53. BLOODY DESIRE

53

BLOODY DESIRE

RYDEN

S he was efficient, ruthless, filled with the red of anger and rage. The animal within me howled, carrying away the remains of my sanity. She was everything I had ever wanted in my incomplete life. She killed Victor, and then she played me, she played me so fucking well but… I couldn’t imagine a world where her red hair and golden eyes weren’t there. A world where she wasn’t there to look at me with a smile that had the power to rip my heart and soul into pieces.

Why? Why is this so hard?

“Hello, Logan. You’re finally mine.” Yara kicked him on the side of his face and shook her head. “I wished I had worn my high heels for this.” She looked like a wrathful goddess, and her eyes sparkled with fire that wouldn’t fizz out until he was dead.

She held him down with a boot pressed to his stomach, her knife ready. Sunlight glinted against the steel knife, and I watched as her breasts rose and fell in a rhythmic motion.

It fucking turned me on, and I was ashamed to admit it… but there it was. She was hot as hell, and I wanted to fuck her right here, right now.

“It feels like I’ve been waiting for this all my life,” she said in a slow breath, grabbing two pairs of gloves from inside her trench coat. She handed one to me. “Wear these and wipe your fingerprints off the gun.” She took a small bag of white powder from her pocket and pressed it against Logan’s nose.

“Ketamine,” she said when she caught me staring.

“The gun’s already evidence, isn’t it?” I said, and she shook her head, chuckling.

“This isn’t my gun, Turtle Mocha. I’m not an amateur like you. You got caught killing Phil.”

“Matthew. His name was Matthew. He was a fucking rapist,” I said with a wince. “Don’t be so fucking smug. I caught you, K.Y. Wolff.”

“Aw, is your tender little ego bruised, Turtle Mocha?”

I growled, baring my teeth at her, and she laughed, the sound dancing along my skin.

“The gun belongs to one of my many men. He won’t miss it, though.” The darkness, the satisfaction in her smile… oh, it pulled out the bloodthirsty heathen buried within me to the light.

I couldn’t wait to see the darkest, most violent shades of her. The goddess and the demon within her.

“How do you want to do this, then, my lady?” I asked Yara, studying the golden ember in her eyes.

“Slowly, painfully, until the demons within me are less hungry, less thirsty,” she said. She leaned closer and pressed a kiss to my lips as her boot came down hard on Logan’s cock.

“Yes. Whatever you want,” I said.

She tied her hair back, her brows furrowed in concentration.

She was gorgeous, even when she was talking about killing a man. The anger in her roared like flames around her, and I’d gladly burn in them if she’d let me. “I want to cut him into a million pieces, and I want him to feel every single cut. I want to pour salt on those cuts. Then I want to burn him until his scream is the only thing I hear until the screams inside me die down.” She looked like she didn’t even realize what she was saying, lost in a haze of blind fury.

Could I be this lucky to have this woman all for myself, to have her darkness breathing along with mine? Could I afford that?

I wanted to. I needed to.

“Fuck. You’re so fucking sexy, and I’m so fucking turned on right now,” I said, running my hand down my cock, and she gasped, shaking her head.

“Hurry, then,” she said as she trailed the knife down my chest until it was pressed against my rock-hard cock. I groaned and she tutted, stepping over the unconscious asshole to come closer. I gripped her hips and she sighed.

“So hard. You’re not lying, but not yet,” she breathed out before kicking Logan in his right lung, once, twice, her pulse ragged, her skin flushed. Sweat trailed down her brows, and the knife in her fingers trembled.

Her grin was quickly replaced by something insidious when she looked down at Logan. “Why? Why did you… hurt my Kat? Why?” The scream that left her filled the sky with the red of wrath and the blue of sadness.

I wanted to pull her to me, to save her from the agony, but I knew the only thing that would help her now was killing him.

“I’ll kill him for you if you want me to,” I whispered, and she looked at me, wide eyes welling with tears.

“Ryden…”

“Yes?”

“I know I’m a monster, but I don’t want you to look at me like… like I am. I don’t want you to see this side of me, Ryden.” Her voice was strangely soft.

“Yet you’ve seen mine.” And she hadn’t run screaming bloody murder. Knowing that lit the darkest edges of my soul.

“I’m not you, Ryden. Your darkness is brighter than mine. It is selfless. I’m not… not that. You’ll run once you see me for who I really am. You already hate me for killing Victor.”

