Page 151 of Pareidolia

“I do,” I whisper.

Nox leans in closer, filling my vision in a halo of red and brushing his lips against mine. “Then believe me when I tell you, if I say this cabin is yours, it’s yours.”

And there’s only one thing I can do, really… only one answer I can give. “I do.”

I’m close enough to see the furious red of his eyes slowly fade to calm. “Good. Now you have no reason to leave the forest.”

Fuck. I sigh and lean forward, dropping my head against his shoulder in a sudden movement that could easily get me strangled with the tendril still around my throat. It loosens, though, and he stills as I turn my head to speak against his skin. “You know, you’re kind of sweet for a primordial moth monster.”

The low rumble that spills out of his chest is a warning before his hands catch my hair again, jerking my head back so I’m forced to look at him.

“Don’t mistake my desire to keep you here with some strange human affection. I want you accessible, where I can easily find you.”

I snort. “You’d live under my skin if I let you.”

Nox’s red eyes glance over me like he’s considering it, but he lets my hair go and pulls me back to the curve of his shoulder. “You act as though I’d ask permission.”

There is that.

Eventually, Nox drags me from the kitchen and forces me back into the living room. With the door closed and the bodies hidden, it’s a lot easier to pretend this is actually some strangely romantic gesture and not a prison sentence in the making.

“This is your den now. Get used to it.”

He’s not asking, he’s demanding. Someday, I’m going to have to have a conversation with him about the difference between ask and tell, and how one will get you everywhere and the other will get a knife in your chest.

Not that the knife did a damn thing, but still.

“Sure, Nox. I’ll look around.”

It’s not like he’s giving me much of a choice… though as I start to carefully make my way through the cabin, I can see how I might call a place like this home.

I’ll just have to take down the pictures of the people who called it that first before I can really believe it.

An hour later, I’m sitting on a couch that smells like flowers and writing on the laptop that Nox disappeared to retrieve.

He didn’t come back with just the laptop, though. He gathered everything from the fire tower and dumped it on the couch beside me. It’s obvious he isn’t giving me a choice of saying no when it comes to where I’m staying now… and I don’t know if I have it in me to fight him at this point. Especially when I’ve spent the last twenty minutes writing an extremely realistic murder scene.

It’s strange to realize that I don’t need to write to feel that fulfillment anymore—that I’m not writing because it’s as close to those emotions as I’m ever going to get…

I’m writing because I want to immortalize it, because I want to look at the page later and remember the dead, faraway expression on the man and woman’s faces.

Fucked up… It’s all fucked up… But Nox gave me another gift, bringing me here.

All the death I’ve craved, the desires that I’ve barely been able to swallow down…

He’s offered it all to me on a silver platter, and the only catch is giving up pieces of my soul in tiny measures every time I take another bite.

CHAPTER 21

NOX

An hour later, Aspen finally blows out a breath and closes his laptop, tossing it onto the couch beside him before he stands.

“It’s hard to work when you’re in the corner looming like a fucking gargoyle, Nox.”

He doesn’t sound angry about it, but he does sound… exasperated. Even with that, he gives me a once-over and then heads into the kitchen.

“What are you doing?”