Page 24 of His

“What do you want me to say, kitten?”

“I don’t know. Something. Anything. Or have you just always been a serial killer?”

“I’ve been many things. A doctor, a healer.”

I coughed on the bite of food, and he chuckled at my reaction.

“Yes, a healer. Now, though, I don’t just sew up wounds. I stop the wounds before they start.”

“You kill bad men.”

I tried to make it seem like I understood. I wasn’t sure if it was working. He sighed.

“I suppose you could say that. I make them suffer. I take away their sins.”

“It must be hard.”

“Which part? The kidnapping part, or the torture part, or—”

“Afterwards.”

“After I kill them?”

“Aren’t you... don’t you feel bad? Guilty?”

“I don’t feel much of anything, kitten. I suppose you don’t know much about that. There’s something in me, a shadow. It dulls everything, makes the world black and white. I don’t feel guilty, or bad, or good, not once the shadow is there. I feel...”

“Numb?”

His eyes lifted to mine, and I saw a hurt in them that immediately vanished. It was as though he’d opened up a bit to me, peeked through the door, and then slammed it shut.

“Something like that.”

A tiny plop of mashed potato fell from the fork, down my chin. It landed on my chest, soft and warm against my bare skin. His hand moved down, and I thought of how he had touched me before. The memory stirred something in my body that I tried not to think about.

He wiped up the mashed potato with a single finger, strong and hard against the skin of my collarbone. Then he lifted the finger to my lips.

“Finish,” he said.

I didn’t dare disobey. I tilted my head forward and sucked at his finger, licked off the mashed potato. His eyelashes fluttered as my tongue touched his skin and there was a softening around the corners of his eyes, but he had no other reaction. I swallowed.

“Gavriel?”

His eyes went cold again when I said his name.

“Yes?”

“What are you going to do with me?”

The calmness with which he smiled back at me only made the answer creepier.

“Are you done with dinner? Yes? Then you’re going back down into the basement.”

He tucked the knife in his back pocket before releasing my straps. Before I could move, he had his arm around my waist and was helping me off of the table.

“How’s the ankle?” he asked.

“Better,” I answered truthfully. The pain was still there, but it wasn’t shooting through my leg any more when I put pressure on it. It was still nice to have someone to lean on as we made our way to the basement stairs. I limped down the steps and into the middle of the basement with him half-carrying me.

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