Chapter Eighteen
Dexter
“We need to leave in no less than twenty minutes. We cannot be late.”
Megan stops peering at herself in the mirror to shift her remorseful eyes to me. She’s not looking at me as a psychotic maniac with no grasp on life. She’s peering past the layers, seeking the source of my disturbing behavior.
She will be searching a very long time. Nearly twenty-nine years, to be precise.
“There is no need to put in an effort, Megan. My father won’t judge you on how you look.”He’ll be too busy formulating how you bleed to assess the clothes you’re wearing.
She sets down the makeup kit I had delivered this morning before standing to her feet. Instead of wearing the clothes I purchased for her when we escaped Meadow Fields, she has on the knee-length skirt and three-quarter-sleeved knitted jacket. The instant I spotted the ensemble in the boutique store of our hotel, I knew it was designed for her. The subtle palette adds to her innocence, and the green foliage enhances her diamond eyes.
My father will be pleased when he sees her. She is the very essence of pure.
After placing her hand on my chest, Megan gives me a look that reveals she’s nervously excited. When I told her we were going to visit my father, she misunderstood the situation entirely. She thought I was laying down foundations. I am—somewhat—just not in the way she predicted.
She knows of my secrets, of my inability to keep a rational head when in the depths of a nightmare. For that alone, she will never be my pet. This is the exact reason why I never slept in a woman’s bed. I try to maintain control over every aspect of my life, but there are some things I can’t regulate, such as my dreams.
I guess the same could be said for Cleo’s dad when he killed Shelley. Maybe it was just an accident, and no one was at fault as Megan suggested last night. When it’s your time, it’s your time. That’s what I’ve been continually telling Megan the past sixteen hours.
Argh!I’m talking like I have a cunt between my legs.
I need to get this woman out of my head. She is making me unhinged. Even more than usual.
My reaction to the bruise circling her wrist was all the indication I needed to know it’s time to finalize this part of my playbook. I don’t pursue women who remind me of my mother because I am infatuated with her. I hate her so much, I hurt woman who look like her because I can’t hurt her. Every tear they shed, every scream ripped from their throat, I pretend came from her.
My manic behavior is disturbing but is easily excused. Many years ago, I was diagnosed as having Sadistic Personality Disorder among other comorbid mental illness. In laymen’s terms, I’m several shades of fucked up. I don’t just have one mental illness. I have many.
Aren’t I lucky?
I laugh at my hilarious inner monologue. It isn’t a smart thing to do. Megan is giving me that look again, not the sympathetic one, the one she gave me in the cabin days ago. She’s looking at me with love in her eyes.
I snatch her hand off my chest before raising it to my mouth. When the vein in her neck flutters in excitement, I draw my lips over my teeth, halving the impact of my bite. I don’t do it because I’m an upstanding guy who buys a dozen roses for a first date. I do it to weaken her eagerness. She wants me to bite her. Not just her wrist, her entire body. I don’t answer to anyone’s pleas. I do what I want, when I want.Except when it comes to my father.
Feeling my qualm slipping, I ask, “You ready?”
Not waiting for Megan to answer me, I head for the door. Recalling my request for her to wear running shoes instead of the strappy shoes she’s been getting around in the past few days, she tugs them on before shadowing me to the elevator bank. With our suite the entire top floor of the hotel, the elevator car comes straight to us, the important guests.
We ride the first ten floors in silence. The tension firing in the air is electrifying. It has the same dramatic edge that kickstarts my pulse before every hunt, but in a unique way. It is a foreign feeling that is extremely hard to explain. If I had to put it into words, I could explain it as if I’ve swallowed the antidote for crazy—like that’s even possible.
Pushing aside the unexplainable as a consequence of arriving to a hunt with the target in tow, I continue counting our descent. Only thirty-four floors to go.
My wish to evade the confines of an enclosed box triples when the elevator comes to a stop at the twelfth floor. Because the uniformed officer is deep in conversation with a plain-clothed detective, he doesn’t immediately notice Megan and me standing at the back of the empty car.
I have a cap hanging low over my eyes, but Megan’s face is completely exposed. She looks identical to the photos every news agency in the country has been broadcasting hourly since our escape, and she knows it.
A vein in her neck twangs as her eyes calculate the distance between her and the officer’s gun. She’ll never make it in time. His gun case is clipped shut, meaning she’d be shot by the detective before she could remove the gun from his partner’s hip.
Not calculating the risk as expertly as me, Megan steps toward the officer. Before she gets us both killed, I grab her wrist, pin her to the wall, then seal my mouth over hers.
The squeak she releases when my tongue delves between her cherry balm-flavored lips alerts the officers that they are not alone. They balk before cocking their heads to the side to watch the spectacle of Megan climbing my frame so she can grind against my stiffening shaft.
As my tongue strokes the roof of Megan’s mouth, I watch the officers in the mirrored wall of the elevator. I’m hoping the presidential suite keychain dangling from my back pocket will enhance my ruse.
It does. . . along with Megan’s hearty moans.
Every stroke of my tongue along the ridges of her mouth triples her husky groans, and I’m not going to mention her prolonged grinding against my crotch. She kisses me like she’s starved of taste, like I’m the only man who has ever caressed her in such a way. She kisses me until I forget why we are kissing. Then she kisses me some more.
