Page 32 of The Fire Went Wild

Jaxon makes an absolutely horrible noise, a kind of wet, thick choking. Then his head slumps back just as cum shoots out, splattering in pearly, gleaming ropes across the mussed-up bedsheets. I shout and jerk away, the chain slackening.

But Jaxon falls sideways across the bed, all the fight gone out of him. I assume he’s passed out, but I pull on the chain with all my strength. Because I want to kill him. That’s the only way I’m getting out of here.

What I don’t do is dwell on the dark, terrifying thrill all of this has given me. Jaxon making me come while I sleep. Jaxon staring at me as he jerked himself off while I strangled him.

This woozy, dizzying rush of adrenaline pushing past the throb of my migraine.

“This is self-defense,” I whisper, wrapping another loop of chain around my arm. “He’s a murderer.” The chain digs painfully into my skin, but that’s nothing compared to what it’s done to Jaxon’s neck, where the links cut so deeply into his flesh that he’s bleeding.

Jaxon gasps suddenly, wheezing, his eyes flying open. He looks right at me again, and his eyes are a nightmare—bloody and blazing. But there’s something in his expression that turns me cold.

Recognition. Excitement.

Lust.

And then it’s all gone. Blinked out. His empty eyes stare at me and his mouth falls open, slack.

The reality of what I’ve done hits me all at once. I scream and drop the chain, clawing at the place I have it wrapped around my forearm until it falls with a loud, thudding clank. Then Iscramble backward off the bed, panting and terrified. Jaxon doesn’t move, his eyes blank and flat.

I did it.

He’s dead.

For a long time, I just stare at him, trying to comprehend what I’m looking at?—

A dead body.

And trying to comprehend what I’m going to do next. Everything happened so fast that I hadn’t even thought about what I was doing. Something whispered in my head to loop the chain around his neck and pull, and that’s exactly what I did.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying to calm down my frantically racing heart. At least my headache has vanished. Small favors.

When I open my eyes again, I half-expect Jaxon to be sitting up, grinning, like this was all a game.

He’s not. He’s still slumped sideways, tongue lolling out of his slack mouth, his hair clinging into damp strands to the side of his face. His cock flops out of the fly of his pants.

I should not be looking at his dick.

“Focus.” The sound of my voice in the empty room grounds me, even though I still have a weird woozy feeling in my stomach. It’s not exactly guilt but more a sense that something’s off. Something’s wrong.

Of course something’s wrong you just killed a man.

I push past the feeling. Focus. I need to focus.

I’m still chained to the bed.

The weird, sick feeling in my stomach blooms: how the hell am I going to get out of this? But Jaxon did unchain me yesterday. He had the key on a necklace. I just hope to god he’s still wearing it.

I slide off the bed and walk over to his body, my hands trembling. I keep expecting him to leap back to life, like the killerin a horror movie. Every time the ceiling fan blows dark strands of his hair across his face, my heart jumps. But his eyes are open and red with burst blood vessels. His face is a dark mottled purple color. He’s dead.

I’m going to have to touch a dead body.

I swallow back a surge of bile and reach over to tug down on his shirt. His skin is still warm, which makes it easier, somehow. I can pretend he’s alive.

When I see a glint of silver chain, I let out a loud, gasping sigh of relief. I hook the necklace with my finger and drag it out from under his shirt until I reveal the two keys. But I’m going to have to lift up his head to get the necklace off him.

I squeeze my eyes shut as I slide my hand under his temple, picking his head up just enough to pull the necklace away from his neck. When I let go of his head, it drops heavily against the bed like an inanimate object.

Don’t think about it.

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