His (A Dark Erotic Romance Novel) Read online

  He sat back on the bed, his hands no longer on me. My body shook with the ache of desire, unsatisfied. Lust tore through me, a hard pain that made my teeth chatter.

  “No,” I moaned. “Don’t stop. Oh god, please, don’t.” I whimpered, unable to stop myself from pleading. This was the torture he wanted to see, this was the agony that he would leave me in. I hated him then, hated him and wanted him in equal measure, and I had never known that such desires could be one and the same.

  Then he smiled, his lips gleaming with my juices.

  “There, kitten,” he said. “I’ll be back soon.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Gav

  Instead of satisfying her, I decided to let my kitten squirm. All tied up, looking delicious. Tasting delicious. When I took my knife out of the drawer she nearly cried, but I left her there without touching her again.

  Release. That’s what she wanted. That’s what I wanted, too, but I could control myself. I could control her. Yes, everything was falling nicely into place. Even with her little stunt with the razor. I admired her for that. She was a smart one, I knew that from the beginning. There was something different about her that made my mind go into a reeling circle of...

  Emotion? Maybe. Maybe it was the thrill of the kill, enhanced by her as a witness.

  I ran a bath for myself; I wanted to imagine that I was her. Imagine what she must have felt like. In the other room she moaned, but I ignored the sounds. I wanted to know what was in my kitten’s mind, what she was really, truly capable of. Now I knew she was capable of killing, or trying to kill, and I understood that. But she had also been capable of suicide.

  I settled myself into the bath and picked up my knife from the granite edge of the tub. It looked bigger than when I’d used it to kill other people.

  Could I do it? The shadow resting over my heart was a poison, but could I bleed it out this way?

  I put the point of the knife to my skin. The blade made a dimple on the thin tissue of skin just under the heel of my palm.

  Could I do it? I wanted to. The world grew dark around me, and all I could see was the point of the knife, the shiny steel blade. I twisted the handle slightly. The knife pierced the skin and a drop of blood welled up at the point where it had slipped through into me. My teeth gritted tightly.

  In the silver reflection of the blade I saw myself. My mouth twisted in horror. Pain crumpled my face. I looked almost… human.

  The knife left my hand, flew across the bathtub. It hit the cream-colored stone and bounced back, slid down into the water at the other end of the bathtub. I pulled my knees back, as though the knife would come after my legs, wanting to finish what it had started.

  My hand gripped the punctured wrist. It ached already, ached much more than a simple cut should have hurt. Under my fingertips I could feel the pulse of my heartbeat. It was fast, frightened, but it was there. I was still alive, after all.

  Not like this. I couldn’t end it like this. If I could snap my fingers and turn the world off, turn the shadow off, I would. More than her, more than anyone, I hated living. It was an endless fight against the shadow, one that I could not win. I did not want to live, no, there was nothing on earth that made me want to stay alive.

  But unlike her, I was too scared to die.

  I could lie to myself about why I stayed alive. I saved women from being abused. I saved children from being molested. A service to humanity. But I served the shadow only; the real reason I killed was to drive back the darkness. If I could make it go away by killing myself...

  I unwrapped my fingers slowly from around my wrist. The drop of blood smeared red over my skin. I lifted the wrist to my lips and licked off my own blood. The coppery tang filled my nostrils and my stomach roiled.

  I stood up from the tub. Water dripped down my body in slow rivulets; it felt thick as blood. At the bottom of the tub, the knife’s edge rippled under the waterline, silver and shining.

  I would never be as brave as her. No matter how much I wanted to.

  How, then? The thought of popping pills repulsed me – the vomiting, the mess. A gun would be a sure thing, but again, messy. I don’t know why I cared so much about my body. It was only a body, after all. I’d sink into the thick earth of a graveyard as easily as anybody else.

  I forced myself to think about it. Worms devouring my flesh. The blood in my veins clotting and crumbling.

  I didn’t care overmuch about the bodies of my victims, but mine was different. I wanted my body to stay whole, at least until after I was dead and gone.

  A stupid, irrational desire. But it was a desire, and I hadn’t had many of those lately.

  So what did that leave? Instant incineration might be a good way to go. Fire burns away the bodies I make, and it’s certainly less messy. If I could find a rocket and sit under the jets, let the fire burn me to nothing in a split second, I would.

  Drowning, maybe. Smothering, if you could smother yourself.

  But not a knife. Not my own blood.

  Enough, I thought. Her moans reached me from the bedroom, and I left the knife where it was. I had other work to do.

  Kat

  “Gavriel?”

  “I like the way you say my name. Like you’re scared of me.”

  “I am scared of you.”

  “Silly kitten.”

  He sat down on the side of the bed, completely naked except for the white towel around his waist. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been pulling on the ropes that tied my hands and feet to the bedposts while Gav had been doing…what he had been doing to me. They ached.

  Now he leaned over me again, and my body quivered even without his touch. His hair was wet, dark and dripping. His chin was dark, unshaven, and his eyebrows pulled together over his light eyes.

  “I don’t know how you did it, kitten.” He turned away from me, and I longed for him to come back, despite everything. The ache had not gone away. His method of torture was terrible; I wanted nothing more than for him to return between my legs, no matter how I despised him. I did not despise his tongue.

  “Did what?” I asked.

  “Tried to kill yourself.”

  “I—what?”

  “I can’t do it at all. Can’t even begin to cut myself.” He bowed his head, his hands clasped between his legs. It was then that I noticed the prick of blood on his wrist just below his thumb.

  “You tried to cut yourself? Now?” I had heard him run the bath, but I had never imagined what he was doing.

  “You are brave, kitten,” he said, as though he hadn’t heard my question. He was off in that other place again, a place where I didn’t belong. He didn’t notice me staring at him, didn’t notice the aghast expression on my face.

