Page 23 of The Blood we Crave: Part Two

“No tears, Scarlett. Not for me,” I say. “Save those for someone who deserves them.”

Lyra melts into me, the cold of my touch a comfort she seeks instead of tugs away from. It’s quiet for several seconds while I wipe the tears from her face and she falls into me.

“I never got to thank you,” she whispers. “For that night. That’s how it started, the stalking. I just wanted to thank you for saving me, and I tried a few times. You were just…” She struggles to find the words, chewing the inside of her cheek to help gather them. “This intangible person. Alluring and so overwhelming. You are so beautiful that people were terrified yet refused to look away. Every time I thought, ‘This is the moment to say something,’ nothing ever came out. I was this little orphan girl that no one ever noticed, and you were infamous. I never meant for it to turn into what it did. I never meant for you to hate me.”

Beautiful.

What a silly word to describe someone who has been quietly rotting inside for years.

No one had noticed her, that was correct. But I had.

I’d noticed her long before she started following me around.

We were maybe ten when she came back to Ponderosa Springs. It was everyone’s first day back to school, and I remembered her the moment she stepped into class. And I remember that day because I heard music when she walked in.

Music I’d created after the night we met.

The unfinished piece, my very first.

Lyra is the reason I make concertos for my victims. She’s the initial inspiration for my uncommon trophy. She’s why every murder I’d ever committed was inscribed into notes on sheet paper. Why every kill has three forms.

The Selection, The Hunt, The Kill.

Scelta, Caccia, L’uccisione.

Music is the only way I can remember in vivid colors, with no black spots or blurry images. A way to relive those horrifyingly beautiful, powerful moments. And Lyra had been my very first muse.

Yet she is the only one who doesn’t have a final piece, whose file has empty sheets for the L’uccisione.

“My dislike never had anything to do withyou, darling phantom. You were a reminder of what my father wanted me to become,” I tell her candidly. “Until one day, you weren’t.”

“And now? What am I a reminder of now?”

“All the things I can never have.”

Secrets I never wanted to share linger. All of these words I wanted to keep to myself, with the hope of taking the look of sadness away. She forces me to be someone I don’t know just to prevent her pain.

Her pointer finger traces the line of my collarbone, working down until she is painting the lines of my tattoo, her amber ring burning in the light of the kitchen. I can feel her warmth drip along my skin. The tips of my fingers dig into the back of her head.

“Your favorite artist is Henry Fuseli, and you’ve always been partial to the Dark Art movement, even though May tried to get you to love Monet. I know you accidentally broke Silas’s nose trying to get down from the school’s roof after senior prom. You write with your left hand, even though your right is your dominant side.”

Her words match the smooth lines she draws on my skin. I feel the way her legs tighten against my hips, wanting me closer, but she’s afraid I’ll pull away.

“You stay for hours after weekends at the Graveyard so you can clean Alistair’s hands. And you let Rook think you hate him so he never knows that you pulled a knife on Theo Van Doren after graduation and threatened to cut off his fingers if he hit him again. I know you don’t drink or smoke, you’re allergic to shellfish, that you hate warm weather and the color yellow.”

“It’s a horrible color,” I mutter, my throat constricting.

My thumb drags across her bottom lip, and I want to sink my teeth into the soft pink flesh but am clinging to the last of my control. She scoots closer, so carefully that I don’t notice until I feel the heat of her core pressed against my groin.

I press a little harder into her, wanting to sink inside of her and live there for the rest of eternity. I can’t help myself, not when she’s so close. I give in just an inch, just enough to curb my hunger.

I drop a hand, trailing up and down her milky thighs, aching to see them dripping red. My blade slicing a pretty line right across her soft flesh and watching as she bleeds. Running my tongue along the seam of the wound and drinking down every ounce of her so she’d melt in my veins.

Despite myself, I anchor my fingers around her waist, rolling her hips against my cock. It’s misery, pure agonizing misery, how badly I crave her. Tilting her head up towards me with my other hand, I make her look at me.

Lust drowns her eyes, luring me further in.

“Those are all the things you are, Thatcher Alexander Pierson. All of that and so much more.” Her hands wrap around the sides of my neck, pulling herself towards my mouth. “Things he can never take away from you.”

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