Page 56 of The Art of Obsession
Exhibitionism gives me an underlying thrill. A craving to be seen, to show who I am and the masterworks I create—regardless of how none could ever understand what it feels like.
Until her.
When I pause to dab at the blood and look at her, I half-expect to find her avoiding the sight of me with disgust and rebellion. But it’s the opposite. She carves a new scar inside me, bleeding me internally with the eyes of a tortured historian. Because no one in existence is better at gazing in awe at the broken pieces of the past and finding their beauty as Everleigh Lennox.
I watch her closely. Her eyes flicker with something I recognize. It’s the same look when she has found something wondrous and dark, but something she doesn’t understand. Through this pain, she is seeking me…and rebirthing herself in true transformation.
Seconds bleed into minutes. Haunting music plays in the background, helping me to fade into the art. With each stroke of the blade, the outline of an anatomical heart takes shape. Blood wells along the lines, vivid against her pale skin. I carve slowly, savoring how her body shudders in resistance.
“You’re doing beautifully,” I tell her, my voice primal and possessive.
She turns away, her face flushed with a mix of fury and humiliation. So fragile…yet unbreakable.
More blood trails, painting her in streaks of crimson. I step back, admiring the symmetry, the rawness, the sheer artistry.
And then, it hits me with the force of an icy tidal wave?—
—dragging me under until there is nothing but blood. Blood letting, blood pooling. A small, sickly hand clutching mine for dear life. The childlike veins opened. Essence and matter trickling out.
Purification. Cleansing. Healing.
But she’s fading. I cut a line down my arm, shedding a ruby rivulet and praying to whatever spirits and forces and gods to spare her and take me.
The masculine hand next to me lowers the blade again. But rage and fury ignite a vengeful god of hell in me. I seize the knife, unhindered when the blade cuts my palm. I turn it around. Grip the handle. And thrust deepdeepdeep to the chest.
A dark and sick satisfaction washes over me as the blood bathes my fist. I’m twisting the blade and carving out the still-beating organ.
But then, one last desperate gasp of air echoes in the room like a strike of thunder. I turn to find the little body pale, drained of life as the bed soaks up her blood.
The torture sucks me into a neverending storm, an ocean of blood waiting to drown me. Wave after wave of bone-deep horror. I drop the blade. The organ falls with a fleshytumble onto the wood floor. I scoop up the little corpse. More viscous fluid gushes, soaking my clothes, my skin until I become nothing but blood and scars.
“Acheron!”
The melodic voice jerks me out of the waking nightmare of my past. And I turn to the silver eyes in the middle of a bloodstorm. The colorless corpse does not exist. It’s only this vision of a woman, the torment in her eyes from the design I’ve scrawled on her skin, the lines like
flush, thin ribbons.
“Where did you go?” she whispers, her fingers twitching, their tips curling toward me, longing, needing.
I don’t respond. I’ve never shared it with anyone. Tonight, she will be the first.
But I can’t get a fucking handle on it. I poise my blade upon her chest, but I need to grip something or risk the undertow again.
I lock eyes with hers. I needhergrip. Need her to surround me as I surround her and finish the design.
“What are you doing?” she asks, shuddering beneath me as I tilt my head, then slowly loosen my belt. Her eyes go wide as cathedral doors, ready to welcome me into her sacred place.
“It’s time,” I say, low and deep.
She tenses, but I take her mouth, eating her lips, tasting her with a force of hunger I’ve never felt. Devouring her, I grind against her, unable to wait any longer.
I lower my throbbing dick to her pussy, part the wet folds, and drive forward, burying myself inside her. Her scream pierces my throat, vibrating into my lungs, into my chest, and spearing deep into my heart.
“Fuckfuckfuck!” I snarl against her lips, stabbing the bloody blade into the duvet again and again. “Fucking owned!” Wrecked. For all others but her. Blind, deaf, dumb—mindless,heartless, soulless to anything but the heaven wrapping around my cock.
She’s gushing all over me. Her breaths a symphonic storm. But her eyes…fuck, those eyes. The flames have melted like silver blood.
I drop the knife. Because I’ve found it. The deepest gravity of pain, of suffering unlike anything I’ve ever seen or felt—excruciating and violating. I know what it is. Because I’ve felt it. It rushes back to me, but I take my power back, purging myself as I channel my sin into her. My greatest art. And purest vessel.
