Chapter 15

The water cascades over her body, carving each luscious inch of her out like she's a sculpture that's still in progress. I'm leaning against the doorframe, raking my eyes over each curve as Kage's blood swirls around her feet, rushing toward the drain.

"You could come in, you know?" she says, lifting her eyes under the water towards me, her heavy lashes fluttering under the water beads.

I smirk, rubbing my lip with my index finger. The one that still smells like her.

"There's no point in washing, stupid girl. Not when we'll be covered in blood again soon, anyhow."

She opens the sheer curtain and beckons me inside with a wave. "Come on."

I can't resist her. I fear I won't ever be able to.

So, I do as I'm bid, undressing and stepping into the water with her.

She steps into my body, wrapping her arms around my back as she lays her head on my chest.

For a long while, the shower was the only sound between us, other than the sound of our mixed breathing.

"What will happen next?" she finally asks.

"Hm?" I ask. I was so lost in the feel of her, in the warmth soaking us in its arms, that I don't know if I heard her question.

"What happens next? To us? After Kage is dead and buried, do we stay here?" She looks up at me, her blue eyes darker and more analytical.

"You and I are like Bonnie and Clyde—stupid love. We don't stop running. They'll take us both in a blaze of glory." I reach up and shove a tendril of her soaked hair over her ear.

She bites her lip, and her eyelids flit in tiny, heady waves.

How I affect her and how she affects me will always be a conjoined weakness. One we'll share at the very end.

"You're home, anyhow," she tells me. Even though she's already admitted this, it's nice to hear it again.

"Our mission might shift a bit, but I think you'll agree with what I have in mind," I say, and she looks like she might inquire further before she shakes away from the thought and moves her hands to wrap behind my neck.

When she nudges me toward her lips, I don't hesitate.

My love for her is something I didn't want to admit for too damned long. And then, for seven harrowing days, it's all I wanted to admit.

Loving her freely and often is my goal now until the end of us.

Until they either lock us away or drag us to hell.

We stayedin the shower until it ran cold, and now we're back in the basement.

Lyla's standing before a battered Kage Davis, and he's eyeing her as if he knows that solace has finally come as the Butcher's stupid girl.

My tongue begs me to ask her how she will do it, but I don"t care what she does as long as she takes him out of this world for all he's done to this town and her.

Half of me wants to pull out my gun and shoot him between the fucking eyes if only to get it over with, but she needs this.

There's no sparing her from the damage he's already caused. She needs to close the chapter on Kage Davis.

She needs to know he's dead because she washed his blood from her skin.

Again.

After another ten minutes pass, Kage gets anxious, shifting as much as the leather straps will allow, grunting in anguish, and making strangled noises.

Thank God we'd cut out his tongue, or the fucker would beg for his pitiful, insignificant life.

I realize she needs me. She needs direction as she has before.

I step behind her, wrapping one hand around her throat from behind, lifting the blade in my other before her.

"Take the blade, stupid girl," I order, voice low and rough.

My cock is already stiff as fuck in my jeans before she grabs the hilt right above my hand.

I let it go, sliding my hand over her exposed stomach.

She came down here nude. She was not even bothering to get dressed after her shower.

I know why.

He took something from her.

Something she's going to remind him of as she takes something from him.

His life.

She presses back into me, and I tighten my grip on her throat. My lips graze the shell of her ear.

"I want you to kill him. If you don't do it for you, do it for me," I whisper.

Kage is making an ungodly racket, making my eyes twitch angrily. It's taking every fiber of control I can muster not to do it myself.

I back away from Lyla, letting my hands fall away from her body.

She takes a tentative step towards Kage.

I walk to the steps behind us, sit down on them, and watch her like a hawk watches its prey.

"Go on, stupid girl. Kill the bastard." I'm impatient for it to be done. It's gone on long enough. I half expected him to be dead when we walked down here and succumbed to his injuries.

I think Lyla had, too.

"For them," she says, straddling his lap, sitting down to look him right in the eyes. "For me," she adds, placing the blade between them, directly over Kage's heart.

He stills, eyes boring into hers, with tears falling.

"And for all those you would've harmed that this saves," she adds.

Pride builds in my chest. She heaves the blade through his chest, but something breaks in her with that initial entry.

She rears back, standing over him, slashing across his throat—blood sprays from his neck, coating her.

