AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The female needed to be able to employ her skills. Fucking her might make her unusable. I would be content with observation and imagination. The knife would make an excellent tool to use on her. Making her scream in agony and climax at the exact, same moment, while I shoved it in and out...making her guess whether I’d introduced the sharp end or the handle end....that had made it to the top of my bucket list, as the humans called it.
The fingers of my host clawed into the cane arms of the chair. Movement of the digits?
Take care. I needed to float below the surface, in the darkness of the Neverland of thoughts—the subconscious. I must be wary, must be slow. If this new abomination of the Cucitrice bettered her skills, she might see me.
No stitcher had ever succumbed to torture or trickery, but this one was crippled. This had turned out better than I’d hoped. Torturing her with the knife would be poor compensation if I failed my primary goal.
Wait and take care. His nails scratched at the cane as I admired her form. So pale, so young. Blood would show well on that skin.
So good. My tongue could almost taste her.
Some of me leaked out. A snickering of black vined into the ink that traced the rose on Val’s arm. Uncurl, unfurl, and slither into the flower.
Put your ear down close to skin, and you hear crackling as the dark invades the red.
The edges of the rose frayed and blackened with evil.
No one would see, and it was such a nice touch.
Her red wolf materialized, glared at me, pacing before she curled up at the foot of the bed. Her deep rumble warned of repercussions if I dared to come closer. I managed a small smile and returned to my observations.
At some indefinable point in the nighttime vigil, true sleep arrived.
I slept deeply.
A knock on my knee jarred me.
Not a dream. Real.
It ripped my consciousness from wherever it had been, adrenaline spiking muscles so that they twitched, ready to move.
But instinct kept me in my seat, told me not to make any sudden moves.
Slowly, I opened my eyes to black-painted toes jabbing me again. I followed the long line of leg all the way over velvet skin and pink lace until my gaze settled on hard hazel eyes.
“Give me one reason you’re not going to leave here singing soprano.” Zara’s voice was calm, her hand steady as she pointed her Ruger between my legs.
I smiled.
Calculations only took a second. Zara was not in the same league as me—shoot first then ask your questions. I had this. The knowledge made it almost forgivable for falling into deep sleep.
“Nobody likes to wake up with a gun pointed at them, darlin’.” I kept it easy, as if I was talking about the weather. As if rain or shine, I didn’t have a care. As if I was supposed to be here in her apartment. “Put the gun down so we can talk.”
Her turn to smile—a flash of white teeth that saidbite me. “Nobody likes to wake up with a stranger in their room,darling.” Her hand seemed to squeeze the gun a little tighter. “Nothing you can say to me that you can’t say in front of my gun, we’re real intimate like that.” She winked. “Now, start talking.”
I slowly raised my hands—simple psychology, reducing her sense of threat by showing her my palms. “Can I stand? I have to use the bathroom.”
“I don’t care if you piss in your pants, long as you start talking.”
From beneath my brows, I regarded her—twitchy, pretty, armed with a gun I should’ve removed from her reach while she slept...someone who’d been a needle-thin moment away from being under psychiatric care in an institution and even now was obsessed with a man who might not exist. The highly strung ones always took more work.
“Let’s think about this. Shooting someone for home invasion can be argued as self-defense, except I’m sitting down, and I’m unarmed.” I let that sink in for a second. “That’s not the complicated bit, you can say I fell backward, put a knife or a gun in one of my hands.” Her brow furrowed. “But the thing you can’t get out of is the fact that shooting a federal officer is a capital offense. You know the one where all those fancy lawyers like to talk about the death penalty.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re FBI?”
“Let’s just say I work for the government.”
“Have you got ID?”
