Page 67 of Possess Me! (I Want You To)

“Before…?” Luca trailed off, patiently waiting, the sassy twist to his words from earlier completely absent. The man I was talking to now almost seemed like an entirely different person.

I liked him just as much, which…surprised me. Considering how much I enjoyed it when he was bratty and loud.

Before you.

I was conserving energy for the drive ahead, so I didn’t exit his body, despite the fact this conversation felt entirely too intimate.

Guilt, fear, sadness.

Emotions I hadn’t even known I could feel.

Emotions I’d kept buried as long as I could.

It was funny how death had taught me more about living than being alive had.

“Where were you?” Luca asked quietly, patiently. “You said you were with a…lady?” He didn’t want to say murderer and I wasn’t sure why I thought that was incredibly fucking cute. Like it was a dirty word, and he didn’t want to soil our conversation.

A murderer, yes.

“Ah.” Luca nodded. “Um.” He slowed the car down a little, changed lanes, and then sped up again, his fingers twitching where they squeezed the steering wheel. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. It was an anxious tick I probably wouldn’t have noticed on anyone else. He had a hard time talking to me, I knew it was because I wasn’t the most forthcoming with information.

Luca was a ball of restless energy and I…well, I was the absence of it. A void that sucked in the life around it and turned it into something darker than space and heavier than death itself.

A black hole.

“So why did she…you know…create you?” His hands were squeezing, squeezing, squeezing again. I wanted to smooth my fingers over his knuckles, to soothe them where they turned white with tension.

What a weird feeling.

I didn’t like it.

She wanted a servant.

“A servant? For…” Luca’s fingers began to tap nervously, and I stared out at the open road in front of us, curious if by looking through his eyes I’d see the beauty in it. I didn’t.

To help with murder, yes. Among other things.

“So you’ve killed people, then?” Luca said those words in an oddly blasé way, like it didn’t matter to him whether or not I’d done it. Like…he’d accept me either way. My throat felt dry and I shrunk in on myself, confused and a little afraid of the fact I was beginning to tingle all over. My heart hurt. Why did it hurt?

I’ve never killed someone outright. Only almost.

“But she made you do other things?”

Worse things.

For the second time that night I thought of green eyes. I thought of sobbing. A tiny boy who resembled the person I cared most about in the entire world, held down by my hand and beaten in front of me. I shuddered.

“What’s worse than murder?” Luca asked softly, gently.

Making someone wish they were dead.

“Oh.” He blinked and was silent for a while as he processed this. “You didn’t want to do that though, right? You wouldn’t hurt someone on your own.”

I would.

“You would, what? Hurt someone?”

Yes.

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