She continues to slash the blade across his body, crying out in lamenting howls of agony.

"Fuck!" she screams, hitting her knees and finally letting the blade clatter on the floor below.

Kage gurgles a few more times before he finally takes his last breath.

She's shaking. She's killed before, but this is different. I told her that we're done with Kage and this chapter after tonight.

She had to process it out of her system.

Had to let it all out.

"Stupid girl," I say, breaking the ringing silence deep into my soul. "Crawl to me."

She turns her blood-soaked face, eyeing me sidelong over her shoulder.

She looks like a cutthroat main character from a horror film, but she's not. She's the villain—the villain who sometimes does what she does to benefit others.

Not only did she just kill her rapist, but she spared all those that would have come after her.

She should get a fucking medal.

Maybe I'll buy her one.

I open my mouth to order her again, but she's turning over and crawling toward me before I can. She's covered in blood, and the look in her eyes is that of a hunter.

One with a weaker animal in its sights.

"Good girl," I tell her, and her darkened green eyes gain a speck of light.

I shove my pants to my ankles and sit back on the steps. My cock bobs up and hits my stomach.

"Fucking look at you," I mutter, shaking my head as she gets even closer. "You look like a warrior goddess. It's my favorite, you know?"

"What's your favorite?" she asks me, finally standing and straddling my lap.

I reach between us, finding her entrance with my cock and using my other hand to drive her down on it, squeezing her hip and guiding her.

"Fucking you covered in another man's blood," I breathe through gritted teeth.

She's so warm. So tight.

I can scarcely think straight when I'm inside her. My balls draw up, and I am already readying to fill her.

Both her hands wrap around my throat, and she squeezes with all her might.

Rage swirls in my chest immediately. But then, it quells.

The way her cunt feels wrapped around me, she could kill me next for all I give a fuck.

"You're perfect," I grit out, and she tightens her hands, cutting off my airway like a professional.

And she is, isn't she?

As I struggle, lungs burning, cock tugging as she rides me hard and fast, I look at her with awe filling me.

I created her.

I groomed her to step into the dark insanity I sensed inside her from the moment she locked eyes with me in that godforsaken asylum.

My soul instantly knew hers, as if we were destined to be. We only had to wait for the universe to align—the stars to coordinate.

"You're mine," she snarls.

Her walls constrict and flutter around me, and I know she's close. The knowledge alone is enough to make me erupt inside her like a fucking bomb. But my stupid girl goes first.

Even if I die before she does.

The world around me is falling away and dimming like a tunnel does when there's no end in sight. Specks of light pepper my failing vision, and I lean into the feeling of bliss.

They say it's like this, you know?

When the end comes, the eventual end, we're ready because of the euphoric feel of Death taking your hand to ferry you to the beyond. It's what she's been chasing, I realize.

And now, it's my turn.

"You brought me to life, Neo Wade. Now you die for me," she moans, coming around me in curling vibrations, and I come with her in a chain reaction.

The world goes dark, and the last thing I feel is the blessed rapture before the end.

My end.

Gasping back to life,I grab for anything I can. Panic circles my heart as it beats in rapid fire.

"You're alright," Lyla says, and my eyes race over the room to find her.

She's in my arms, head lying on my chest.

We're both on the basement floor, and she looks blissed out completely.

I'm still panting when I hold her tighter to me.

"Welcome back, Butcher," she says, rising to my lips and kissing me long and deep.

Her tongue tumbles over mine in salutation, and I return the favor.

"I didn't want to go, but…" How do I tell her how I'd taken Death's hand so tranquility?

"It's a strange feeling, right? Once fear melts away, you slowly become aloof, pleased even, to fade away. That mixed with orgasm is…" She sighs.

"Transcending," I finish for her.

She nods against my chest.

"We need to bury him," she says, looking up at where Kage still slumps in the electric chair.

I don't know why it was in the basement in the first place, but I know I'll now need to incinerate it.

"We do."

She snuggles into my body more, throwing a leg over mine. "Just a little longer. He can wait."

I kiss the top of her head. "Yes, stupid girl. He can."

Laying on the floor of a basement, a dead man at our feet, we both remain as idle as the killers hiding in our chests. In our psyche.

I never thought I'd share my fucked-up life with someone. And now I can't think of myself alone. Life has no meaning without her in it any longer.

It's her and me against the world.

Against Death himself.