Chapter 17

Pierce

Watching her is still an obsession.

Watching her shower, drink her tea, burn her mouth on noodles that are far too hot to be in her mouth, watching her work, watching her come with my name on her lips. She's an obsession that'll never waver. She's burying herself deep into my soul. So deep down, I know I'll never be free. But this can't work. Can it?

A man can't stalk a woman and then win her heart.

But when she rolls over and sighs, opening her dark orbs to gaze into mine, I think that it just might. She just might be my reason. The reason that I've remained alive when Cynthia lost her life. The reason I still draw breath into my lungs. I was waiting.

"What's going on up there, hmm?" she asks, tapping my temple with her fingertip before dragging it down my jawline lightly, finishing the movement when she drifts it across my bottom lip.

"Nothing." It's stern, and it's a lie.

She cups my face. "You're an enigma, aren't you? It's going to take me a long time to work you out."

A smile peels onto my face without a second thought. "A very long time."

"You seem different."

Her statement rolls through me. It's something I'd noticed myself. In her presence, the demons are at bay. No more do I feel like a man torn to bits by his past. One just trying to survive through the ugliness.

"There's still a lot," I tap my head with my finger, "in here, that needs to be worked through. But I do feel as though I've faced something I've been hiding from for a long time."

She nods in complete understanding, reaching up and running two fingers over my scars. "How did you get these?"

My eyes close, savoring her touch. The inner demons inside me purr, curling up under the tender care she shows us. Even though she's seen the dark side. "It wasn't enough for them to kill her. They wanted all traces of her gone. All traces of me gone. Because neither of us would give up what we knew. As we were trained. I tried to take her body with me. But the flames..." A tear escapes my eye, and she soaks it into her hand, wiping it away. It's the first time I don't feel alone in my misery.

"You'd have died with her, Pierce. She wouldn't have wanted that."

Logically, I know that. But not having remains to give her parents so that she could be properly buried had been so fucking soul-crushing. To stand before them knowing I'd failed. As her partner. As her protector.

Even if she wouldn't have seen it that way. She knew the line of work she'd gotten into.

The ache in my chest spreads, overtaking my good nature. Even though I try to stop it, it does no good. Gripping her hips, I lift her off me, slamming her onto her back on the rickety couch-bed.

"Why do you fucking care what I went through? Why make me relive this?" I snarl, panting.

She doesn't stir nor bristle. She only looks at me with soft eyes, ones that understand my pain. And it makes me angrier. And I can't get the reins back in my hands. Control has been something I've struggled with since that day. Since Mario Gallo turned my world upside down. But if you asked Cynthia, she'd have said I always had a control problem. That I was destined for this fate all along. A man doomed to become a monster inside his own flesh.

"I care because I love you," she says. Even though I'm still pushing her into the mattress, hands on both her shoulders, heaving anger rolling through me, she looks at me with kind eyes.

Her words ripple through me, and I can't work out how it could be that she loves me. She's mistaken. A woman, untouched and confused by her dark desires. She's bemused by my touch and the things I've done to her. That's it.

"Don't do that," she says, seeming to know what's going on inside my head. "I'm a grown woman, and I know when I love someone. Don't tell me I'm mistaken."

"You can't love me. Look at me. I'm hot and cold. I'm out of control. I can never love you back as you need to be. There's a side of me I don't know if I can fix. My mind is a shattered mess."

She nods in agreement with all my words, and it hurts a little to have her agree so easily.

"But you're exactly what I need, Pierce. Don't you see that? You haven't fixed something in me, but you've set something free. And I didn't know I needed you. Not until you were here. I love you, and I know that it'll be different with us, I do. I know that, but I don't want to be in this world without you beside me."

I open my mouth to give a rebuttal, and she shakes her head.

"Scars and all," she adds.

The darkness is still right at the surface, coiled and ready to strike. And it's very hard to put it away once it's this close. Like a storm that can't be boxed.

Getting off the bed, I heave in breaths as I back towards the window next to the couch.

"I need you to go, little ember."

She gets out of the bed, and the sheets fall off her, baring her to me. A growl rumbles through my body like a speeding train through a silent ghost town.

"Please, don't do this. I can't just go back to life now that I know what it can be like. I can't." She's panicking, her eyes growing in their worry.

Shaking my head, I try to keep a lid on my emotions. This happens since that day. I can't control my reactions. I can't control the images that taunt me. I can't control how much emotion overwhelms me to the brink of madness.

"Get out!" I grit out.

She steps toward me. "Pierce, I love all of you. Don't hide from me anymore..."

Moving swiftly, I reach under the pillow and grab for the revolver I know resides there as I sleep. The one that keeps my sanity intact because I know I'm armed if I need to spring into action.

