Page 67 of Little Puppet

“What in the hell are you doing?” I ask, looking around in confusion.

She pops up, blowing her blonde hair away from her face, which had fallen out of her messy bun. “Packing, of course.”

“Of course,” I say, looking into the living room and finding it likewise in shambles. “Uhh, darling girl?”

“Yes?” she asks, lifting a box and closing it with packing tape.

“Can I ask where we’re going? We both have jobs here and to my knowledge, I might be losing my mind, so excuse me if I am—we haven’t discussed moving.”

I wait for her to explain, but she only smiles.

“We haven’t, but I thought we agreed that I would beeverything you need.”

I nod in agreement, grabbing her as she tries to pass me with a box. I take it from her, sitting it on the island as I turn her to face me. “Where are we going?”

“Home. To where I fell for you, of course.”

My brows tug together in confusion. The farmhouse?

“Grimrose House?” I ask her.

She nods. “Is that its name? I didn’t know. Very gothic, I like it.”

She’s in good spirits today. Six orgasms will do that to a person.

“You want to go live at Grimrose house?” I ask her.

She sighs, motioning around us to the room. “This is a lie, Cain. It’s a facade you’ve been living in for years. It’s time to live how you want to. We don’t have to if you don’t want to live at Grimrose House. I’ll get an agent to find us a house. I get it could be weird to live there being that…”

I shut her up with a kiss. “We can live wherever you want.”

My mind flickers to the bodies suspended in the room off the stairs, and I narrow my gaze at her. “And the women?”

She doesn’t bristle. She thought of that, apparently.

“They’re part of our story. Part of who we are. Though I don’t think they should hang like puppets in the house, we can find something to do with them.”

“You’ve truly thought of this. You really want to stay with me?”

She wraps her arms around my neck, lips pulling into a sinful smirk that boils my blood. “Oh, my precious little psychopath, has no one ever loved you before?”

She’s baiting me, I tell myself inwardly.

Even so, my ego rises to the occasion.

My hand rises, cutting off her air as the man from the depths cracks his neck back and forth, preparing for a fight.

I keep wondering when she’ll have had enough. When is the point she stops wanting a killer’s hands on her? When does she decide it’s enough?

I can’t think like that, but it spurs me on.

“Don’t taunt me, darling. You know what happens when you do.”

She grins. “It’s why I do it, you fucking monster.”

I can’t help myself. I forget who we are to one another, leading her by her throat to the wall beside the fridge, slamming her back into the drywall. “Puppet,” I warn.

“I want to be with you,” she says, and my hand flexes. “You need to get past this.”

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