Chapter 19

H er flesh is pulled taut away from her body, and it’s covered in blood. My cock pistons inside her, giving her the rush of being weightlessly fucked, suspended from her rigging, while the hoops tug and give her a pinch of pain.

Grace has surpassed my expectations and given me something I thought no one ever could. She’s my perfect girl. My puppet. My muse. My fucking everything.

The scent of blood on her flesh gives me something I primally need as my cock gathers steam inside her.

She’s come for me twice, not including how well she came for me in the bathroom, and I know I will soon need to let her down. She’s been suspended far too long, but the high she’s giving me.

“What a fucking gift you are, Grace.” I grip her hips as I fuck straight into her.

She’s suspended at the perfect height, all over her weight evenly distributed on her pierced hoops, rigged above us.

She looks like a fucking angel. Like resurrection made flesh.

“Cain,” she whimpers, and her eyes tell me she’s close. Her hands tug at the piercings at her nipples—the ones she’d wanted for herself—and I feel my own orgasm building.

“Come for me like my good girl, and I’ll let you down.” My words promise an end. A light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

She feels fucking sublime around my cock, and I groan and let my head fall back.

“God,” I moan.

“Tell me I feel good,” she begs, hands curling over mine, her nails digging into my skin.

I hiss, fucking her harder, using my grip on her hips to pull her down as I drive forward.

Skin slaps, and our cries meld.

“You know you feel good, darling. Like a tight-fitting sheath made only for me. Were you made for me, Grace?”

I’m barely hanging onto my control as I open my eyes and find hers.

“Yes! I’m all yours! Made for you!” she screams, body buckling around my dick, her walls wringing out my ends I wasn’t ready to reach yet.

“Fuckkk, Grace, goddamn you!” Cum shoots from my cock, finding its home inside her as she shudders and pulls every last drop from me .

We come down slowly before I work her off the hooks and down to the floor, scooping her into my arm and moving her to the bedroom.

My bedroom.

I lay her down and get in next to her.

For a while, our breathing was erratic, and the world around me twirled and tilted. Soon, though, we were both breathing normally, and Grace turned on her side and snuggled into me.

“That was… I don’t think I have a word for what that was, actually,” she says, and I curl my arm around her, rubbing her back with my fingertips.

“We need to check your wounds,” I tell her, the surgeon inside me knowing one of them might need stitches. “We’ll also need to get rid of these sheets.”

She smirks. “That’s alright. I’m sure they won’t be the last.”

Something crosses her face, and I steel my insides at what comes next. She just witnessed all of me. The darkest parts I’ve kept hidden away. Only those dead and dangling have seen what lurks below my skin, and I don’t know what her following words are going to be, but I’m confident I won’t like them.

“I have to say something, and I don’t want you to freak out about it,” she says, pulling up to sit next to me and looking down at me as if she needed a higher vantage point.

I allow her to keep it as I lay on my back and cross my arms in defense .

“Go ahead. I’m listening.”

She takes in my rigid posture and change of tone, shifting her naked body on the bed awkwardly.

“I don’t want you to think you have to say anything back, and I don’t want you to run away, either. I have to say my peace, and then we can move on from it.”

I narrow my brows. “You’re making me anxious, and when men like me get anxious, it’s not good for anyone, Grace.”

Her eyes flare at my use of her name, and I fight a smirk. I do it to unnerve her, just like I use darling at the perfect times to melt her into a puddle. I discerned early on it was a weakness of hers, and have been using it to my advantage ever since.

She takes a breath and then releases it, not saying a word.

Finally, I sit up and pull her into my lap, wrapping my arms around her. “Spit it out, or I’ll spank you.”

Her cheeks heat. “How about I tell you, and you still spank me?”

I shake my head, fighting a laugh. “Incorrigible little puppet.”

She beams. “I love you,” she says, and my heart stops. Fucking stops in my chest, suspended in paracardial fluid, fighting to regain its rhythm.

“Excuse me?” I ask her. I heard her, but I crave to hear it again—like the defibrillator that’ll restart my heart.

“I love you,” she repeats, more sure of herself this time .

“That’s what you had to tell me?” I ask, waiting patiently for the other shoe to drop.

She nods, nuzzling her nose against mine. “It’s fucked up, I’m sure. For the kidnapped woman to fall for a blood-thirsty kidnapper, but I can’t help it. Whether you keep it beating or not, my heart is yours.”

I can’t think. My brain is short-circuiting. Neurons are misfiring.

It’s a full system failure.

“Cain?”

“Mm?” I come to as she kisses my lips softly, slowly.

“Are you alright?”

“I love you, too,” I blurt and freeze.

After assessing my insides, running a system diagnostic, and then nodding when I agree with the words I just spat at her, I double down. “I love you, too,” I tell her again.

She turns in my lap, straddling me as she attacks my mouth with a punishing kiss.

“I thought you were leaving me,” I tell her when I pull back from her kiss.

Her hands gently cup either side of my face, her hazel eyes softening. “And go where, Cain? After touching the flames of wild passion, one can only descend to the pits of hell, I’d think. Nothing in life would be fulfilling without you beside me. Besides, I think I’m still a prisoner, right?”

I laugh despite the seriousness of the situation. “How do you figure? ”

She leans back, running her hands over her piercings. “Well, because you’ve got your hooks in me, of course.”

