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She’s never needed anyone before, never had an emotional need to be met, and she doesn’t even know what to ask for, or how to ask. And from me? The villain who bestowed these cursed emotions on her? She can’t surrender.
But I’m the only one who can give her exactly what she needs.
When her emotions run high, when she falls into that dark chasm of emotional turmoil, I’ll lace our fingers together and pull her away from the brink.
I’ll let the friction between us spark and roar until we’re nothing but spent embers.
Passion can only burn us alive once.
“A crematorium,” she says, as if picking the thought from the air around us.
My brow furrows as my thoughts circle to where we began. “That would be convenient.” I lower my hand, caressing down to the base of her lower back. “Unfortunately, I don’t have access to something that convenient.”
Her swallow drags along her throat. “I do.”
She doesn’t give me time to ask. She presses into me and crushes her mouth to mine.
And as we evolve from a fiery collision to forming molten matter, we forge the darkest of plans in my lab. Sirens wail and horns shout, the sounds of life outside these brick walls flood the dilapidated space while we plot how to silence the dead.
38
TIME’S UP
ALEX
Blakely’s presence hums next to me, my skin abuzz from her nearness, her energy. Both the physical closeness and the metaphysical. She still has reservations—ones that will take time to climb over the inertia I created along our timeline, but there is one constant in the universe, and that’s change.
Nothing stays the same forever.
Like the turn of a dial, one emotion gives way to the next along the spectrum, and as time passes, our emotions shift and modify. One kiss shouldn’t be life-altering, but factoring in Blakely’s stubborn disposition, that kiss was shattering—a magnitude eight earthquake to rock our foundation.
After the sun set, we headed into Chelsea, where the flurry of nightlife thrives, but the cover of darkness shrouds us as we move through the veins of the city. I follow Blakely as she turns down a familiar alleyway. I was just stalking this borough as we pursued the same target and yet, somehow, I missed the connection.
I don’t believe in fate.
But I can’t deny the irony.
Blakely stops outside of a three-story building with two-tone bricks and a faded black awning.
The awning reads: Pet Heaven Crematory.
She looks at me expectingly. “I watched Addisyn enter and leave here,” she says, turning toward a lockbox nested alongside the rusted door. “She was never one for discretion.” She starts to punch a code into the keypad, and I grab her wrist.
“Cameras,” I warn.
With a derisive tilt to her head, she says, “You’re not a very diligent stalker,” before she returns to the keypad. “The batteries on the Wi-Fi cams are dead. I checked them the first day while trailing Addisyn.”
The box beeps and she opens the small black door, producing a key.
I glance around the bustling four-lane street. No one is watching, no one cares. Who breaks into an animal crematorium? Still, I can’t ignore the tension knotting my spine.
“This is too exposed,” I say, even as she pushes the door open.
“You’re too accustomed to your habitat. Your private, creepy forest. Well, this city is my forest. I know how to operate below radar.” Leaving the lights off, she uses her phone as a flashlight.
The interior looks like what I’d assume the average pet crematory would look like. Miniature caskets. Bare brick walls with a few display shelves to showcase picture frames and animal toys. A generic desk. The smell of linseed oil used to polish the wood mingles with a dry fragrance of what I presume is ash. Another distinct odor hovers beneath of animal feces. I curl my lips.
The front of the business is set up as a merchant shop, with urns and picture frames, even wooden boxes with inscriptions. I suppose mourning pet owners want to bury their pets like a loved one, with memories and cherished objects, as they place them in comfortable, satin-lined caskets and watch them roll into the cremation unit.