  If he’d killed himself, I would have starved to death, tied to his bed. Did he even think about that? Think about me?

  “The pain is worse than anything else,” he said. “Not the actual pain, but the thought of leaving this behind, all of it. As much as it hurts to stay, it seems like it would hurt even more to leave. I would miss it. It needs me.”

  He turned to me, a shadow of pain masking his face. His fingers clutched his wrist.

  “I would miss you, kitten. And the killing. I would miss never killing another person.”

  “That’s… that’s disgusting.”

  “No, not at all.” He raised his chin up to the dimmed lights, his face beatific. “It’s exquisite. The moment of release. Think about what I did to you, before my bath.”

  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 bad
ly, 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.

  No, the shadow is something I wear like a cloak, and like a cloak it grows heavier with each step until it’s unbearable. That’s when I kill. I kill. Me. Not the shadow. Still, if it were gone, I wouldn’t need the release that killing gives me.

  Wendy was able to sew Peter’s shadow back on using only a needle and thread. Is it so impossible to think that she could cut it away from me with a razor?

  Kat

  When I woke up, it was dim in the room. The sky outside of the bedroom window was gray, the curtains glowing white at the edges. I longed to look outside, to see the trees now in the half-darkness. Half-turned on my side, I tugged slightly at the rope before realizing that I was still captive. The knot was still tight around my wrist.

  Next to me, Gavriel kicked out. He’d fallen asleep on his back, leaving me to stare at the ceiling for hours before I finally was able to drift off into restless sleep. Now he was the restless one. He kicked again and moaned, the blanket yanked down around his waist, his body twisted.

  Sweat soaked the front of his shirt, a half-circle of transparent wet fabric clinging to his sculpted chest. His brows were clenched together tightly on his forehead, an expression so painful it hurt me to watch him writhe. Both sides of his mouth turned down in a grimace. The corners of his eyes leaked tears that mixed with the sweat trickling down his temples.

  Killer. Kidnapper. Torturer. But as he tossed beside me, moaning again in his sleep, he looked like a child scared of the dark.

  He turned over again, a whimper escaping his lips. He murmured half-words I could not understand. Then one I could, a whisper so sorrowful it nearly broke my heart.

  “Kitten,” he whispered, and moaned again.

  My arm was tied tight, but I could reach with my fingers as he moved his head. I touched the top of his hair, my fingertips stretching to caress him.

  He stopped moaning. Stuck in an awkward stretch, I continued to pet him on top of his head with only my fingertips. My nails ran through his hair, pushing back the black mess. His lips moved but now there were no words, just silent intonations.

  Then he rolled over, his arm swinging across my body, and he clutched me tightly, as though I were a pillow or a stuffed animal from his childhood. His head rested on my shoulder, damp with sweat. His knee rested on my thigh. The weight of him was so real, so impossibly human.

  Was he a monster? And was I a monster for caring for him? Even now, tied up to bedposts, I could not help but think that I was less of a prisoner than he was.

  I tilted my head down and kissed him softly on the forehead. Hot skin, still moist with sweat.

  “Sleep,” I whispered, and he obeyed.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Gav

  The next morning I brought her breakfast in bed. Her eyes were bleary; she must not have slept well. Pity.

  “Why don’t you untie me?” she asked, as I offered her a piece of buttered biscuit.

  “I have to go,” I said. “I can’t leave you untied when I leave the house.”

  “Where are you going?” She wasn’t eating; I was slightly irritated.

  “Out.”

  The shadow was back. It had come back in the night, after so many days of being chased away. I knew I had to find a new victim. Not to kill right away, but soon.

  There had been a man I’d been researching. A politician, one who enjoyed whoring around and beating on his wife. He’d slept with his intern, too, a fourteen year old girl. She’d come out of the building once while I was there, her hair mussed, her eyes rimmed red with tears. I watched him as he spoke with her in the pa
rking lot, threatening her, bending her against the hood of his Lexus. The thought made me shiver with dread.

  Yes. That would do it. That would drive the shadow back. An indulgence, to kill twice in a month, but I deserved it for dealing with such a hassle. That’s all she was, my pet, a small hassle. I pushed the biscuit into her mouth and she chewed. Chewed, chewed and swallowed.

  “What were you dreaming about last night?” she asked.

  Her shoulders were relaxed, even tied up. Her lips were pink and tempting.

  “I didn’t dream,” I said.

  “You did. You were talking in your sleep.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Were they nightmares?”

  My eyes snapped back to hers. Clever one, she thought she was. And she was clever, but not clever enough. I didn’t know what she’d heard last night. The screams of the man I’d been killing in my dream? The cries of my mother?

  “No,” I said.

  “What happened to your mother?”

  It was a guess, nothing more. I could tell. She was pushing, trying to figure me out. There was nothing to figure out, little kitten. Push too far, and you’ll see the darkness. I tossed the last piece of biscuit back onto the plate.

  “Goodbye,” I said, and stood up before I could get any angrier.

  The shadow was already creeping up around, clawing its way back in.

  Kat

  Hours passed. I struggled to untie the knots at my wrists, but I only drew the rope tighter. Hunger made my stomach growl. I wished I’d eaten more for breakfast.

  What if he was serious? What if he left to try to kill himself? What if I was stuck here by myself?

  Fear ran through me, and I had no way to tamp it down. Normally I would pop a pill when I got too anxious, but there were no pill here. I couldn’t reach anything. The ropes tightened around my wrists and I began to breathe hard.

  Calm down, Kat. Calm down. Don’t freak out. If you freak out—

  The door downstairs opened, and I heard his footsteps coming up the stairs. He was whistling. Strangely enough, I was relieved. He opened the bedroom door and walked in, a bounce in his step.