Page 49 of Cut Deeper

“Remove your dress but leave your heels on,” I said, striding to Eva’s cage and rolling it into position.

I glanced at the hook dangling from the ceiling, making sure we had a good vantage point. Anne was peeling off her dress, and I did a double take when I realised she’d been entirely naked beneath the blood-red silk.

I crouched to inspect the cowering little bitch in her cage. Her stitches were intact, and I liked how she was forced to smile even when her eyes had gone dull.

“You’re all the same. Heartless little whores who rejected me,” I whispered to her—then paused, considering, and rose to face Anne.“With one exception.”

Anne crossed the room. Her heels clicked on the coated cement, but I was mesmerised by the sway of her hips, the way her nipples tightened against the cooler air.

“Why don’t we show her what she missed out on?” she murmured, unbuttoning my jacket.

It was as if she could reach into me and read my mind—the thoughts I’d never shared with anyone. She drove away my demons by simply existing. She slid the jacket down my arms, and I took it from her.

“You read my mind.”

Gareth was gone—lungs severed and extracted. We’d watched his final moments together, as a couple. Once his organs were on ice for Anne’s canvas, I’d dragged him off the table and laid him on the floor. By the time I was finished with Anne, all three of us had been soaked in his blood.

But tonight was homage to a queen.

“Wait here,” I said, leaning down to kiss her cheek and breathe in her perfume.

Not her usual light floral notes—something deeper tonight, musk-based, intense. I noticed everything about Anne. Not out of vigilance. Out of captivation.

I quietly gathered everything onto the trolley and rolled it toward Anne and the cage, the wheels squeaking as I drew closer. Anne smiled when she saw what lay on it. I lifted the rope and watched her eyes track my movements. It should have amazed me that someone her size had put down grown men, but the cold, feral quality in her eyes spoke volumes.

“Give me your hands,” I murmured.

She held them out, wrists pressed together. If I hadn’t been fully erect before, I was now. I wound the rope around her wrists with care, looping it several times through the middle.

I moved aside to lower the hook, the pulley’s mechanical whirr filling the silence while I waited for it to reach the right height. Then I closed the gap and snagged the rope onto the hook.

“I usually string them up and cut them,” I whispered, sliding my hands from her wrists down to her elbows.“Slice them open and fuck them to silence the voice.”

There was no fear in her eyes. And it wasn’t blind trust either—which irritated me, because how fucking dare she accept death, even by my hand.

“You want me to do it?” I growled, lowering my hands to trace the scars she hid on the undersides of her arms. The deeper cuts. The hidden ones.

“Do you want to do it?” she asked, tilting her head.

I didn’t answer. Instead I crouched and removed her heels—the tiny buckles were fiddly, but within seconds I’d left her dangling, painted toes searching the cold cement for balance.

When I straightened, the rope was cutting into her wrists. I paused to admire her, stretched out before me. Control and calm returned.

I kept my eyes on hers, sultry blue, hooded and heated for me, and closed the gap between us, trailing my fingers from her neck to her belly.

Without a scalpel in my hand.

Without splitting her open.

Without a single cut.

I circled her, and as I reached her back, I caught Eva’s eyes peering from the shadows of her cage. The silly, scared rabbit was frozen, but she couldn’t look away from us. I cupped Anne’s arse cheeks, massaging before prying them apart.

“Are you ready for the monster?” I murmured.

A single exhale left her lips, then her breathing turned ragged and shallow.

“You know I am,” she gasped.