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“Sit on the counter,” he says.
I arch an eyebrow. “Clothes,” I demand.
Without warning, he grips my waist and hoists me onto the counter. I dig my nails into his arm, but he easily pries me off, turning my hand over between us. He uses the soft light of the candles to inspect my scrapes and bruises.
A charged current electrifies the air between us. His touch is too intimate, too familiar, my body on high alert, so aware of him and every caress of his sure fingers over my skin. I struggle to breathe.
He’s silent as he reaches above my head to gather alcohol and gauze from behind the vanity. His cologne invades my space. It’s a clean, nautical scent—and I imagine this is his scent; the way he always smelled before incarceration. The thought is tantalizing.
“First you hurt me, then you mend me,” I say, shaking my head. “Your diagnosis is ever advancing, Grayson.”
His fingers trace the sensitive skin beneath my scraped wrists. “Even a sadistic hunter prefers healthy prey.”
I try to snatch my hand away, but his grip tightens. “Hold still.”
I straighten my spine. “You’re enjoying this. Getting off on my pain.”
“Nothing has ever gotten me hotter.” A devious smile twists his lips, annihilating what’s left of my resistance.
My pulse speeds as I allow him to treat and bandage my wrists. I try to think, to process, but his bare chest is just inches from me, and all I can do is stare at his scars. One diagonal slash on top of another—eleven in all. He catches me staring. “They’re self-inflicted,” I say, and he glances down.
“Yes.”
I recall during our sessions, the pieces he revealed of himself and his self imposed punishment. “Is that the number of lives you’ve taken?”
“Yes.”
He’s been convicted of nine murders. He brandishes two additional scars. I swallow an ache. “Am I going to become number twelve? Just another scar on your flesh?”
A muscle feathers along his locked jaw. “I won’t let that happen.”
He finishes wrapping my left wrist, and I pump my hand into a fist. “How can you stop it from happening when you can’t control your compulsions. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Because you obsessed over me—over some connection, our ‘inevitability’. And then you fantasized about your escape until you made it happen.”
He rests his hands on either side of my thighs, his face too close to mine. Shadows dance over his face. The flicker of candlelight casts his features in dark, predatory beauty. “There are too many contingencies to account for them all. I had to focus on the most likely ones, but we—you and I, London—we were always a contingency. What we’re working through now is the variables to determine our exact outcome.”
I hold his gaze. I find and wrap a stray thread from the towel around my finger. “A less intelligent person with your disorder would simply be insane. They’d have been locked up long ago with the rest of the criminally insane. But you…your IQ distorts the madness, Grayson. It may feel like brilliance, even mimic it, but it’s still madness.”
His head tilts slightly, bringing him even closer. “One man’s madness is another’s genius. Is that what you’re saying?”
My shoulders tense, his nearness unnerving. “You buried me,” I say, the accusation clear in my raspy voice. “Where is your genius in that?”
“Patience, love. You’ll realize it soon enough.” He lowers his head and inhales deeply, breathing in my skin. The pulse of his breaths against my shoulder vibrates along my body like a current, humming with a warning.
Grayson pulls away, putting a small space between us. Then, reaching for the white candle, he slowly swipes a finger through the flame. “Touching you is like daring the fire to burn me.”
He taunts the fire, deliberately toying with the wick until the flame is almost snuffed out. Then he moves in. His hands slide along the counter, eating the distance separating us. His thumbs make contact—the slightest touch to my thighs, but I feel the impact rock through me.
“You’ve always been too
tempting,” he says. “Alluring, seductive…making me question myself. Seduction is one of your sins, did you know that? Are you aware of your power?”
I lick my lips, completely aware of the way he’s watching my mouth. This is a complicated matter, though; how far to push him without going too far, without pushing him over the edge. It could just as easily backfire.
I’m willing to take that risk.
“I’ve never felt weak until you happened,” he says, inching my towel up my thighs. “That can drive a man crazy. The want. The need. Craving what you know is bad for you.”
I stop resisting and let his hips push my knees apart. “I’m just as guilty,” I admit. “Of desiring that bad thing, of wanting you.”