She was staring at me, her eyes tearing at my soul. I was angry, but I wasn’t angry enough to leave her. I wanted to hold her close to me and never let go, to become a part of her madness, her rage, her world. As long as she’d let me.

“I won’t run,” I said, turning to Logan Jones. She was mine way before all of this.

Now, after all of this… I didn’t feel like a stranger in my own skin. I wasn’t an outsider with my beautiful, dazzling masks on. I was myself. This was the ugliest I had ever been in front of someone I wasn’t planning to kill. Except Enzo. I belonged next to her. With blood and darkness and with her demons. There was no running from this. “I won’t let anyone come between us.”

Not even Victor.

She blinked, her mouth in a tempting little O, and once again, she didn’t answer me. It pricked like a fucking bee sting, but…

She turned toward Logan, avoiding my confession. She could run, but I’d chase her to the end of this insanity and catch her. She was my mad fucking goddess, and I’d burn the entire universe down for her, morality be damned, goodness be damned.

She believed I was selfless, but how wrong she was!

“You’re bleeding,” she said. “Because of him. How dare he touch what’s mine,” she said as she knelt down next to the unconscious bastard. The look in her eyes made my heart hitch.

“It’s nothing. So… I’m yours?”

“You have been mine since the moment I caught you killing Phil… Matthew.”

“And?” I had never wanted something more than to be hers.

“And nothing,” she said. “The fucker looks almost harmless, and I can’t believe he was the one that killed my best friend.” Grabbing him by his hair, she pulled him up before slamming him hard on the ground. He groaned, finally coming back to life. “Why Kat?” she whispered to herself as I pressed my foot to Logan Jones’ stomach, keeping him in place just in case he decided to fight back, but the Ketamine already made him weak. “Why?”

Yara slapped him hard against his cheek. She pressed the knife to his chest while I kept the gun pointed at him. She smiled when he cursed. It was the smile of a predator, cold, calculating. There was no life in her eyes. I always knew she was not normal, but knowing she was just like me… it made me hopeful and scared at the same time.

She twisted the knife in her hand, playing with it as she studied her prey. The darkness swirling around her was mesmerizing, electric, and it pulled me in further.

“How do you know me?” she asked Logan, and his answering smile made me slam my shoe into his stomach.

He whimpered, shook his head, and smiled a little. Yara growled, grabbing a handful of sand and rubbing it against his right eye. As he screamed in pain, she slowly dragged her knife down his cheek. He screamed and thrashed and then stilled.

“What’s your obsession with me?”

“You know nothing, Yara Kent. Nothing.” Yara Kent?

Where had I heard that name? Kent. Kent!

The first one in the Hunters and Preys podcast—the man’s name was Jordan Kent. I knew then. He was her father. The monster I wanted to kill when she talked about him that day at her house. She assured me he was dead.

He didn’t just die. She killed him. She had claimed her identity, something unique, away from what he wanted her to be. She was better than me.

I still couldn’t find or kill my father. If I had to blame someone for Victor’s death, it was him. He was the reason our lives, my life, changed into this horrendous version of what it once was. But it also gave me this woman.

“You’re a fool. You think you’re smart, but you’re just ordinary,” he snapped.

Her body went stiff, and the knife went further into his skin, cutting a sharp line along his throat.

“Why did you kill Katelyn? Why her?”

“How do you know that I killed her?” Logan’s voice was antagonistic, and his smile twisted as he grabbed Yara with his grimy hand.

Everything turned red. I shot him on his other hand, and he screamed again, but let her go.

“Don’t touch her, you motherfucker,” I growled, kicking the side of his face. The sound of flesh smacking against my boot was therapeutic, so were his screams.

He slumped back down, tired, but the gleam in his eyes never went away.

“Tell me why you chose her?”

“Did I choose her?” he goaded.

“You’re The Strangler. You killed her.”

“Didn’t I tell you… I hate that name, Little Love.”

“Yara, kill him.”

“No, I can’t. I need answers. I couldn’t…” She wiped her eyes and let out a frustrated growl, punching Logan.

“Eyes on me, Yara, look at me.” She met my eyes. “He won’t give you anything. You already know that. He’s playing you.”

“Trust him, Yara. I won’t,” Logan said, laughing as he did, spitting out blood. His laughter was sinister, deranged.

“Then die,” Yara said with a growl. He smiled, and she bared her teeth. “Die.”