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“I’m not five,” Gareth muttered with a frown. “I know how to paint. I just like painting with blood. Blood is my chosen medium.”
“Yes, well, you’re all out, aren’t you? So you don’t really have a choice—” The way Gareth was staring at me made me stop talking. Behind his glasses, his eyes twinkled, and I’d been around Gareth long enough to know he had an idea.
“I’ve been thinking about that, actually,” Gareth said. He turned toward me, taking the paintbrush to my cheek and painting a line down my cheek to my jaw, and then to my chin. “I have an idea. It’s something you could help me with.”
The paint was wet on my jaw, and I watched as he pulled the brush off my skin and turned to dip it in the color again. “Let’s hear it, then,” I mumbled, though I had to catch my breath when he brought that paintbrush straight down my neck, to my collarbone, painting a line over it, just above my shirt’s neckline.
“Since you don’t want me going off and getting blood on my own—and I’m being annoying about it and listening to you,” Gareth had to pause to roll his eyes at that, as if he was displeased at himself for caving in and holding back from killing people, “there is a way I could replenish my supply. Slowly, of course, but in an ethical way… as long as you agree.”
“How could getting blood from someone be ethical?” I spoke the question dryly.
Gareth stepped back from me, tilting his head as he studied me. “That’s where you’re wrong. Now, take off your clothes. I’m finding, if I have to paint using real paint, I think I prefer the canvas that is your body instead of that.” He pointed to the square canvas with a single line of purple down it.
He wanted to paint my naked body? Hmm. At least it was one way to get him going without using blood. The funny thing was, when I first moved into this house, I would’ve told Gareth off in a dozen ways, refused to undress for him and let him paint me.
But things had changed, and that was why I slipped off my pants and my shirt without saying a word. As the clothes dropped to the floor, Gareth watched all the while, a hunger flashing behind the depths of his emerald stare. And when I went to take off my bra and panties—a matching set, which Gareth always preferred—that hunger only grew.
“Lay down,” he said, “over there.” He gestured to the chaise lounge a few feet before the canvas; he’d dragged it there when he planned on hurting Erin in front of me, and it never got moved back. The lazy boy.
Oh, but he was no boy. I couldn’t forget that.
I was well aware my nipples had hardened the moment I’d slipped out of my clothes, that every inch of me was on display for Gareth as I walked over to the chaise. Sitting down, I met Gareth’s eyes, and then I lay back. Once I’d reclined and lifted my legs onto the lounge chair, Gareth brought over the palette and the paintbrush, and he set the palette down beside me, moving to straddle me.
He dipped the brush in the red paint—a poor substitute for the real thing, he’d already told me—and brought it to my face once again, drawing two lines down my nose, one on either side. I stared at his face all the while, as he made me his living canvas.
Gareth was never as calm as he was when he was painting, it was true. It was like having a brush in his hand helped calm his monstrous heart—something I understood all too well. I think that’s why I’d been so addicted to it my whole life. It was like I’d known, deep down, that I needed something to distract myself with, to hold my true self back.
Because my true self? It was ugly.
He dabbed the brush in the white color, and even though he wasn’t cleaning the brush between colors, he didn’t care. The white he brought to my chest, painting around the bottom curve of my tits. Once he got more paint, he ran it between them, and I inhaled sharply.
“Back to what I was saying about the blood,” Gareth whispered as he dropped his attention to my stomach, painting a design on it with green as he spoke, “there is, in fact, one ethical way to get blood: if it’s freely given.”
That got me to laugh softly. “And who, Gareth, would freely give you their blood?”
Gareth’s eyes flicked to me, the painting of my stomach pausing as he waited for me to come to the only conclusion there was. When I still didn’t get it, he clarified, “You.”
“Me?” I echoed. “How would you—”
“Nurses and doctors take blood all the time without killing their patients,” Gareth explained as he resumed his painting of my abdomen. Circles and zigzags, nothing too artistic, but I had the feeling painting on my naked body wasn’t for the artistry. “I could take yours, bit by bit. You might have to take some supplements to help your body get stronger after giving me blood, but—”
He said more after that, I knew he did, but I tuned him out. Not because I was upset at his suggestion, but because, in a weird way, it was beautiful. I could give him my own blood, and he could paint with it, create abstract masterpieces made by my blood, inspired by me. He could sate his need to use blood to paint with, and I could sleep soundly while knowing he wasn’t out there, killing and draining random people just for their blood.
Gareth must’ve taken my silence as me being unsure, because he told me, “I could have Alistair help, if it would make you feel better. He could oversee the whole thing, doublecheck that I’m not taking too much.” He set the paintbrush down on the palette, and then he crawled over me, holding his body above mine, expression earnest. “The last thing I’d ever want to do is take too much. I love you, Bri.”
I couldn’t help it. I smiled when I heard that last part. I’d known for a while this jerk had claimed a part of my heart for his own, but I couldn’t say it back. No, as much as I wanted to—and believe me, I wanted to desperately—I would make him and the others suffer for a while longer. I’d messed up at the hospital by telling them all at once, and then they’d explained their little competition to me. It still irked me when I thought about it.
So, yeah, no more declarations from love on my part for a while. I wanted to make them squirm.
Gareth was hoping I’d say it back. I could tell from the look on his face. Instead of telling him what he wanted to hear, I decided to swipe my hand upon the paint palette and bring it to Gareth’s face, wiping one side of his face with my paint-smeared hand and then the other as best I could.
He hadn’t been expecting that, and his hopeful expression turned into a glower. He took my wrist into his hand and held it above my head, pinning it there. “You bitch,” he whispered, his face covered in paint, a mixture of colors.
I giggled. “You look good in red and blue and purple.” I didn’t try to free my wrist; if there was one thing I knew by now, it’s that when Gareth had a hold of me, there was no escape. “And green and white—” I was still smiling when I reached out my other hand to his face, smearing the paint on him even more.
Within two seconds, my other hand joined the first above my head. He didn’t hold that wrist as hard; it was my left one. He never held it as hard as he held my right. The scar on it was a constant reminder of what I’d done, though I did wonder sometimes if he didn’t want to be rough with that wrist because he was worried that somehow, someway, the scar would magically reopen and I’d bleed out.
“You’ll pay for that,” Gareth hissed out, his voice carrying the same venom it always did when he got upset. And yet, even though that particular voice might cause a jolt of fear to run through any sane person, the only thing it made me do was squeeze my thighs together in anticipation.