The cold barrel presses into her temple and the slightest squeak of fear escapes before she can help it. Images of Cynthia roll through my head. Her screaming. Her blood pooling on the dank concrete. Mario's laugh at my shouts of rage.

I shake my head, pressing the revolver harder against her head.

"Do you see how fucked up I am? You have to see! I can't control it. It's too hard. My brain is fucked, Hazel!"

Using her name seems to do something to her. But it's not the effect I'd hoped for. No. Her eyes light with something as dark as I feel, and she reaches up and holds my hand over the gun. There's no slight tremor in her hand. No inkling of fear as she stares into my eyes deeply and smiles.

"I do see how fucked up you are. But I also see the loyal, protective man beneath all that. I see the man who needs my love. And I'm just as fucked up, Pierce. Do you forget we're bound in blood now? Can't you see that I'm willing to dance in the dark with you?"

A heavy breath leaves my chest. I drop the gun.

A dry smirk lifts my lips, and she watches it ruefully. I open the chamber of the gun, removing all but one bullet. One by one, I drop the bullets onto the bed. When I spin the chamber for show, she watches me like a hawk. Slamming it closed, I arm the weapon, using two hands to point it toward her.

"There's one bullet in the chamber, little ember. Shall we let fate decide?" I ask, my darkest side screaming in pleasure in my head. The images have stopped, but I want to play with her on the edge of the cliff.

And somehow, I know she can take it.

"Fate," she echoes.

"Mmm, fate. Run, little ember. Run fast and hide from me. If I find you, you'll regret it."

She hesitates, looking down the end of the barrel.

My finger pulls the trigger, the clicking of an empty chamber, the sound that breaks through the silence between us.

"Run!" I shout. My voice is graveled and filled with excitement.

She turns and skitters toward the steps, nude body moving from the action. I lick my lips.

"This is going to be fun."

* * *

She's nowhereto be found. And panic has set into my chest just a bit. I'd told her to hide. Our game was going to get very interesting when I found her, but that was only if I could find her. My hands are getting sweaty on the gun, and my nerves are fucking frayed. But the side of me that needs this is already nearly satisfied. And it's not lost on me she's giving this to me. That she's satiating the depraved needs inside me.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are! Don't you want to play a game with me?" I taunt, opening cupboard after cupboard in the kitchen, and coming up empty.

I growl, rolling my neck to relieve some tension.

"Now, where could you be at?" I tease, licking my lips as my eyes scan the room, falling on the most obvious of places that I hadn't checked yet.

The walls.

But she can't know. She couldn't have found an entrance... Unless she had.

I laugh maniacally, the sound even grating against my soul. "Oh, little ember. You've outdone yourself, haven't you? But when I find you in those walls, you'll have nowhere to run to!"

I crawl through the house, teasing past each hole in the wall, in case she's behind that specific one I pass. Drawing our game out. Because the longer I take to find her, the more satisfaction I get from the game.

I use the largest entrance, which is located right off the third-floor landing, behind a floor to ceiling portrait of some dead relative of my father's.

The walls only have the dimmest of light, and they're drafty as fuck. My cock bobs along, heavy and erect between my legs. I'm careful not to touch a wall so as not to get a fucking splinter.

"Oh, Hazel," I call out, scraping the gun against the wall as I near what looks to be a shadow. I'm very close to the entrance that would lead into the room nearest the attic stairs. The very one I'd used to exit and shut off the light the first night I laid eyes on her. The night she'd burrowed into my brain and become a new obsession.

The shadow moves, and I smirk. A chuckle rises out of my chest. "Now, you're fucked, don't you think?"

When I get closer, she plasters her back to the wall, grimacing at how cold it is. In our proximity, my eyes skim over the hardened state of her nipples.

"You've nowhere to run to now, little ember." I lift the gun and use it to tuck hair behind her ear, and a heated breath leaves her lips. "But you don't want to get away, do you? You want to feel what it's like to be captured, don't you?"

She swallows audibly. "Yes. I want to know what it's like to be in your grasp."

I let the revolver run over her face, running it down until its barrel is pressed against her throat. She instinctively stills.

"Ahh, so there are some wits in that pretty little head of yours, hmm?"

I want nothing more than to see her pupils as they dilate with arousal for me, but in the dimness of the passage, there's no way. There isn't much room in here. My back is close to the wall behind me. And hers is pressed firmly against the one behind her. My cock is the other weapon between us, and I know she can feel how excited I am to have captured her.

"So, you think you can handle being with a madman? You think you can settle down with Dr. Jekyll and endure Mr. Hyde?" I press the cold barrel of the gun to her folds, angling upward.

Her breathing is erratic. "I do. You don't scare me."

I laugh, and it raises even my own hackles. Leaning down, I press my ear to her chest the best I can. She leans back, allowing me access so easily.

"Mmm, well, your heartbeat says otherwise, little ember."

