Page 168 of Bake the Town Red

She won’t ever have to again. She has me.

I’m here.

Fate reached its grubby hand into our pockets. Stole everything it could from Dahlia and me.

Almost everything.

Something’s remained.

That glimmer of hope. That kindling of love. That spark of obsession. They’ve always been there. Ours.

When I look through the almond-shaped holes for eyes on Dahlia’s mask, I see all of those things. See them behind her blue eyes. See what I feel reflected in her soul.

We burn so bright that nothing can scare us. We fear fucking nothing.

We’ll have an eternity to catch up on the time we lost. I’ll love her in this life and the next. We’ll share a casket so that when our bodies are nothing but bones, our souls will be together.

“Nm, nm, nm,” Dahlia impersonates a rabbit. At least what she claims their clucking sounds like.

Fuck. Me. That’s hot.

I let it distract me, if only for a second.

We’re not here to fuck while she makes clucking sounds. We’re here waiting for Johnathan in the baking room of Sweet DeNights.

It’s nine in the evening. The sun set a while ago. People are everywhere outside. We don’t see them, but we hear them. Laughter and shrieks andBoo!

The perfect setting for him. The FyndUsHere Killer can blend into the crowd. Feel invincible and invisible all at once.

He already left a message on the baking community on FyndUsHere.

My game. My rules.

Couldn’t help it, the miserable shithead. Couldn’t resist the impulse, the pattern. It always boils down to the fucking pattern.

“My innocent little bunny.” My fingers rake through her hair, sliding lower to her neck.

Under my fingertips, I feel the soft scar tissue. Right there, hiding beneath the snake tattoo. No matter how many times I bite it, how many times I break the skin, it remains.

Over time, I’ve stopped resenting either the tattoo or the scar. Our pasts have lost their hold on me. There’s only Dahlia and me. Only a dark future ahead of us.

I place my thumbs beneath her chin. Tip her face up to me. Her mask twists at an angle. Messing her hair just the right way.

“So beautiful.” I kiss her snout. “Always beautiful. Always mine.”

“You’re a handsome, creepy man yourself.” She hooks her fingers on the lapels of my pea coat.

No hoodie for either of us tonight. We’re both in black jeans, black long-sleeved T-shirts and black pea coats. Boots for me, black Chucks for her.

Both of us are dark shadows in her sparkling baking room.

Waiting.

“One thing I loathe about these masks,” I growl.

Johnathan will be here any minute, and look at me, finding the time to growl. It’s an impulse. Can’t control it, just like I can’t control the beast that tears through my skin whenever I’m around my Dahlia.

“Let me guess.” She slides one hand to the front of my jeans, her fingers curling around my aching cock. “You hate you can’t eat me out?”

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