Page 59 of The Cruelty of Thorns

I felt my cheeks heat up. “I’ve never done that. Not with a man.”

“I know,” he grinned, running that same hand up to tuck a stray hair behind my ear before dropping it to zip up and button my pants. He leaned in to kiss me again, this time slower, as though he was savoring the taste of me. I melted against him while my heart slowed to its normal rhythm.

“You never answered me,” I said when our lips parted.

“What do you mean?”

“What are you doing here?”

Before he could reply, a light was shined in my eyes, blinding me. I looked up toward the parking lot as a voice called out. “Is everything all right here?”

I squinted into the light and could make out a man standing there in the uniform of the campus police. “Yes sir,” I replied, stifling the urge to giggle like a kid caught doing something forbidden, which was, in fact, what had happened.

“You should probably get inside,” the man advised. “It’s not safe out here right now.”

“Thank you. We will.”

After he was gone, Julianus looked at me curiously. “What was that all about?”

“Probably the murder.”

He quirked a brow. “Murder?”

“A student was found on campus this morning. She’d been raped with her throat ravaged.”

Julianus’s entire demeanor changed. His eyes hardened, his voice noticeably cooler when he asked, “Her throat was ravaged?”

“Yeah. There was something weird about it, too.”

“What?”

“Whoever did it left a rose on her body.”

He stood so still I thought he had gone catatonic. “Hey, are you okay?” I asked.

He blinked and looked at me as though he just realized I was there. “Come on,” he said brusquely, grabbing my arm. “Let’s get you back to your dorm. And don’t wander around out here after dark.”

His change in attitude was a little unnerving, and I found my mind going back to what had happened in the hospital. Was this another rejection, or was he truly concerned for my well-being?

When we reached my dorm, he pulled me in for another kiss, but there was no heat involved in this one. He left before I reached the top of the stairs.

CHAPTER 25

INTERLUDE

Eternal regret

TWO DAYS PASSED.

Not that there was any visible clue to their passage from deep within this lightless cell. I knew only because I could feel the rising and setting of the sun like an internal clock.

The first day was bad. I kept remembering that taste on my lips, the way it coated my tongue and zinged through my veins, knowing only that I needed more.

I spent the time trying to distract my mind, but there was nothing to compete with this searing reality, and I knew if I didn’t answer it soon, I would lose all sense of myself. So I paced and I listened and I waited for the door to open, resolved to attacking anything that came through it.

By the second day, reason started to abandon me. The need grew exponentially with each hour that dragged by. It consumed me, first the lust, then the thirst, the two of them at war within my body.

I didn’t know where it came from. I didn’t know what had happened to change me. I only knew what I needed and what I would do to get it. On the one hand I was a ravening beast, a mindless slave to my baser needs. On the other I was a cold, calculating monster who would stop at nothing to get what I desired. There was no right or wrong in this. There was only survival.

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