"A fast heartbeat could mean anything," she counters.

I pull back up, my lips too close to hers for sanity's sake. "Tell me what yours means," I whisper, and her lips part and a whimper leaves them.

"I need you. That's what they mean. God, Pierce, I'm too turned on by this. By you. And I'm not worried about what's wrong with me anymore. You fill a hole that's been empty for so long."

"Those are a lot of pretty words," I taunt. Pressing the cold revolver upward, I graze her clit.

"I mean them," she moans, moving across the gun like a greedy little whore.

"Show me, then. Let's see how much of me you can deal with, shall we?"

She nods. "Please!"

"One... Two... Three," I count. My finger pulls the trigger, and the telltale clicking sounds as an empty chamber misfires.

She whimpers, and I breathe out a sigh of what feels like static electricity. Excitement is dancing through me and looking for an escape. I roll my neck.

"Are you afraid yet? Do you want to keep playing?"

She nods frantically. "I want all you have to give."

"And if this gun fires the one bullet? If it blows this beautiful pussy to bits?" Swiping it back and forth through her folds, I await her answer.

Her head falls back and hits the wall. "Then let it happen."

A growl leaves me as I lean down and bite her neck hard enough to make a scream escape her throat. The vibrations of her skim my teeth, satiating something deep inside me. "I think you mean that. I think you'd let me ruin this body. I think you'd let fate have you."

"I do. I don't know why, but I do."

"I know why, little ember," I whisper into her ear, nipping the edges as I pull the trigger again.

A click causes my eyes to roll back and her to moan. She grinds across the barrel, her body taking over her good sense.

"Tell me," she begs on bated breath. "Please, tell me!"

"Because I'm the devil, you can see. I'm not the one who lurks in the shadows and steals from you in a drug-induced haze. I'm the one who tells you what fucked up things I want to do to this greedy body, and then follows through. I see you for you, and you want me because it's your choice to stand in my darkness. Because you have the control. And even with my gun pressed firmly to your drenched pussy, you know if you tell me to stop, I will."

I pull the trigger, and the clicking makes her feral. Her hand grips over top of mine and presses the gun harder into her clit as she moves her hips over it.

"I'm in control," she breathes.

I nod through the gray haze of the shadows. "I've been yours since I laid eyes on you from within these walls, Hazel. You have shown me that embracing the dark is better than hiding from it. But you'll have to embrace it with me, little ember. Can you do that? Can you dance with demons when they emerge?"

"Fuck, Pierce!" she shouts as I pull the trigger again and it clicks. "Yes! Yes, I can!"

Removing the gun, I lick it, letting her glassy eyes watch as I lick my weapon clean of her flavor. "I think you can, too. I think it's why I was so obsessed with you. My soul knew all along you belonged to me. To us."

She whimpers at the term us, and I grin like the Joker with Harley Quinn in his sights. And she could be just that, my fucked up little monster, ready to do my bidding because her brand of darkness calls to mine. We're but two souls that the world used and spat out, who've found one another in the murkiness of hate and self-loathing.

I reach down with my other hand, lifting her leg and bending the best I can in the cramped space, letting my cock find its way home inside her wet, hot heat. She wraps her hands around my neck, using my body as leverage to lift herself. Leaning into her, I sink deep inside her as she wraps her legs around my hips.

"If you become ours, you can never leave. There's no escaping, little ember. You will live in the dark with us for the rest of your days, and I can't promise that I'll get any better. But I can promise you that no one or anything will ever hurt you again. Because I'll bathe in their blood and fuck you while coated in it."

"I knew from the first time you kissed me I'd never escape you, Pierce. You're mine, and I'm yours. And fuck the rest of the world. Fuck everything else. This is what I've needed. You are what I needed."

Her lips crash to mine, and I let the revolver drop to the ground and it clicks again.

It races an energy through us, the looming edge of death, and we groan as we devour one another whole. Tongues thrash. My cock spears through her quivering body like an anchor trying to find its way to the sea floor.

"Fuck, fuck, so close. I'm so close," she breathes into my mouth, and I tip her face back.

"Well, let me give my greedy little whore what she needs then, hmm?" My teeth sink into her throat, sending her flying over the precipice of ecstasy.

"Pierce! Ahh!" Her walls ripple around me, gripping my last bit of resolve as my balls tighten and cum moves through it and coats her insides unbidden.

"Such a perfect little cunt. Take it all," I grit out, and she moans, finding my bottom lip with her teeth and clamping down. "Fuck, I love you!" I admit through convulsions of pure bliss.

A shockwave of a continued release rolls through me as more cum paints her insides like a canvas.

"You might be the fucking end of me."

She kisses me, my blood the only flavor between us as both our bodies twitch out the last moments of release.

"But what a beautiful end it'll be, hmm?"

I smirk. "Catastrophically so."