Chapter 11

I unhook the strings off her back, and the newfound access to the back of her neck has me sliding her hair off her shoulder to sink my teeth into her perfect skin. Her scent, even with my soap permeating it, is mouthwatering.

My hand slides beneath her panties, fingers prying her lips apart and finding her wet for me.

“Always ready for your master,” I tease, slipping them over her clit in rough circles.

She whimpers, lifting one leg to give me more room to open her. To savor her.

“It’s Christmas, my perfect puppet.”

My words have her going rigid against my hand, but I use her spread thighs to slide two fingers inside her and hook them upward, causing her to wiggle and moan.

“It’s Christmas, my puppet, and I don’t want to kill you. ”

“You don’t?” she breathes, riding my hand like the perfect little whore that she is.

“No. I don’t. I want to lick your cunt until you’re shaking on my tongue, and then I want to sink my cock deep inside it and fuck you until you scream Christmas carols for me. I don’t want to slit your throat. I want to kiss you, tangle my tongue with yours, and swallow those perfect little whimpers you make.”

She whimpers right on cue at my words and my fingers’ increased pace. I bite her shoulder.

“Those whimpers, right there. I want to fucking bottle them so I can listen to them all day long.”

She leans back into my body, opening to me like a flower embracing the sun.

“Please, Cain. Don’t fuck with me, do it.”

I pull my fingers out and drag them across her lips. Her tongue darts out and tastes herself on them before I move over her as she adjusts onto her back.

She slips out of her panties, opening her legs to me and lifting her pretty little cunt to my mouth as I dive into it, lapping at her like she’s the last woman on earth.

It’s never been like this before, and even though I hate to admit to her that I don’t want her dead, I need her to know.

I need her to realize we have to figure this out. What the fuck am I going to do with her?

“Fuck me, Cain. Master, please, fuck me,” she reaches for me, fisting my hair and yanking my face off her pussy. I’m glistening in her arousal as I climb up her body and take her mouth with a bruising kiss.

She never once bristles at her flavor on my tongue, only deepens the kiss, shimmies against me, and moans when I flick my tongue against hers.

My cock tips inside her with the help of my hand, and she ripples around me in a symphony of muscle convulsions.

“Goddamnit, you feel so fucking good,” I grit out, grabbing her hips and squeezing as I pound into her, watching my cock disappear.

“What are you going to do to me, Cain?” she whispers, cupping my face with her tiny hands and pinning me with a glare as somehow our connection deepens at the moment, my pace changing to reflect it.

It feels raw and unyielding, like the sun. I can’t look away.

I grind and thrust, drive, and swirl my hips and fuck her any way I know how to as she closes her eyes in bliss and wraps her arms around my neck.

“I can’t let you go, darling puppet. I can’t ever let you go!”

I’m so close, and so is she.

She’s so close that she doesn’t reply to my admission.

“Come for me, you filthy fuck puppet. Come for me and milk my fucking cock. Take me with you,” I breathe, barely containing the need to spill inside her.

She cries out, shattering around me as I let go of my ends, cock erupting inside her as I slow into jerky strokes I can’t control.

“Holy fucking hell,” I groan.

She opens her eyes and smirks, and I shake my head, flipping her over and driving into her from behind shallowly as I lay atop her.

I lean down, lips at her ear. “I’m not fucking done with you yet, my little whore.”

She doesn’t give a rebuttal, only lifts her ass so I can sink deeper inside her, inviting me into the cavernous pits of her body.

I grab onto two of her piercings for leverage, causing her to cry out.

“There you are, puppet. Come back to me from your haze, have you? Beg me not to rip these out, darling. Fucking beg me.”

We fucked into the afternoon before we meandered to the shower and washed off, both silent in the aftermath of what happened all morning.

This is the best Christmas I’ve ever had, and yet, I’m more confused than I’ve ever been.

I meant what I said.

I can’t let her go. But to keep her forever would raise too many flags. There are no guarantees she won’t run to the authorities the first chance she gets .

I have nothing over her to keep her silent. To live my life without her having tasted her, too, would be pure agony. If I were to offer her a proper relationship with me, though, would she take it?

Who’s to say she’s not faking her interest in me? While I pride myself on being an insightful man with preternatural instincts, maybe I’m too enamored with her for my own good.

Maybe I’m too close to this and not thinking clearly.

No. That would mean she’s dazzled me with her pussy, and that just doesn’t happen to the likes of me.

I feel as though what I have built inside of me is more profound than the sexual shit, and that’s what’s fucking confusing. Because I’ve never had feelings for anyone.

