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I set my keys and bag on the living room table, my gaze trailing Colton as he moves around the room. “Nothing’s changed for me. You can’t scare me away,” he says, his fingers roaming over my fireplace mantel. There are no pictures there. Just my obscenely embarrassing porcelain figurine collection.
“Not even with my creepy porcelain dolls?” I ask, trying to effect a light tone and failing miserably.
Colton gifts me with a faint smile anyway. “You like them because they’re fragile. Breakable. Beautiful. You like to protect them.”
I head toward my bedroom, saying as I pass, “I’m that transparent, huh?”
He reaches out and grabs my hand, pulling me to a stop. “Only to me.”
Licking my lips, I stare into his pale blues. “That night in the club…I told you. I’m a monster. It’s the truth of me. I’ve never admitted that to anyone, Colton. What I shared with you today is who I am. Unlike you, I have never felt any mercy.”
Taking my hands in his, he laces our fingers together. “But you’re wrong, goddess. You felt mercy for the victims.”
I shake my head. “I felt retribution. It’s not the same.”
“We are the same.” His eyes bore into me, down to my marrow. “If you claim otherwise, then everything you demanded I believe last night is a lie. And I won’t let it be. Even if I was so desperate for your acceptance that I didn’t question why or how you could love a villain.”
“I meant it all. But now you see who the real villain is,” I say, my voice low, my soul fractured and just as desperate to hear Colton’s affirmation of me.
“If that’s so, then is it the only reason you’re with me? Because you believe your sin is greater than mine?”
The leaden truth of that question crushes me. “No… You know it’s more than that.”
“We’re bound together,” he says, bringing my body flush against his. “Whether that’s in sin or mercy, I don’t care to make the distinction. It’s just one more reason, one more undeniable proof, that you were designed for me.”
His lips find mine then. Tasting of solace and benevolence and unyielding consequence. Temptation to be lost—just leave behind all my pain and suffering, and the woman who clung so ruthlessly to it—bewitches me. I could truly let go.
I would never look back.
But a beep from my phone pulls me out of that fantasy. Breaking away from Colton’s firm embrace, I glimpse the screen, and I’m plunged right back into the icy waters of reality. As if I were ever able to escape.
An image of Avery wearing a tight, silky red dress flashes across the screen, followed by a text: A simple request, my love. See you soon.
I swallow the thick bile coating my throat walls. “He wants me to wear a red dress.”
Colton takes the phone, closes the message, and sets it atop the mantel. Anchoring his hands around my waist, he lifts me up until I’m forced to straddle his hips, my arms finding their home securely around his neck.
“If that’s his request,” he says, walking us into my bedroom, “then I have one of my own.” He kisses the column of my neck tenderly before he lays me down on the bed.
I rest my cheek against the cool comforter as I watch him open my closet door. “My dresses are all the way in the back,” I say, trying to force away the thoughts of what Avery must be suffering this minute. What is he doing to her in that dress?
Avery is beautiful and pure—and she was perfect. My world has become darker and darker since my abduction, and I hate that someone so full of light has now been tainted by that same evil. Despite what I tried to turn away from, every molecule in my body wants to kill the evil that has corrupted her world and turned it into mine.
Colton steps out of my closet with a satin red dress. It’s not exactly like the one I wore the night I stalked Connelly to that bar, but it’s a close enough match.
I clear my throat. “I should’ve seen if before now. His ritual to decorate his victims in dresses. How could I have missed the connection?” I close my eyes. “My profiling skills should really be called into question.”
The mattress dips under Colton’s weight. “I would argue that…if you hadn’t accused me of being a serial killer right off the rip.”
I attempt to stifle it, but a laugh escapes. “We’re completely twisted. The only two people who could find humor in any of this,” I say, linking my fingers around his.
He brings my hand up and places a soft kiss beside the band of rope. “Stop questioning us, goddess. And stop doubting yourself. As selfish as this may sound, I don’t regret anything that brought you into my world.”
I reach over and palm his face, loving the feel of his unshaven scruff. “What’s your request?” I ask, unable to restrain the rising desire unfurling within me. Before I go, before I risk everything…I need to feel Colton inside me once more. To know that I had finally found redemption.
Pressing into my palm, he turns his face to the side and catches my finger between his teeth. His tongue traces the tip before he releases me, sending a surge of yearning all the way down to my toes.
He pushes off the bed, stands at the base. Kneeling down to remove my shoes, he says, “The UNSUB wants one side of you; but I want it all. Who you were before, between, and now. You might have to dress the part for him…but I won’t let you slide on that dress with him in your mind. You’re mine, goddess. When you walk out that door, I want you to feel me—to know that I’ve touched and branded every part of you and that fucking dress.”