Her grin is rueful as I tug her back into my mouth, kissing her breathlessly as I let her words bathe me in a new veil—one that’ll shroud me from the world surrounding me for the rest of my life. With her love, I’m protected.

With her beside me, I’m whole.

Grogily, I pad to the kitchen, where I hear Grace banging around. However, when I entered the room, I discovered more than her just cooking breakfast.

“What in the hell are you doing?” I ask, looking around in confusion.

She pops up, blowing her blonde hair away from her face, which had fallen out of her messy bun. “Packing, of course.”

“Of course,” I say, looking into the living room and finding it likewise in shambles. “Uhh, darling girl?”

“Yes?” she asks, lifting a box and closing it with packing tape.

“Can I ask where we’re going? We both have jobs here and to my knowledge, I might be losing my mind, so excuse me if I am—we haven’t discussed moving.”

I wait for her to explain, but she only smiles.

“We haven’t, but I thought we agreed that I would be everything you need.”

I nod in agreement, grabbing her as she tries to pass me with a box. I take it from her, sitting it on the island as I turn her to face me. “Where are we going?”

“Home. To where I fell for you, of course.”

My brows tug together in confusion. The farmhouse?

“Grimrose House?” I ask her.

She nods. “Is that its name? I didn’t know. Very gothic, I like it.”

She’s in good spirits today. Six orgasms will do that to a person.

“You want to go live at Grimrose house?” I ask her.

She sighs, motioning around us to the room. “This is a lie, Cain. It’s a facade you’ve been living in for years. It’s time to live how you want to. We don’t have to if you don’t want to live at Grimrose House. I’ll get an agent to find us a house. I get it could be weird to live there being that…”

I shut her up with a kiss. “We can live wherever you want.”

My mind flickers to the bodies suspended in the room off the stairs, and I narrow my gaze at her. “And the women?”

She doesn’t bristle. She thought of that, apparently.

“They’re part of our story. Part of who we are. Though I don’t think they should hang like puppets in the house, we can find something to do with them.”

“You’ve truly thought of this. You really want to stay with me? ”

She wraps her arms around my neck, lips pulling into a sinful smirk that boils my blood. “Oh, my precious little psychopath, has no one ever loved you before?”

She’s baiting me, I tell myself inwardly.

Even so, my ego rises to the occasion.

My hand rises, cutting off her air as the man from the depths cracks his neck back and forth, preparing for a fight.

I keep wondering when she’ll have had enough. When is the point she stops wanting a killer’s hands on her? When does she decide it’s enough?

I can’t think like that, but it spurs me on.

“Don’t taunt me, darling. You know what happens when you do.”

She grins. “It’s why I do it, you fucking monster.”

I can’t help myself. I forget who we are to one another, leading her by her throat to the wall beside the fridge, slamming her back into the drywall. “Puppet,” I warn.

“I want to be with you,” she says, and my hand flexes. “You need to get past this.”

I can’t shake the haunting feeling of every time I’ve fucked her. Every single time I’ve been inside her. Even though she’s flesh and bone before me, like she’s infused me with fever, she’s wriggled beneath my skin and infected me.

It’s unfathomable to me that she’s still here of her own volition. I’m surprised to see her each night I come home from work .

Like she’s a gift that keeps on giving.

“The bodies go,” I growl, not giving her any room for rebuttal or explanation.

She nods. “It’s your call.”

She has this way of being just what I need when I need it, which keeps me guessing with her. We have a lot of life ahead of us, her and me; I’m ready to dive off the deep end with her. To walk unthinkingly into the future and see what it brings.

I’m a fucked up man, and finding her wasn’t easy, but I’m so fucking ready.

“It’s Good of you to allow me to make some decisions still,” I tell her. “You know I hate it when you bait me, darling.”

She smirks, turning around and pressing her ass against my cock. “Go ahead, then. Punish me, master.”

I fist her hair, tugging her head backward. “What monster have I created in you?”

“Not a monster, master. A perfect puppet, remember?”

I growl, skimming my nose up her neck and getting high off her scent. “Oh, darling, how could I fucking forget.”

I turn her, dropping her hair when she’s facing me again.

“Get on your knees, puppet.”

Her eyes look devious as fuck as she slowly descends to her knees. “Of course, master.”

For quite some time, I’ve wondered if my entire existence, the reason I was killing and maiming, was to find this woman. It’s this very moment that solidifies that theory.

I know it was all for her.

Even if it’s fucked up to the onlooker, every bit of it was worth it.

She closes her lips on my cock, and my hands press into the wall as I box her in beneath me, shoving forward and gagging her.

“That’s a good little puppet. Gag on your master,” I taunt, driving down her throat over and over until tears are staining her rouge-filled cheeks.

I fuck her mouth, forgetting everything around us, focused solely on her and the feel of her around my dick.

“Swallow your master’s cum, my perfect puppet. Fuck, that’s a good girl. Right there, here it comes, goddamn…” I jut forward, emptying down her throat as she fights to swallow and breathe.

When I pull out, I grasp my still-hard cock in my hand, slapping it across her face.

“You’re going to need a lot of training, darling.”

I slap her again, and her answering grin is as wicked as she is. “It’s a Good thing we have plenty of time for that, psychopath.”

Fuck.