Page 54 of The Circus

Her eyes round at the edges, showcasing more of that alluring, bruise-like purple. She takes another step back.

“Will you stop?”

Her voice is barely a whisper now. Grinning like the psychotic serial killer I am, I shake my head. “Run, little ghost. It’s time to play.”

THIRTY-ONE

TEDDY

With a girlish giggle,she turns and flees through the woods, and it takes everything I have in me not to give chase, the slap of her flip flops echoing and then fading. I’ll let her think she has the upper hand. The voices are as charged as lightning in a storm, buzzing through me, my body humming with the vibration. When I kill, it’s the same feeling, that erotic sort of anticipation at knowing my bloodlust will soon be satisfied.

I won’t kill Eden, of course.

Just hurt her a bit.

So I meander down the path, everything around me going still. Those eyes I feel whenever I’m alone in this place begin to brush against the back of my neck, raising my hairs as I focus on the hunt.

I put myself into Eden’s mind, sink into her psyche, and allow it to lead me to wherever she thinks she’s safe from the demons in my soul. It’s the same when I’ve chosen someone to kill; I think like them, put myself in their position. It’s how I am able to remain silent and lethal and undetected. The police have never caught me, obviously, and only three bodies that I am responsible for have ever been found.

My father’s of course, and two pedophiles I dumped in the Puget Sound a little too hastily. By the time they were recovered, only dental records could prove who they were, and no one batted an eye once their long rap sheets were read on the nightly news. Poor mom had turned pale as a ghost when I’d smirked in satisfaction at hearing my work broadcast to the greater Seattle area, but she’d pressed her lips together and refused to ask me anything.

I appreciate her more than she knows.

To my right, a pair of mourning doves are roused from their spot on a low hanging branch, the rapid flapping of their wings and startled calls alerting me in the direction I should go. Smiling sinuously, I step off the slender trail and into the bracken. It only takes two steps to find one flip flop, and a few feet later, another one. Crouching low, I hide in the cover of the dewy ferns, listening, watching.

It’s odd, though, stalking while being stalked by the dead. They feel genuinely curious at this little game Eden and I are playing. I don’t mind if they want to watch me fuck her, so long as they understand she ismine, in life and in death.

After a few moments, I slowly stand and continue forward, as silent as a mountain lion as I carefully pick my way over fallen branches and blackberry bushes. My heart steadily pumps harder and harder the more excited I grow, my cock twitching, my balls aching. Through the trees, that little giggle reaches me again, igniting the need to hunt her down until it’s flaming through me, and I take off in a sprint toward the sound.

She’s crashing through the trees when I catch sight of her, that long, dark hair fanning out behind her, a few random leaves tangled in her silky locks. Eden turns to glance at me over her shoulder as she runs, smile stretching her cheeks wide, her eyes igniting in both fear and raw excitement as she sees me. A screech leaves her lips, followed by a breathless laugh, andshe pushes herself to run faster, enjoying this—enjoying being hunted.

And fuck, if I don’t love hunting her.

Just to tease me further, she somehow manages to flip my shirt up and over her head, flinging it behind her, my little ghost streaking through the woods as naked and as devastatingly perfect as she can be. A mordacious grin is pinned to my lips, and I push myself harder, sprinting past my shirt that’s snagged on a thorny bush of dead roses.

Ahead, there’s another break in the trees, and we burst forth into a wide, hilly area that has my breath stalling in my lungs. Eden stops, her chest heaving, her ribs straining against her ivory skin as she turns to face me, her breasts bared to the wild. Cheeks blotchy, skin dewy, she walks backwards with a giggle, weaving lithely between staggered headstones that look as ancient as the asylum.

I’m upon her in a flash, snatching her arm and wrenching her body to mine with a voracious sneer, my other hand ripping my zipper down as both of us struggle to catch our breath. Her eyes have widened, and I back her against a headstone until she’s pinned there.

“Do you want me to struggle?”

Fuck, what is she doing to me? No one alive has ever read me as succinctly as her, and it only fans the flames of my obsession into an all-engulfing wildfire, burning through me and decimating everything in its path.

Pressing my body against hers as I free my cock and stroke it until I’m fully hard, I say, “Baby, you can struggle all you fucking want. You’re never going to win this battle.”

She glances down between us, the purplish head of my dick intimidating in the wan light of day, her eyes widening anew as she audibly gulps. Her eyes spring back to mine, and she whispers demurely, “Never?”

I chuckle darkly in response. “Never. Now put this mouth to good use and suck.”

I shove her shoulder, forcing her to her knees, and her brows crunch together in anger. She uses all of her pitiful mite to push against my legs.

“No,” she growls.

“Eden,” I warn, fisting her hair and yanking her head until her lips are poised right above the tip of my thudding cock. “You wanted to play with fire.”

And then, the little shit sticks out her tongue and fires back with sass, “Make me.”

The storm that gathers on my face and in my soul is reflected in the widening of her fearful eyes, and I release my cock, pinching her cheeks so hard that her jaw unhinges with a whimper of pain. Towering over her with a triumphant sneer, I twist my hips and smack her cheek with my cock degradingly. “Take me in your mouth and get me all nice and wet for your pussy, or it’s going in your ass dry. You choose.”

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