Page 51 of Sick Bargain

“Because you’re a coward?”

“Because I want you! I’m… I’m a willing prisoner, okay? I fucking want you!” He rips his hand free and throws the knife somewhere into the living room.

I’m so jarred by his admission that I refuse to accept it. “No. You need me,” I correct.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. He sits up and pushes me back. Flipping our positions so I’m sitting upright on the step, Remiel climbs onto my lap and wraps his fingers around the back of my neck, thumbs under my chin. “I don’t need you.”

I watch him intently, looking for lies and meaning. I don’t know what he’s getting at, and the whole thrill of the night is shifting into something vulnerable and horrific. This is supposed to be about blood and the rush of death. Yes, I wanted him to throw the knife and show he cares, but now he’s saying things that don’t mesh with my idea of the connection we share. I want him scared! Honest with actions, not words!

I’m his monster. The one who will complete his bargain. His tormentor and his rapist. He relies on me to keep him safe and end the lives he wants ended. Nothing more.

“I don’t need you,” he repeats. “I can survive without you. At least until the curse takes me. But I can do it. I can live on my own.”

I swallow, too afraid to say anything.

“But I pick you,” he says, tilting my chin and looking straight into my eyes. “I told you I’m sick. I fucking told you.” He lifts onto his knees and wiggles until my cock lines up with his ass. “I pick you as mine. I pick you to turn me into something I’ve never been before. I choose you to show me a way of life I’ve never lived. I don’t need you, Krypt. I fuckingwantyou.” He slides down my cock, and even though I’m mentally panicking, I’m coming, too. Suddenly and without warning. Feeling it too deeply without reacting to it. My cock throbs inside him while my chest pulses from what he said. It’s not pleasure soaking me. It’s pain. I can’t tell if it’s good or not.

The pit of my stomach coils tightly, churning and burning into something volatile and dense. My eyes surge with the need to free my demons, wondering if they’ve always simply been vulnerabilities in the form of tears, and the breath in my lungs refuses to leave. I don’t know what the feeling is. It’s a craving I can’t name and a sensation that doesn’t make sense.

I want to fucking kill him for being so stupid.

I want to kiss him without hurting him.

I want to lock him in the basement as punishment for what he said.

I want to wrap my arms around him and touch him tenderly.

I want to throw him from my life so he can never change it.

I want to hold on to him so tightly he can never leave.

He wants me. The real me. Keegan from town and Krypt from Vile House.

I don’t like being wanted. I love it. I hate it. It’s too much and not near enough. It’s all my diagnoses coming back to war with one another because none of them can settle on the way we feel about this. He’s an idiot!He’s fucking mine.

“I want you,” he repeats.

“Don’t. Stop wanting me.”

“I can’t.”

He can’t. He can’t. He can’t.I’m going to kill him with my want, and he has no idea how dangerous my love can be. My love is warped. It doesn’t feel the same as it does to others. It’s alarming and scary and dangerous. It’s a complete fall into obsession and the obliteration of everything else. If Remiel becomes the focus of my love, it will annihilate him. Wipe him out. Strip him bare and turn him into a husk of his former self. He’ll die.

I tilt my head at him, hurting everywhere but nowhere in particular. “You’re tricking me. Trying to entice me into killing you.”

He squints at me. “How is telling you I want you a trick?”

I latch onto his hips, scrutinizing everything about him. The way he breathes and moves. The way he looks at me. The way his lips pop open and his pupils dilate. “I told you my love is dangerous. You’re using that to make me kill you. No.” I push him away, barely caring when he crashes to the floor and falls down the last few steps. “No, I won’t let you.” My cum seeps from his ass, but I’m too stuck in my head to appreciate it.

“You won’t let me want you?!” He stands, naked and angry, inner thighs glistening.

“I won’t let you want me! I won’t kill you, Remiel!” I turn my back on him and rush upstairs. I’m supposed to be in the basement, but fuck everything and everyone. I’m overstimulated and incapable of processing my thoughts. Because, for once, they’re mingled with feelings I can’t fathom. Feelings I’ve never felt before. Feelings I don’t understand.

Feelings I can’t name.

This was supposed to be about fear. Now I’m the one who’s terrified.

18

---