Page 82 of Pretty Monster

“You know too much,” he tells me. “What I’ve been doing . . . Usually the women I play with end up in shallow graves across the country, and I don’t need to concern myself with the possibility that they will report me to the authorities, but you’re different, Kyah. I can’t bring myself to end your life, which means that you currently hold a power over me that I’ve never allowed before, and I don’t know what to do with that.” He pauses, taking a breath as his gaze lingers on mine. “I’ve never allowed a woman close enough to know my name, know my face, and I sure as fuck haven’t allowed her to mark my body with a design that could be used to identify me. I play it carefully, always covering my tracks, but with you, I’ve been a mess. I can’t keep away from you.”

My fingers twine into the back of his hair, unable to keep from touching him despite the terrifying reality of our conversation. “You’re never going to let me go, are you?”

Alex presses his lips into a tight line. “That’s up to you, Kyah,” he says. “Like I said, I don’t get off on hurting you. That’s not what I want, but if I can’t trust you to protect me the way I’ve protected you, then no, I won’t be allowing you to leave.”

Tears well in my eyes, and before I get a chance to blink them away, they roll down my cheeks. Alex trembles at the sight, his heart on his sleeve. “Baby, don’t cry. I can’t handle your tears.”

“I just . . . I don’t know what to think or say. I want to be terrified of you, but for some reason, I just can’t, and it has me questioning everything,” I tell him, lifting my shoulder to wipe the tear off my jaw. “Was any of it real?”

“Of course, it was,” he says. His brows furrow, almost looking horrified at the idea that I would think to question it. “Every fucking day, I wake up and think of you, even after we’ve been together, and I’ve walked you back to your apartment. I wonder what you’re thinking. What you’re doing. If you’re happy or sad. I’m fucking crazy about you, Mace. Just because I take that crazy to a whole new level, doesn’t mean that any of it was any less real.”

I swallow over the lump in my throat and hold his gaze, my heart racing a million miles an hour. “Why am I so different from the other women you’ve killed?” I ask.

“You want an honest answer?”

I nod, unsure if I really want to know.

“With them, it was about getting off. I’d fuck them, but it was always missing that adrenaline rush that comes when you take somebody’s life. Watching the light fade from someone’s eyes has always gotten me off in a way nothing else could.”

“You don’t think you’d feel that rush with me?” I ask, wondering why I want to know this so badly.

“Fuck, Kyah. The opposite,” he admits, giving me the cold hard facts. “Ending your life would be the biggest rush I’ve ever felt, but I quickly realized that I couldn’t bear the thought of what would come next.”

“And what’s that?”

“Having to grieve you,” he says bluntly. “I don’t want to miss you, Kyah. I don’t want to wake up every day and not have you living across the hall from me. I don’t want to be sneaking into some other woman’s room. Not now that I know how fucking good it is with you.”

I let out a heavy breath, my cheeks blowing out in the process as I try to process everything he’s saying. “Shit, Alex. You’re making it really fucking hard to hate you right now.”

“I know, baby.”

The tears continue down my face, and he holds me tight, pulling me into his chest so that I can rest my head on his big shoulder, his hands roaming up and down my back, gently soothing me. “I thought I was falling in love with you,” I tell him, my heart breaking at the thought of having to end things with him.

“You still are,” he tells me, his voice like velvet flowing across my skin. “I’m still the same guy you met in the hallway. There’s just a deeper complexity to me that you’re still discovering. I have a dark past and indulge in a lifestyle that isn’t socially acceptable, but that doesn’t change a damn thing between us.”

“How can you say that?” I question, my voice trembling. “It changes everything. You stalked me for weeks. I put lingerie on for you and let you do things to me that I wouldn’t have been so brave to do with you so soon in our relationship. I was happy exploring those messed-up fantasies with the stranger in my room because it didn’t mean what it would have meant had I known it was you. It was a thrill that I never knew I was even into, but in a relationship, they’re things that I would have liked to explore with you and taken my time when I was ready. Hell, for those few weeks, I feared for you. I thought this stalker was going to realize that I was falling for you and hurt you, and you allowed me to believe that.”

“That’s just the thing, Mace. Everything that I threw at you, you were more than ready for. You just didn’t know it,” he says. “Running through the park last night, it was the fear that got you off, not me. Before I’d even touched you, you were already soaking wet, but had you known what I was planning, it wouldn’t have been the same.”

“So, what? You’re saying I have some kind of fucked-up fear kink and that I should be thanking you for helping me discover it?”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all, but for the record, a fear kink is exactly what you have, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s hot as fuck, and as long as you know where to draw the line, they can be the best sexual experiences you’ve ever had.”

I scoff, pulling away just an inch, but that’s as much space as he’s willing to allow. “I don’t think you know a damn thing about drawing lines.”

He shrugs his shoulders as that cocky, boyish grin I love surfaces on his face. “Perhaps you’re right,” he tells me. “But ask yourself, have I ever hurt you? Have I ever crossed a line when it comes to sex?”

My brows furrow as I think over the times he’s snuck into my bedroom. He’s always scared the shit out of me, always left me trembling with fear, but he’s not once physically hurt me. You know, apart from the syringe in the neck, but desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose. And as for crossing the lines, there’s been plenty of times, more than I care to count, but when it came to being physical, I was always more than eager to allow him to touch me. I was more than a willing participant.

“I mean, you ate my pussy while I slept,” I point out. “A girl can’t exactly consent to that while she’s sleeping.”

“Are you telling me if you could go back and tell me no that you would?”

I swallow hard and shake my head. He’s got me there. He knew I wanted it. He knew how much the feel of his mouth closing over my clit turned me on. Hell, if I could go back, I’d tell him to do it a million times over.

Pride flashes in his dark eyes. “That’s what I thought.”

A heavy silence surrounds us, and I find myself clutching his hands, wishing that things could be different, that we could have fallen in love the normal way and then he could have slowly introduced me to all of this craziness instead of dumping it on me like this. “I want to trust you, Alex,” I tell him, meaning every single word.

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