Page 178 of What We Burn

I grab Stine by the shoulder and hip, brace my feet, and roll him onto his back.

He lands with a wet thump.

Sage sucks in a full breath and sprawls across the carpet, one knee still bent toward the bedframe. Blood covers her face, her clothes, her hair—basically every exposed inch of her. She looks like she’s spent the night competing in a murder-themed obstacle course.

Then I look at Stine.

One eye is gone. His chest and stomach are shredded, his shirt soaked so thoroughly it’s stopped pretending to be a separate color. There are wounds in his side, his neck, his shoulder. His remaining eye stares at the ceiling while his face holds the deeply surprised expression of a man who thought he’d booked a victim and discovered he’d ordered his own execution.

Holy shit.

My kitten did this.

All by herself.

I glance back at her. “You’ve got a little something on your face.”

She wipes at her cheek, smearing the blood toward her temple. “Did I get it?”

“Absolutely. Now it looks intentional.”

“Asshole.”

“Psychotic overachiever.”

I offer her my hand. She takes it, and I pull her carefully to her feet while watching for any sign that one of her legs won’t hold. She wobbles once, then steadies.

The knife lies on the carpet beside Stine’s shoulder.

She follows my gaze down to it, bends to snatch it up, then tucks it behind her back.

“I can explain.”

“Explain? What’s to explain? This is . . . ” I let my eyes wander around the room. “So fucking hot.”

Her mouth drops open. “What?”

“You. This.” I gesture at the room, at her, at the man formerly known as Dale Stine. “I mean, the volume of blood is genuinely impressive. I think you got arterial. Did you get arterial? Because that wall says you got arterial.”

“Milo, I⁠—”

“Kitten.” I take her face in my hands, blood and all. Her skin is slick and warm under my palms. “You’re so beautiful I don’t even know where to start.” I sweep the hair out of her face with fingers that leave streaks on her cheek.

She’s shaking, every part of her quivering with adrenaline. I can see the animal joy in her, the way it wants to slip the leash, the sense that if I said something wrong it would shatter her and if I said something right it would shatter her and either way, it would be perfect.

She blinks hard, some of the focus leaking out. “I’m a fucking mess.”

“You’re a goddess.” I lean forward and kiss her, letting her taste the truth of it. Blood and all. She gasps into it, and for a second she’s stiff, tense, like she still might run. Then she fucking melts. The knife hits the floor with a clatter. Her hands come up, slick with blood, clutching at my T-shirt, at my hair, yanking me so tight it’s like she’s trying to fuse us into a single, pulsing being.

I walk her backward until her legs hit the bed. She pulls me down on top of her and we fall onto the polyester bedspread, and I’m peeling her wet shirt off and she’s yanking at my belt and neither of us says a word about the dead man on the carpet three feet to our left.

This is fucked up. I’m aware. On a scale of one to needs-therapy, this is somewhere around call-the-Vatican. I’ve been told by at least three mental health professionals that my major flaw is “inappropriate affect.” As in, I respond to life-and-death situations like I’m at a birthday party and respond to birthday parties like they’re a funeral.

Case in point: that time my girlfriend stabbed a serial rapist eleventy-billion times and we made out on the crime scene bed like prom night at the slaughterhouse.

She’s everywhere. Mouth, teeth, nails. Her hands claw at my neck, my jaw, down my chest. I don’t mind losing a little epidermis for her; it’ll grow back. Most things on my body grow for her.

She shoves my jeans down, just enough to get my dick out. I drag her open jeans and underwear down to her thighs, and she hooks one leg over my hip, moaning as I sink into her. It’s raw, body-wrecking, so good even my nervous system is overwhelmed trying to keep up with all the input. She’s tight, slick, greedy—her teeth find my shoulder and break skin, and the pain-wired-through-pleasure short-circuits my head. I fuck her hard, not gentle, not careful, and it’s exactly what she wants because she comes on my cock ridiculously fast, full-body shudders.