Chapter 3

‘Who the fuck does he think he is?'

He's in my town. In my world, and he thinks he's going to show me up? And for what? For some clout? To call me out? None of it makes sense.

And if I don't have enough to worry about, now the stupid girl I can't help but keep under my sadistic thumb has eyes for his style. She'd come back to me with a glimmer of respect in her eye. From one killer to another. She thought his work was admirable. Fascinating, even.

She can say he's stupid and sloppy all she wants to. I could feel the chill in her bones when she lied to me. When she told me she'd help me kill him, her reluctance to do so was evident in the way her pupils shrunk in subconscious fear.

I'm going to lose it all to him: my empire, my reputation, and my girl.

And I don't even know when I'd taken to calling her my girl. She's got me so fucked in the head. The way she let sanity go for me. Unhanded all she's ever known, and slipped into a world of darkness and blood beside me as if it was all for me. All for us and what we were going to become.

But now, with him on the loose, what will we become?

Scrolling through the records of Crows Hollow Penitentiary, I come across something promising. There was a recent release for one Sarah Smith last Friday. She's blonde, and she killed her friend. There's suspicion in the papers that it was an accident, but a jury found her guilty, citing her testimony was thin and ever-changing.

"I've got you now, motherfucker," I grumble, sending the record and time of her release to the printer. It buzzes on and hums to life as the little fingers inside dance across the paper.

"Neo?" The hairs on my body stand on end, as they always do when she's near.

"Go back to bed, stupid girl."

Even I bristle at the curtness in my tone, but it's something I can't help. I can't be all that she needs. There are times when she pulls me close and wraps around me lovingly, and I think I can. And then I seethe, breaking free of its hold. At first, I thought it would make her run after time and make her realize she wanted more. But she never did.

If anything, she's clung tighter to me.

Her hands slide over my shoulder, tentative and soft.

Sometimes, she doesn't listen to me. And sometimes, I like that.

Like now.

"Didn't I tell you to go back to bed?" I sigh into her hands as she kneads my flesh like dough.

"Yes, but you didn't mean it. I can tell when you mean it and when you don't. What are you doing awake? What's bothering you?"

I turn on the barstool to tell her everything that's rumbling around in my psychotic head and then think better of it. Her hands lift back to my shoulders, sliding up to my neck, rubbing softly.

Far softer than a man like me should enjoy, but I still nearly purr under the scraping of her nails over my flesh.

It's like she's a fucking witch of epic proportions, and magic beyond belief keeps me rooted to her side like a familiar. One that would kill for her with one point of her stiletto black nails she keeps pointed like daggers.

"What is it?" she asks. "There's tension between us. Something unspoken, and I don't like it, Neo. Because even when things hurt to hear, you say them. It's what I've always loved about us. We have honesty."

That fucking word!

Love.

It's the root of all evil, I swear it.

Because even if it's something I feel, I can't say it. I can't breathe life into it, even for her, because love broke me as a child before I could even understand the world around me. I understood that when people told me they loved me, they would hurt me.

It's why I'm thankful she's kept her feelings to herself. If she even feels them. I am a fucked up man, and I don't expect that she loves me. Sometimes, I'd like to know what it would sound like from her lips.

I shake out of the spiraling thoughts, gripping her throat in my hand and flexing it as I ebb and flow pressure over where she gasps for air. "Don't fuck with my head, Lyla."

She shakes her head, pupils dilating. "Never."

"There are things between us unsaid. There always will be. You know that. And the longer we're together, the more there will be. Can't you understand that?" I ask her, voice wavering slightly.

Her eyes soften, and I hate her for it.

Pity isn't something a man like me can take well. It's a hard pill to swallow.

"I can. I'm sorry I asked. Sometimes I forget…" Her whispered words trail off.

"Forget what?" I snarl, leaning into her face with mine.

Before, when I first met her, this would make her shake in fear. Rattle to be near me right before she'd let her inhibitions drop and lust shine through. Now, all it does is make her pant for me, which I love. But sometimes, I miss the fear.

Sometimes, I wonder if I broke her or if I took her too far. There are times I miss the sane version of her, and I don't know why.

"Sometimes I forget you're different," she gets out as I grip her tighter, standing and nearly lifting her off the ground by her throat.

"Different." I scoff, rolling my eyes.

I let her throat go, shoving my hands under her arms and picking her up, only to drop her on the bar with a thud. It brings us face to face, and she looks me over. She's searching for something, but what?

"You are Neo. You're not like other men. You can't tell me how you feel. Sometimes, I know you want to tell me what you're thinking, but then, as quickly as you almost do, you shut down. I guess you might be like most men in that regard. But I never said your being different is a bad thing."

