“I have been watching you, Ray. I’ve been watching you for a very long time.” His admission made my back go straight, and I leaned away from him. What the fuck was he telling me right now? He rushed out, “I know it’s a little weird, a little unorthodox, but I was so desperate for a friend.”
I didn’t say anything to that, remembering when my dad told me I would not see those boys anymore, that they did this for our safety. While I understood, it also felt like he tore away from me the only people that truly knew how I felt after our moms died. I didn’t even care that Ax was kind of a chubby crybaby, that Falcon seemed distant, that Avery was a mystery with his cultured attitude, or that Lex seemed softer than all of us. That day on the playground, when we held each other’s hands as we watched our mothers burn before our eyes, we bonded, we all felt the same pain at once, and, in a way, it connected us on a deeper level.
He continued as he squeezed my hands while staring at the floor. “I wanted to be around you so badly.” He looked up at me like he had finally found salvation. “Then I gripped that hairpin you gave me and touched the orb, and there you were. At first, I just wanted to feel connected to you, to see how you were living. To see if you were okay.” He scoffed. “I would even time it so that while you were training, I would work on the same moves. It was almost like we were in the same class together. I would talk out loud to you, encourage you when you were having a hard time, and I would clap when you finally did it. Like that backward spin kick you worked so hard on.”
My eyes got bigger as what he said sunk into my brain. He had been watching me. That back spin kick took me months, and I even got so mad one day I trained way into the night, still not getting it right. I remembered I had felt like I was being watched, like I had eyes on me, but I thought that was my mind playing tricks on me, making me work harder by thinking I was doing this in front of people... but it was just Lex.
“Then watching you became like a drug. I needed more. I wanted to be even more a part of your life. I would look forward to the times I got to watch you, learn about you.” His face lit up. “Like how I know you love that blood-filled bunny tracks ice cream, but you secretly wish it was also mint chocolate chip.” My chest rose and fell faster as I breathed out of my nose. “Oh, and how you hate when people betray you, destroying your trust, but you secretly like it because it gives you a reason to let out your darkness. To rain down blood and violence as you see fit.”
I puffed out a laugh, looking down at our clasped hands when he tilted my head up to meet his eyes before tucking some of my hair behind one ear as he whispered, “And how you do daring and death-defying things because you want to feel alive. You want to remind yourself that you’re not in a box like your mother and that you need to keep going for your father.” I sucked in a shaky breath as tears gathered in my eyes.
He was making it very hard to stay mad at him. Even now, looking at Lex, knowing he had kidnapped me and had been spying on me, I didn’t feel like it was that odd anymore. I was not screaming at him, hitting him, or threatening to kill him for what he did like I would anyone else who dared try. No, I was looking at him as the boy that I had lost, the piece that was missing this whole time with the others. I understood his pain, and he understood mine. We might have grown up miles apart, but, right now, it filled my heart that I had someone with me the whole time, even if I didn’t know it. How fucked up was I? How could I judge him for being a little fucked up as well?
My mind must’ve still been foggy from the drugs, maybe I was disoriented from being kidnapped and taken care of so well. Maybe the stress of the past few days was catching up with me, and I needed a break. The point was, I wasn’t thinking. I was only feeling, and at this moment, everything fell into the background of those gorgeous, swirling, dark pools that called to me, telling me to fall into them, and everything would be all right because he would catch me.
I leaned forward, resting my head against his for a second. His heavy breaths fanned my face as I closed my eyes, feeling his intakes and exhales like they were my own. “Ray, you are my lifeline in this ever-consuming darkness, you are the only one that pulls me out and shows me there is more. You make me want to live for you and only you.”
That was it, I was a goner. I let go of his hand, trailing it up his arm and shoulder until I ran it through his silky raven locks. “Then let’s live for each other right now.” I gave his hair a small tug, lifting his head slightly as I captured his lips with mine and moaned as soon as his arms encircled my body. He growled against my lips as he lifted me up and out of my chair. My legs wrapped around him and squeezed him like I never wanted us to be apart again.
Yep, I had lost my marbles.
