Page 34 of Follow Her Down
“How?”The word is barely a whisper.“How did you know?About him?About…me?”
A dangerous smile touches his lips, the intensity reaching his gorgeous eyes.“I’ve been watching ye, Prayer.”
The nickname sends an unexpected shiver down my spine.
“Longer than ye know.I found your wee corners of the dark web.I read every word ye ever posted about vengeance, about pain, about the kind of justice that doesn’t come from courts.”His thumb stops circling, pressing firmly into my hip bone.“I read your sex stories, the ones that make ye all your money now.All that rage and hurt and hunger bleeding onto the screen with the same username.”
My breath hitches.He’s read my stories?The raw, violent erotica I poured my darkest fantasies into?The ones where justice is meted out with knives and teeth?Where pain and pleasure are indistinguishable?The ones certain websites banned?
It feels like being flayed open, exposed in a way I never anticipated.He didn’t just stalk my physical movements; he stalked the landscape of my mind, mapped the scorched earth of my soul through my words.
“I saw the real ye,” he continued, his voice low, resonant in the small space.“The girl screaming under the mask.The one who wasn’t broken, just…reforged into something sharper.Ye looked hungry, Prayer.Starving for someone toseeye.Not the victim.Not the lie ye wear now.The fucking furious, beautiful creature underneath.”
His hand slides up my back, his fingers tangling in the hair at my nape, pulling my head back slightly so he can hold my gaze captive.“So I saw ye.Really saw ye.And I knew I had to find ye.Had to be near that fire before it burned the whole fucking world down, so it could burn me first.”
His words resonate in the hollow places inside me, filling them with a terrifying sense of…recognition.He didn’t come to save me.He came because he recognized the monster in me and wanted to stand beside it.Maybe even feed it.The realization isn’t frightening; it’s liberating.A dark, twisted form of validation.
I lean forward, closing the small distance between us.My lips meet his, tasting blood and salt and the lingering bitterness of violence.The kiss is an affirmation, like a seal, an acceptance of the darkness we both carry and the dangerous communion we found within it.
“You saw me,” I whisper against his mouth.
He nods, his forehead resting against mine.“Always.”
A wet, choking sound from the floor breaks the moment.Rick.We both turn our heads, almost in unison, to look at the man James beat into a bloody pulp.
He lies exactly where James left him, slumped against the wall next to the door.His face is a swollen, purple ruin, one eye completely shut, the other a slit of dull white.Blood, dark and congealing, coats his chin, neck, and the front of his grimy work shirt and pools onto the floor around us.
His chest… His chest isn’t moving anymore.
The faint, wet rattle we heard moments ago has stopped.The silence that replaces it is absolute.Oppressive.
James’s hand tightens on my hip.He disentangles himself from me, moving with a sudden, focused energy.He kneels beside Rick’s prone form, not caring at all that his dick is still hanging out.
He presses two fingers to the side of Rick’s neck, holding them there for a long moment, his expression unreadable.Then he lifts Rick’s limp wrist, feeling for a pulse.He drops the arm, which lands with a sickeningly boneless splat on the wet tile.
He looks up at me, his blue eyes wide with delight.“Nae pulse.”
The words hang in the air.
I stare down at Rick’s ruined face, the slack mouth, the unseeing eyes.A strange calm settles over me, colder and clearer than the aftermath of sex.
“He’s dead,” I say, the words light, airy, almost flippant as they leave my lips.A tiny, detached bubble of amusement rises in my chest.“Oops.”
James gets to his feet, his gaze locked on mine.He runs a hand through his sweat-damp hair, leaving streaks of diluted blood.
“Fuck,” he mutters, a low current of tension underlying the word.“We need to get rid of him.Fast.Before anyone comes looking.”
The reality of murder, even justified, requires a practical response.He looks at me, waiting, perhaps expecting panic, or at least urgency.
Instead, I haul myself up and lean against the bloodstained sink, my legs still bare, my pussy still out, the cooling mess of James’s cum starting to itch between my thighs.My gaze lands on the large, cast-iron drain cover set into the center of the floor.It’s old, rusted around the edges.A utilitarian piece of plumbing, designed to handle spills, leaks…and other fluids.
I point at the drain, my finger steady.
“We’ll just take care of him here,” I say, my voice calm and conversational, like I’m suggesting where to order takeout.“We’ll take him apart piece by piece and send him down the drain.Easy.”
And when James grins at me like I’m godless, I smile back like I never needed saving.
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