. What a thing to ask!”
“I didn’t mean loved in the carnal sense,” he said, his mouth quirking at her affronted reaction. Rose tried to kick herself. It had been a trap. He’d given her a line that could be understood two ways, and she’d gone with the disgusting one. “Have you ever been loved by anyone? A father, a mother, sibling, friend or, yes, I suppose a suitor?”
She had not. Her mother and father . . . well, they clearly hadn’t loved her enough to keep her. She didn’t have any siblings she knew of unless she counted Millie, who was practically sisterly sometimes, but they had more tolerance for each other than they had affection. As for friends, there had never been any time for that sort of thing, what with work and . . .
The killer read her lack of response as a negative. His face contorted strangely, like he was trying to look sympathetic but didn’t have enough experience with it to successfully pull off the expression. Giving up, he went back to fixing her with his unblinking, unreadable, unreal stare.
“Does it hurt? That there has never been anyone? Anyone to take care of you, anyone to listen to you without asking for anything in return, anyone to make you feel like you matter?”
Rose stole a glance at the hourglass. There was quite a bit of sand still at the top, but also a considerable amount already on the bottom. She couldn’t understand what he meant to do. She had limited experience at being seduced, but she suspected that taking a slice out of the target’s heart and seasoning it with lemon wasn’t the best way to go about it. It was true that all he could do was talk, but wouldn’t it be more effective to say something kind?
Then again, she should probably be feeling grateful that he wasn’t attempting anything effective.
“I could love you,” he added. “If you want to be loved at all.”
“Why would I want to be loved by a murderer?”
“Because it would be better than being loved by no one.” She had to remind herself that he was saying what he was saying in order to bed her. It did little to soften the blow. “I could care about you, Rose, like no one has cared before. Please you like no one has pleased you
before.”
“Kill me like no one has killed me before,” she retorted, but there was a small waver to her voice that shouldn’t be there. Did she want to be loved? It wasn’t a concept she had thought about all too much, as it had never seemed as important as getting through another day. A part of her had to long for it, though, or his offer wouldn’t have been so tempting to accept, even though she knew what the price was.
“I could make every moment you are asleep feel as good or better than when I kissed you just now,” he continued. His voice was like honey. Sweet, difficult to wash off, produced by a creature with a known tendency to sting. “You work so hard. Every moment of every day, from dawn til dusk, and what does that earn you? More demands? An old crone’s bad temper? Why don’t you allow yourself to have something good just this once?”
“I . . .” It was true, she did work hard. And Mrs. Cross was a bad-tempered old crone, no denying that. And if she were honest with herself, she would admit that it would be pleasant to have something to show for what she did, something other than her own survival.
She just wouldn’t have expected that the best reward her mind could conceive would be . . . well, him. It wasn’t that he was unattractive, not at all. If he were simply a face and a body with no strings attached, someone she hadn’t met, someone who hadn’t frightened her night after night, she would even say that her subconscious had done an excellent job in creating the perfect dream lover. As it was, she couldn’t help but wonder if there was something deeply wrong with her.
It hit her, all of a sudden, how ridiculously she was behaving. She was reacting to him, to his game, to his proposition, to impending ravishment, as if it were all real. And it wasn’t, no matter how it felt. He was a thing of dreams. The real killer would be more likely to cut her throat than to try to paint it with light, seducing touches, or discuss love with her as if he meant it. The real killer would, in point of fact, be completely aghast to find out that she had stamped his likeness on a vehicle for whatever twisted desires boiled within her.
The Darker Side of Love (A Dark Erotica Boxed Set) Page 42