Page 51 of The Blood we Crave: Part Two

Conner shifts clumsily in the chair I’d forced him into. His belt is looped around his arms and waist to keep him still, which was me being nice. Too much movement would make me sloppy.

“Careful,” I advise. “Too much moving around and I’ll nick an artery or cut off an appendage.”

Grabbing the back of the chair, I turn him away from the desk so he can face the door. Let him see just how close sweet, sweet escape is. The seat groans against the hardwood floor, thudding once I’m finished moving it.

“This is ridiculous,” he sneers, pushing against the restraint, “We were both caught up in a moment. Your jealousy is making you overreact!”

“Jealousy would require me to envy something you have, Conner.” I toss my jacket on the couch nearby, circling in front of him. “You’re here because you didn’t keep your hands to yourself. You touched something that belongs to me.”

Possessive rage is a nasty thing.

It festers.

It’s an eternal wound struck with gangrene, turning your insides into a black, oozing infection. This wound had been rotting since I’d seen the way he looked at her at the start of the school year.

I catch the way his eyes hunt for Lyra, finding her tucked against the door. Arms curled around her waist, she stands in silence. It fuels that rage, his entitlement to her.

“Lyra, please explain to him. We’re friends! You can’t just let him do this.”

My fingers grab his face, crushing his jaw painfully tight, forcing him to look up at me as I loom over him. The knife I’d pulled from my pocket sits sideways along his throat, grazing pieces of neck hair.

The gunmetal-gray blade has no shine. No glamour. It’s matte, sharp, and made for gutting wild animals. Or, in this case, teachers with no respect for boundaries.

“If you want to leave with your eyes, I suggest you keep them off her.”

Conner Godfrey doesn’t have enough blood in his body to pay for this mistake. He’d faint or die before I got to the good part. If things were different, I would’ve waited.

I would have selected, hunted, and killed him. Added his name to the filing cabinet of sheet music on my desk. I would have taken my time, created a concerto that would leave a room silent, and his screams would sing along with every note.

“Thatcher.” He gulps, the blade scratching his Adam’s apple with mild strokes. Knowing Lyra will be of no help, he’s turned to bargaining with me. “Let’s just take a second here. We can talk about this.”

I sink a little further into his neck, pricking at the first layer of skin. The hiss of pain he surrenders before collapsing back into the chair makes chills travel along my spine.

Oh, how I missed the sounds of screaming.

The way it rushes into my veins and pumps adrenaline straight into my obsidian heart. How it is ripped straight from the vocal cords, coaxed out by meticulous, excruciating torture.

I don’t need music to relive this moment, not the way I had with the others.

No, I have something far better.

A witness.

One who would watch my every move, write it down in her brilliant mind, and keep it there as a permanent memory. And later, when I force my cock inside of her, I’m going to make her tell me everything she saw.

Every. Single. Detail.

Until she’s coming, shouting my name to the memory of his suffering.It’ll be her punishment for putting herself in this position, for being too trusting, being naive around men who have corrupt intentions.

“Do you think the board will view it that way?” My eyebrow lifts. “When they learn how inappropriately you behave with students? You believe they’ll take pity on the man who holds no weight and ass-kissed his way here?”

If he thinks he can scare me by threatening to talk, he is sorely misguided. He’d risk everything going against me, wanted for murder or not. I hold more power in my left pinky than he does in his entire body.

He is nothing in comparison. Conner has no name or legacy, just pure luck he’d befriended Stephen Sinclair in college. He is simply a throwaway that no one would back.

My knife slices across the muscles in his throat, enough to make a narrow crimson cut appear beneath it. Fear pools in the depths of his eyes, and a twisted grin pulls at my lips.

Nothing checks a man’s ego like a knife to the throat.

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