Page 29 of Grave Love
“I want to make myself clear,” he says, his countenance darkening. “The only person who gets to take your life isme.And like I said before, there’s no art in a gunshot. I won’t waste your final moments with a bullet.”
This time, I laugh hard. He thinks he’s better than me because he won’t use a gun to kill me?
He’s crazy.
“It’s hardly ‘art’ to let me burn alive in an industrial-sized oven that you can’t even see inside of,” I say, mocking him. “Where’s your big talk, Mr. Killer? Was this your plan tonight? To burn me alive and be done with it? To hope that you can hear my screams? Where’s your talk of torture when your only method is to burn your victims alive in a funeral home?”
He laughs, but everything about the sound is forced. Menacing. Pleasureless. My skin crawls, and as I meet his eyes, he licks his lips, staring at my mouth.
“You’re right. I’m not finished with you yet, little corpse. I so rarely make my victims die this soon. I’d rather play with my toys.” He leans forward, bringing us eye-to-eye. “Are you feeling it yet?”
My vision fills with dots, each black spot trickling upward like the bubbles in the champagne.
“Think of this intoxication as practice for when you’re dead. Drinking until you’re unconscious. A body without thoughts,” he says.
Fear flickers through me, but I’m already gone. It’s like my head has disconnected from my body, floating like a balloon. I don’t know up from down; my control is spiraling, lost in the darkness.
Blaze clutches my arms, keeping me together. Holding me down.
“Now,” he says in a low voice. “Spread your fucking legs for me.”
Chapter12
Blaze
Her mouth hangs open,her cheeks redder by the second. I play with that silence. Simmer in it. Basking in the fact that she craves this as much as she tries to deny it.
I keep myself still while her knees quiver in anticipation. Waiting for me.
This power she gives me? It’s invigorating.
“S-spread my legs?” she stammers.
I come forward. Grab her knees. Push them apart. She gasps, my touch electrifying.
“Drink,” I order, an evil grin on my face. The drink is a passive aphrodisiac; it’ll prime her for me, make her feellikeshe’s losing control, when it’s just champagne.
We both know she wants it to be more. Shewantsme to drug her.
She downs the rest of the glass.
“Last time, you gave yourself away before I even touched you,” I say. “I indulged in your fantasy, knowing that you wanted to play dead. This time? It’s more than that. I need to know you, Ren: what makes you tick, what makes you”—I lick my lips, the taste of her desire practically dripping over my tongue already—“hungerfor more. I need to know everything about you.”
Her fingers dance across her leggings, searching for clues about what to do next. Gray fabric. A white shirt. A matching gray hoodie. She’s already dressing in the colors of a corpse.
“You knew,” she whispers. “You knew I liked pretending to be dead. Even before that.”
I smile. “Before what, love?”
“Before you—” she stops, unable to decide how to frame it this time, now that her truth is out there. “Before you had me.”
Had her.Like an object.
Amusement rises inside of me, threatening to bubble out in maniacal laughter. Of course I fucking knew. She’s so stuck in her own head that she hasn’t caught me following her around. Hasn’t noticed her missing hair. Ren is so far gone that she suffocates herself in her own little world.
“Will you kill me, then?” she whispers.
Her glassy eyes are enraptured, hunting for details. She wants to know every gory little aspect of her future death. To get off on it.
