Page 100 of Cruel Malady: A Necrosis of the Mind

He lifts his bandaged hand to my face, his fingers stalling before making a connection, then he touches the strands of a loose wave. “I’m glad you kept it blond,” he says.

“What are we playing at, Alex?” I jump to the fucking chase.

“No games between us.” He caresses the strand of hair admiringly. “Just the meeting of bodies, both exerting equal force on the other, causing the exchange of momentum, of energy.” He moves in closer to demonstrate his point. “In the simplest of terms, a collision.”

I believe him. From the very first moment we met, we crashed right into each other.

“It’s physics,” he continues. “And you’re the only body I want to collide against. You’re a force, my force. The personification of power and raw energy.”

I hold his penetrating gaze as the club vibrates around us. “You destroyed your goddess, Alex,” I say, giving in to his delusion. “You killed the very essence of her soul. You broke her. Now you need to repair her.”

I should feel foolish talking in riddles, but with Alex, I have to get on his plane, I have to reach him. I’m either going to convince him to reverse the procedure, trusting that he won’t cause more damage….because what choice do I have?

I either let him potentially fry my brain, or live trapped in this hell forever.

And I simply can’t do that. One way or the other, this will end.

“No, you’re perfect,” he says, fingers trailing my neck. “You bleed now, you feel the wound. Every achingly beautiful emotion, you embody it. You’re so much more than a goddess, you’re what the goddesses envy.”

I’m breathless for a suspended moment as his intensity holds me captive, then I shake myself from the daze. Impatience curls my hands into fists at my sides as I restrain the desire to make him bleed.

I should feel vindicated. He’s confirmed at least one suspicion; he’s been stalking me. He’s seen me struggle, at war with who I’m becoming. But I don’t feel anything but a blistering anger and the overwhelming desire to cause him pain.

His thumb feathers my bottom lip, and a dark hunger burns behind his eyes.

I turn my head away. “So what you’re saying is, you have no idea how to reverse the procedure.” I laugh mockingly, knowing it will wound his ego. “What kind of scientist doesn’t know how to reverse his own treatment?”

He clasps my jaw and forces my face toward his, fingers bruising. “I know what you’re doing. That tired logic won’t work. Even if there was any way to reverse the process, I’d never do it.”

I lick my lips and smile. “You know what I swore. Your procedure didn’t corrupt the part of my brain that craves revenge.”

His mouth tips into devilish grin, his hand slipping down to collar my throat, and I sense a level of predator in him I never encountered before. “We can fight,” he says, “or we can fuck. It’s your choice. You came looking for me. Personally, I prefer the latter, but I’m okay with anything that promises your hands on my body.”

Apprehension threads my spine. This isn’t the Alex I left in a burning cabin.

When I don’t respond, he tightens his hold in warning, his touch igniting my blood like a lit match to kerosene. He moves in and gently places a kiss to my jaw, tracking his tongue over my skin. My body rebels and succumbs all at once, incapacitating me.

“Now that you have the ability, there are so many things I want to do to you, to make you feel.” His heated words whisper along my skin.

My eyes close, as if I can shut him out, turn off the receptors. When he pulls away, I open my eyes, stoic. “You’ve changed,” I say.

His features darken as he measures me coolly. “That’s what love will do. You changed me, made me a different man.”

Love.

That word is a weapon when he uses it.

Of all the poems and sonnets I’ve read, never once did I imagine the lovesick hero trying to destroy the object of his affection. I never understood what I read before, not deeply, not on an intuitive level.

But maybe those writers didn’t see what I do when I look into Alex’s eyes. Maybe there’s some deeper level of love that goes beyond poems and sonnets, a darker love that is so maddening, you crave to destroy what you love only because you want it so badly, it has to be consumed or demolished.

It leaves you no other choice.

That love isn’t the kind knights in shining armor lament about.

This is what it feels like to be loved by the villain.

“You’ve changed, too,” he says, stroking his thumb down my chin reverently. “So I had to be better, to become more, for you.”

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