Page 38 of Vicious Hearts

Interesting.

Back in the bedroom slash kitchen slash living room slash closet, I sit on the edge of her bed. I open the drawer of the bedside table, pulling out the little metal tin with a design of a ballerina on it. I open it, glaring at the blade sitting inside, neatly arranged next to a stack of band-aids, a little roll of gauze, and a small bottle of peroxide.

I don’t like that she does this. At. Fucking.All.

I haven’t watched her do it to escape yet—just as a dangerously arousing means of pushing herself over the edge when she makes herself come on this very bed. I’ve watched her do that twice in the past week—both times utilizing the little razor blade to push herself harder and deeper.

It’s intoxicating to watch her bring herself such pleasure from my perch on the roof across the street. Even if it makes me furious to see her mar herself.

It explains the little white lines on her thighs I noticed that night at Club Venom.

It doesn’t account for the crisscrossed pink ones on her back, though.

Frowning at the memory of those particularly brutal-looking scars, I tuck the case away and reach for her laptop. I quickly scroll through her recent search history and smile a dark, hungry smile.

Bad girl.

It’s all the same stuff she was watching on the porn site last week. Ultra hardcore, very realistic “consensual non-consent” porn. A smattering of BDSM. A few minutes of a young woman bound on bench on her hands and knees while a man in a black mask roughly—and I do meanroughly—fucks the complete shit out of her in…multiple holes.

My dick turns to steel in my pants as I picture Una lying in this bed, watching this.

Growing wetter.

Thinking perhaps ofme, and the rough, punishing way I manhandled her that night at Club Venom.

It’s been illuminating to see that her interest in sadomasochism wasn’t just an act to get in the door that night. The band on her arm wasn’t a lie. She reallydoesget off on this. What I did to her in that room really is what she craves.

And that’s something I probably shouldn’t know, considering Una is my enemy.

But I can’t stop thinking about it. Just like I can’t stop fucking coming here. Because even when she’s not here, this place has the same effect on me that she did. It’s as if her scent and the aura she has left behind calms me and soothes the demons inside as much as playing with her in the flesh did.

She’s got a delicious darkness in her. Maybe that’s it. Perhaps that’s what calls out to my own fucked-up-ness and assuages the roaring.

She’s a beautiful, broken doll. One that I want to possess. One I’m determined to claim andkeepall to myself. But first I need her to bring me to whoever is pulling her strings.

I just don’t know how much longer I can stop myself from taking her.

I get up. Before I leave, I open one of her dresser drawers and run my fingers over the lace I find inside. My finger hooks through the gusset of a tiny little thong—blue, with black palm trees on it.

It gets tucked into my pocket.

I nod to the cat, pleased to see that he’s finished his meal. When he looks up at me, I drag a finger across my lips.

“Not a word.”

Then I’m gone.

Back on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, I head toward the black GTO I left parked in the alley behind Una’s building. Two random fuckers are standing in the opening of the alley, smoking and talking shit to each other. I pay them no attention as I pass, heading toward the car.

That is, until I hear it.

“She told me she lives with her boyfriend when I asked.”

“Nah, man. That’s fucking bullshit. It’s just her and this stupid black and white cat up there.”

I tense, slowing to a stop as I fade into the shadows against the alley wall.

“So, no guy?”

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