Page 80 of Serial Killer Games

The corners of her lips spasm and she takes a quick sip from her glass to cover. “Are you done with the vampire jokes?”

“I have a few in reserve.”

She creeps closer, until I can practically feel the warmth radiating from her. I never drink, but it’s not the wine that’smaking me feel flushed and weird. My understanding of the moment shifts, and this time I realize in advance where we’re heading.

She studies me. “You’ve been so strange with me. Sometimes you look at me like…I don’t know. Like Jeffrey Dahmer doing some meal planning in his head. But then I throw myself at you, and you’re the nerdy kid who flinches and turns his back to the football. I can’t tell what you want from me.”

Inever knew what I wanted from her. I justwanted. Maybe it is hunger. From the moment she stepped into that elevator, it was like not realizing you were starving until you were offered something to eat.

She leans closer. “Is it your illness? Does that—?”

“No,” I say quickly. “It’s not like that.”

She cocks her head to one side. “You need zip ties and duct tape to get turned on.”

“No.”

She presses her lips together. “So it’s me.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t do it for you.” Her tone has already changed. Lofty, could give a fuck. She pulls away, picks up the remote, eyes back on the TV, where there’s a vista from the top of a downtown skyscraper.

It came out wrong, but the idea that Dolores could think she doesn’t do it for me after literally all ofeverythingis a brand-new, previously unlocked level of head-assery.

“I know it’s been a while since you’ve been able to see your own reflection. You do it for me so well you scare the shit out of me,” I clarify, and it’s true. I’m running on stress hormones whenever I’m around her. I never know how an interaction with her is going to go. Her cheeks turn faintly pink, her eyes still on the screen, where there’s the image of a paper airplane.

“This is probably a shocking twist, but I haven’t been married that many times before.”

The corners of her lips move again.

“And obviously you have several centuries’ worth more notches on the lip of your coffin than I do.”

“Fuck off.”

“Whatwassex like before showers?”

She tosses the remote onto the coffee table with a clatter and turns to face me.

“Go long, nerd,” she whispers, and then she bites my neck.

My brain blinks out, all color contracting into a dot before vanishing, like an old TV turning off. My mouth finds hers, and it’s pure brain stem action after that. Touch and taste and basic functions, like breathing and pulse and, beyond that, nothing except a mayfly’s instinct to at least check this off my list before the clock’s done ticking.

I like her on top, like she’s going to take care of the important decisions, so I hook her behind one knee and pull until she’s straddling me, her long hair spilling onto me, and she runs her hands over my shoulders, my chest, my throat. My hands find her knees. I don’t remember ever noticing a woman’s knees before, but when a woman dresses the way Dodi does, like her body is privileged information, the bits you can see take on significance. Her neck. Her knees. And now above her knees, up the sides of her thighs, under the fabric of her nightshirt…on the right I can feel bumps. Lines. Scars in the skin from a part of her tattoo that went too deep. I want her to show me all her tattoos.

She bends her face to mine and kisses me like an animal licking its wounds. Brain activity completely flatlines, and if I were in a hospital bed plugged into a monitor, the only humane thing to do would be to remove the feeding tube. Notgive me a shot of adrenaline directly into the heart, which is what it feels like right now. I could run a minute mile. She kisses me harder, and one of us makes a sound, or maybe it’s both of us, and it feels for a moment like she’s everywhere, and there’s nothing else, and then she takes my hands and puts them where she wants them—which is also where I want them—and she’s soft and warm—

“Your hands,” she says suddenly, and the moment skips and stumbles and crashes.

My fingers are completely white. Cadaverous. They look awful. I shove them between my thighs and the sofa cushions.

“Do they hurt?”

I shake my head. “They just go numb.”

I feel stupid for ruining the moment again. I try to slow my breathing. I look everywhere but at her.

“Jake.”

---