Even when Salice at work tried her best to date me, I felt nothing. Sure, I sunk inside her lithe body that she offered up willingly to get some pressure off myself, but that was it.

I’ve never connected to anyone like I have with Grace.

I likely never will again, either.

She’s it for me, and the thought has me reeling.

I’m ten years old, in the closet, with one eye pinned to the scene beyond it.

I haven’t felt fear in a while, and I can’t say that I want to feel it again.

“Cain?” Grace’s voice has me shaking away from my anxious thoughts and looking at her where she’s exiting my bedroom .

She’s in my sweatpants and a T-shirt. I hadn’t thought to reconnect her strings to her piercings, and now I’m glad I hadn’t. Though, it’s ignorant. She could’ve left me.

She comes to the chair where I am in the living room and straddles over me to sit down. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“About what?”

“About what you said in the bedroom earlier. About how you don’t want to let me go.”

“I’m scared, Grace. I’ve never admitted that to someone, but you scare me.”

She laughs, and the sound of anger roils my veins.

Before I think twice about it, I grasp her throat in my hand, cutting off her oxygen. Her eyes light with heat.

“What are you laughing at? You find me funny, Grace?”

She licks her lips, and my cock stirs.

It’s never sated. It always wants to be inside her. Have more of her.

I release her throat. “You see? Do you see who I am? With you, I’m more raw, more myself. How am I ever to stuff this part of me back down if you’re not dead, darling? I need you gone to return to life as it always is.”

“But why?” she asks. “Why do you have to go back to it? Why can’t you be yourself at home with me and be Dr. Mordova at work with them? Those peasants don’t need to see you as I see you, Cain. You save those bits for me. You don’t need to repress it and save it for one week a year. You come home and fuck me, cut me, slap me, do whatever you need to do to me to feel alive. To feel happiness. Then, you go to work in the morning with my scent on your lips, the feel of me on your cock, and you save lives. That’s what you do.”

Her words awaken the beast in my chest, and he rolls his neck in answer.

“It sounds great, puppet. But it can’t happen. Be honest. You’re going to run from me the first chance that you get. You’re going to call the police, rat me out. I’ll rot in a cell, fisting my dick to thoughts of you, coming all over concrete walls and writing your name in it, night after agonizing night.”

Her cheeks heat with blush, and I rub my thumb over it as if some will sink into my skin.

When I glide my thumb over her bottom lip, she opens for me, a small breathy exhale billowing out.

I only have another week of vacation before I have to go back to real life. I give myself only two weeks each year: one to hunt and play and one to preserve my puppet.

She’s made it to Christmas and is still alive. But before New Year’s, I have to kill her.

We both know she’s going to run.

“Run along, puppet. Go to bed.”

She opens her mouth to give a rebuttal, and I shake my head once, the look on my face warning her not to push me tonight. I’m too on the edge. I don’t trust what I’ll do if she continues.

“Can I sleep with you tonight, master?” she leans in, her lips dusting over mine. The whispers of her scent curl around me, and I breathe them in deeply.

“Yes. But you’d best be bare for me when I get up there, understand?”

“Yes, master.”

She slides off my lap and up the staircase, but I don’t follow her with my gaze as I usually would, and that’s where I fuck up.

Even as my brain says that we could try it her way, her next move solidifies her death.

Her scream carries down the stairs, and I sit rigid as I turn my head slowly, knowing just what my puppet has found.

I sigh as I stand, turning for the stairs and taking them two by two.

She’s backing away from the open door, the one I expressly told her to stay the fuck away from. She backs into my chest, and I walk her into the room, flicking the light switch.

“Now you see me, don’t you, Grace darling? This is Cain Mordova, doctor and serial killer. This is who I am, puppet.”

Her eyes roam over where the girls’ bones are strung up like full skeleton puppets from my ceiling. All nine of my past victims. It had taken time and a lot of effort to have them preserved and beautifully hung in my time capsule of death.

“Do you see why I know you’ll run, Grace? Do you understand now? ”

She’s shivering against me, sobbing as she looks her fill.

When she sidesteps me and rushes into my bedroom, I know I’ll have to reconnect her strings tonight.

My puppet broke the rules and is now a liability again.

I take one look backward as I switch off the light and shut the door behind me, heading towards my bedroom.

I’ve been grappling with how badly I want to keep her, but now I know self-preservation will allow me to do what I need and keep me on my path.

“Take your shirt off, puppet. Master needs to string you up again,” I say as I enter the bedroom.

When I step in, however, something crashes over the back of my head, and I slump to the ground.

Grace steps over me, clocking me once more, this time harder.

As my vision fades and I fight to hang on, I realize I was right about her.

She’s going to unravel me.