She finishes, and I'm leaning into her, my hands on either side, warming the counter with the heat. "The world broke me long before you came along, stupid girl. And thinking you could ever repair the damages was stupid of you."

"I never said…"

I shake my head and cut off her words. "You did. I can see it in your eyes. You thought eventually I'd warm to you. Whatever it is, we're doing it together. I never have, and I know it makes you sad."

She looks over my shoulder as if she can see beyond me when darkness is all there is over my shoulder. The entire house is dark, except for the small light she plugged into the hall to the right side because she kept bumping into things at night when she went for water.

The mundane moments we've had here in this house have driven me more into myself. I'm not used to this and not used to being somewhere steady. The only steady home I've ever had was the asylum. That only paints the pitiful picture of me more vividly.

"You'll move on from me as soon as you find someone more worthy of your time, Lyla. I've always known it. So, don't mince words with me, alright?" I tell her, straightening my back and removing my hands from the counter.

She grabs my wrists, tugging me back to her. "No."

"No?" I growl, not liking when she's defiant. But she knows that.

She always thinks she can toy with my sensibilities. Fuck with me by using her influence over me.

"No," she repeats, and rage is rushing through my body.

"Stupid girl…" I start, but she places my hand on her throat. Then she places the other on her breast, coaxing me to knead her flesh as she'd done mine.

"You're my fucked up, broken man. And you're mine forever. I don't care how much you try to act like it's me who will tire of you. I guess I'll remind you for the rest of our fucked up lives how I feel."

She curls her hand over the one at her throat, begging me to squeeze where my hands already were a moment ago.

"I already fucked you earlier," I tell her, the darkened side of me slipping out yet again when I should be kind to her. Any other man would be sweet right now. He would tell her how he feels. But even if I think about those things, they don't come out.

"More!" she demands, and flashes of our beginning flutter through my brain like they're playing from a projector. I see her on the back of my couch at the asylum, coming relentlessly as I demand even more of her.

"Lyla," I groan when she slides my hand from her breast under her nightshirt. I know she's bare for me. She always is in hopes I'll wake up with the urge to sink into her, as I do often.

"More!" she growls again, and my cock presses against my sweats.

"Who are you to demand things of me, hm?" I lean into her, two fingers finding her cunt wet and ready for me, the others wrapped tightly around her delicate throat.

"Yours," she manages, and it clicks something in place inside me. Something I didn't know had slid slightly off-kilter. But she had. She knew exactly what she needed to do when she saw me out here, wallowing in my head, my pool of worries and doubts.

It's why I wish I were something different for her sometimes.

When I've never wished to be anything else before.

Where I genuinely worry about the damage I've done to her and how far I've changed her, I'm also beginning to worry she's changing me. But not enough where I'll ever be what she needs.

"More!" she barely gets out as she slides to the edge of the counter and arches into where my fingers command her cunt, pumping in and out, the sinful sounds echoing through the nearly empty house.

Before I can double-guess myself, I pull my dick out and slide inside her wet pussy. She welcomes me with waves of muscles around me as I fuck her hard. She falls back on the counter, nearly knocking my laptop to the ground. Reaching over her, I pull a knife from the block and put the tip to her throat.

She whimpers but presses into it.

This drew me to her—the slight shimmer of myself that lived in her long before she knew me. Sure, I helped it grow, but it was always there.

"You're my stupid girl, aren't you? Always pushing the boundaries instead of behaving," I get out, riding the high of how she feels gripped around my cock as I pump inside her without a care in the world.

Her hands come over mine on the hilt of the kitchen knife, pressing into her flesh.

The pop of the knife going into her neck reverberates through my entire body, and my dick twitches inside her.

"Fuck, stupid girl, why do you have to be so fucking good?"

"Because you created me," she whimpers, walls rippling around me as she comes and screams my name.

But her admission almost takes me aback.

I did, didn't I?

I created her. She's what she is because of me. No matter what stupid thoughts have me reeling right now, that's something no one can take away from me.

And whoever tries to take her from me will pay with more than their fucking life because I'll trudge through the underworld to ruin their afterlife.

"Shit… Lyla!" I crumple over her, forgetting the knife as I hear her squeal when it slices into her again. My cum sinks deep into her body, likely changing even more of her DNA than I already have.

When I help her down, and she works her nightshirt back down as she smirks over her shoulder at me to beckon me back to the room, I glimpse my name branded on her ass cheek as it waves at me from her movements.

She's mine, it reminds me.

And it's when I know things are about to get bloody.

The way my stupid girl and I like them to be.