“Actually, I’m not sure I do,” I threw back at him.
His nose nudged at the soft skin behind my ear, and he licked a stripe up my neck. A playful bite to the hinge of my jaw made my cock twitch.
No. No, this isnotsexy, I reprimanded my traitorous dick. The last thing I needed was to get hard as a serial killer wastrying to kill me, though I guess I couldn’t be faulted for the crossed signals when it was my boyfriend.
“There’s a hint,” he whispered as sparks lit up my body, betraying the fact that I, too, would rather fuck than fight. But I wasn’t naïve enough to believe he wouldn’t kill me as soon as he was done.
With Nate’s mind on sex, I took the opportunity to throw myself to the side. It was a risky move, and I still got nicked by the blade, but it was better than getting my throat slashed. I scrambled toward the kitchen that was in front of me, figuring there had to be more knives I could use to defend myself.
But I didn’t get very far before I felt a burning in my side. I ignored it and kept going but quickly felt something damp against my shirt. When I looked down, I noticed my side was covered in blood and there was a large slit through my shirt.
No, not just my shirt. My fingers probed, and I let out a hiss as I realized the asshole had sliced my side open. The blade had been so sharp I hadn’t even noticed.
I looked up at him, shocked. Though, I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I had still hoped he’d been telling the truth when he said he’d never hurt me. Maybe I’d been lying to myself and trying to make myself believe he loved me, too, and that meant he couldn’t hurt me.
Either way, I’d been wrong. He didn’t care about me and he was going to kill me.
I backed up and leaned against the island, never taking my eyes off him as he made his way toward me. But I was getting weaker the longer I stood there. I knew it would only take him a few seconds before his long strides brought him into the kitchen with me.
Then he’d kill me.
“You don’t have to do this, Daddy,” I whispered as I started to sag, my elbows braced on the counter behind me.
There was a flicker of sadness in his eyes before he shookhis head. It should have given me some sort of comfort to know there was a part of him that didn’t revel in killing me. But it was a poor consolation prize.
“I’m sorry, little bird,” were the last words I heard before pain and blood loss pulled me under into the cold, unfeeling darkness.
31
NATHAN
Iwatched in a daze as Aiden slumped in my arms. The blood oozed out of him and mixed with the blood on my hands from the nameless man I’d killed earlier. I grimaced at the realization.
Aiden deserved better than the desecration of having his blood mixed with that of someone who didn’t matter. The other man had been a nobody, while my little bird was my everything.
But he was slipping away, dying in my arms. And I felt myself slipping away with him.
As gently as I could, I laid him on the ground and went to the sink to scrub the blood from my skin. There wasn’t much I could do about my clothes, but they weren’t a priority at the moment. When my hands were as clean as I could get them, I made my way back to where I had left Aiden.
My heart raged at the sight of him hurt and bleeding out on my floor. Well, that wasn’t a fair statement. The likelihood of him bleeding out from that wound alone was pretty small. Didn’t change the fact I didn’t like to see him hurt—even if I was the one who had done it to him.
I needed to get him up and moved somewhere else. Then again, the high polish and sealant that was put over the industrial concrete flooring in the kitchen was probably the best place for him to be while he was still bleeding. Not that it was comfortable, but it provided easy clean-up.
“What am I going to do with you, little bird?” I asked his prone body as I leaned down to check his pulse. Still steady. That was good. Logically, I knew I should kill him. It would be easy, with him unconscious. But the thought made me want to throw up.
Just like every time before when I thought about killing him. I didn’t know what it was, but I’d already proven I couldn’t do it.
Which was utterly ridiculous!
I’d killed dozens of people without remorse. Yet Aiden had proved difficult from day one. I pushed myself up from the floor and paced as I contemplated my options, of which there really weren’t many.
Either I killed him and I fled or I didn’t kill him and when he regained consciousness, I’d go to prison. Unless I ran.
Looking down at his prone body, I didn’t know if I could find it in me to run. Even faced with the knowledge that he knew everything.
Fuck. I was so screwed.
Why did he have to show up at the moment he did? Even if he’d had the cufflink, if he hadn’t watched as I slit a man’s throat, then maybe I could have come up with some sort of excuse. Though I wasn’t stupid enough to believehe’dbe stupid enough to believe in any coincidences in the matter. Especially given that he already had Christian as the person who discovered one of the bodies.
