Page 27 of Psycho
August shook his head. “My brother said I shouldn’t talk to you about that. Or any of my other weapons. Or my kill playlist. Or my love of pop divas.”
The smile fell from Lucas’s face and he was suddenly kissing him, turning him so the sharp edge of the counter dug into his hips. “You are one of a kind, August Mulvaney,” he said against his lips.
“So I’ve heard,” August said, darting his tongue into Lucas’s mouth. He tasted like toothpaste.
“I’m still not sure I’m on board with happily ever after and all that.”
“I can live with that. At least through dinner.”
As they ate, they talked. Well, August talked. He talked about string theory and the relative state formulation, about whether he truly believed there were parallel worlds, and how some of his co-workers thought his theories were too out there. Lucas could have interrupted, could have changed the subject, but he found himself fascinated and more than a little turned on by how passionately August spoke about a subject he clearly loved.
August’s hands gesticulated wildly, his forest green eyes bright and cheeks flushed as he somehow made huge abstract concepts palatable and easy for a lay person like Lucas to understand. When August was in his comfort zone—teaching—all his awkwardness seemed to melt away. Lucas didn’t really care for any science, except the social ones, but August explained his ideas in a way that made the universe seem magical and full of possibilities.
How did a vicious killer, a man who admittedly enjoyed hurting people, have such childlike wonder when it came to all the world’s possibilities? Lucas envied him. He envied a serial killer. If anything should have signaled he’d hit rock bottom, that was it, but he just didn’t care. August was a huge radiant beacon and Lucas was a moth, desperate to get closer, using that light to blind him to the shitshow his life had become.
“Your students must love you,” Lucas finally said.
August paused, his gaze darting to his right, like he was thinking about it. “I think they do, yes. I get many requests for my classes and excellent evaluations.”
Lucas smiled. August lacked the ability to fake any sort of humbleness or humility. He was confident in his brilliance. “I can see why.”
August tilted his head in that way he did whenever Lucas said something any other person in the world would have seen as flirty. “Why’s that?”
Lucas looked August up and down. “Because you’re sexy when you talk physics,” Lucas said. “Which is a phrase I never thought I’d ever utter out loud.”
The change in August was…palpable. His affable good-nature morphed into a feral intensity that had Lucas’s cock hardening. Yeah, August’s particular brand of crazy was definitely Lucas’s kink.
August studied him, gaze hot enough to melt steel. But almost as quickly, it disappeared, replaced once more by polite August who cleared his throat, gaze falling to his half-eaten chicken.
“Except, I’m being rude, dominating the conversation,” August said, not like he meant it but like he was trained to say it, trained to know the niceties needed to pass as human in the outside world. “I want to know about you.”
ThatLucas believed. August looked at him like there was still something salvageable in there, and it made him jittery, like he’d had too much caffeine, even though he hadn’t had any because August had thought of his medications. How could a psychopath be the most attentive person Lucas had ever met?
“You do?” Lucas asked.
August frowned. “Of course. If I’m going to marry you someday, I should probably know what I’m getting into.”
His words sent a shock wave of awareness rolling across Lucas’s nerve endings. There wasn’t even a trace of humor. August Mulvaney—a killer he’d known less than three days —was sitting at his table casually talking about how he had settled on Lucas someday becoming his husband.
It was a testament to the weirdness of Lucas’s life that it just seemed like one more surreal thing in a long, long list of bizarre events. Where was his fear? His sense of self-preservation? This man had just said he was going to marry him like it was a foregone conclusion and it didn’t scare him. It just made him…horny. And made him feel safe. And Lucas never felt safe. Or even wanted. Something he would never say out loud to anybody.
Fuck. They should have never let him out of that facility. He’d clearly cracked. “What do you want to know?”
August leaned in, his sudden wide grin fading to an amiable smile, like he wasn’t sure which was the appropriate option. “Why did you become a profiler?”
Lucas wanted to tell August he didn’t have to fake it with him, that he didn’t care if he smiled or not. That he wanted him to be comfortable around him.
Instead, he took a sip of his water before saying, “I have this talent, right? I can touch things and get impressions, visions, know things I shouldn’t.”
“Psychometry.”
Lucas blinked at him, surprised. “Yeah, people always want to say I’m clairvoyant, but that’s somebody who gets visions unprompted. I have to touch the person or object.”
August studied him. “No wonder you don’t like to be touched.”
Had he told August that? He was starting to think he was the psychic. “Yeah, it sucks to know that even your own family thinks you’re a freak.”
“I can relate to that,” August said. “Imagine being the weirdest psychopath in a house full of psychopaths.”