Chapter 10
Ididn’tthinkaboutanything but his lips as he lifted me, and my tongue slid between his soft, plump lips to get a taste of him. He moaned, and his arms circled around me as he moved backward toward the stairs.
I grabbed a handful of his hair, letting myself enjoy the soft tresses before I tugged on them and pulled his head just a breath away from mine. “So, you have been watching me all this time... have you seen me...” I looked down at the ground, not wanting to ruin the mood, but needing to know the answer all the same.
His lips curved into a devilish smile. “Are you asking if I’ve watched you fuck?” My eyes flicked up to his, trying to gauge his emotion about it, but all I saw was humor twinkling in his black eyes. He turned me around, walking up the stairs as he answered, “The first time I saw it, I wanted to kill the man you were with. I almost bought a plane ticket to do just that, but then I realized I could learn from it.” When my brows furrowed, he chuckled while turning down the hallway.
“See, it’s all in how you think about it. I didn’t have to think about it as watching you fuck someone else, I could see it as learning about you. What you liked, what you didn’t. How they failed, and the noises you made when they didn’t.” He kicked open the door to the room I was in earlier, my bedroom doppelgänger, as I watched him with fascination. He took a few strides to the bed and laid me down, then hovered over my ear as he cooed, “Do you want to know a secret, though?”
His hands skillfully removed pieces of clothing from the bottom up as I nodded, wanting to know as much about this creature in front of me as I could. When I only had my shirt left, he bent over and kissed the side of my neck as his voice slid against my skin. “I had my first orgasm watching you punish that wretched first boyfriend of yours with pliers.”
I gasped, remembering that time like it was yesterday. It was my first taste of real pain, real hurt from another being, and I vowed to never feel that way again. To never let someone hurt me like that. After all the tears had dried up, all I had left was rage, making it hard to breathe. I grabbed the first thing I could think of, marched to his apartment, and punished him as I saw fit.
What I didn’t expect was how much I would revel in his pain and screams. It was in that moment I realized how good it felt to have the blood of my enemies splattered against my skin. I learned that night that while sex was great, violence and bloodshed were better. The fact that this was the first time he came, watching me do that, was like adding gasoline to the fire building in my belly.
Stalker or not, I wanted this dark and dangerous man. I wanted him to show me what he could do with all his Peeping Tom ways.
I tilted his head and ran my tongue up the column of his throat and to his lips before I said in a husky voice, “Then show me what you learned.”
His eyes widened for a second as if he couldn’t believe he was in the position he was, but I snapped him out of it as I removed my shirt and put my body on display for him. His gaze carved its way down my body, and I felt his desire in my bones.
He removed his clothes, not taking his eyes off me once, and even ripped his shirt in half so he didn’t have to pull it over his head. “I don’t want to miss a single second of this. Of your utter beauty before me.”
1He lowered himself on top of me, kissing me like I was his last salvation in this life and that he couldn’t bear to part from it. He broke the kiss and whispered along my skin, “I’m going to make you feel so good, my rose. I’m going to worship this body so well you will never want to leave me. I promise you.”
As he traveled down my body, my hands needed to touch him, feel him, make sure he was real. They sailed through his soft, glossy, inky strands, and I admired the contrast between them and my smooth pale fingers.
As I dug in deeper, I felt two points at the top of his head growing. Before I could yank my hands away, he grabbed them and kept them in place as his eyes drilled into mine, shining with desire.
“They’re my horns” was all he breathed out. Since he was holding my hands on them, I gave the little nubs a squeeze, and his breathing picked up as he panted. An evil grin formed on my lips as I realized he received pleasure from me touching them. I took one finger and ran it up and down, feeling the ribbed texture, pressing into each groove as they grew bigger by the second.
“So, they continue to grow? How big do they get?” I continued my musings, exploring his horns like I was unaware of how it affected him. He closed his eyes, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he gulped, then he opened them again with a sea of emotions.
Desire. Lust. Love. Obsession. Need. Fear.
I didn’t understand that last one, maybe he thought I thought the horn thing was weird, but that was the furthest from my mind. If it made this dangerous and deadly demon puddy in my hands, then I was all for it.
