The words make me go cold, and I swear my heart stops beating. I freeze under him, my eyes wide and on his, expecting him to break out into a laugh or smirk down at me before saying something to break the heavy mood.
“I think you’re fucked up, silly girl.” The fondness doesn’t quite soften his words, and I’m too frozen to do anything as he reaches up to cup my face, thumb trailing over my lower lip. “You’ve killed four people now, and you cried over Dale not because he’s dead, but because he made it self-defense when you wanted it to be in cold blood.”
“No, that’s not?—”
“You killed your roommate’s boyfriend and instead of falling apart, you immediately calculated a way to make it look like one of mine.” His nail digs into the softness of my lip, drawing a soft breath from my mouth.
“You killed your mother by beating her face in with a flashlight with such brutality no one could believe a child could do that. You got away with it because of that fact. Because the murder was so cruel, socold,that the jurors didn’t actually want to believe the little girl in the courtroom could have done that, and it was easier to believe in justifiable cause than to look at you and see you forwhat you are.”He lowers his face so his lips just over mine and we’re breathing the same air.
“You found your father dead and went to some guy staying in a cabin on the island. You could’ve run away from him. Derek Prescott wasn’t exactly that athletic. You could’ve gone anywhere, done anything. You could’ve just killed him quickly. But no, little girl,” Larkin croons with a sweetness in his words that makes me feelsick.
“You poked out his eyes and listened to him scream. Then you beat him with that same flashlight, even though he was never going to be able to find or hurt you. Hell, he would’ve diedanyway from what you did to his eyes. But that wasn’t enough for you. So do I think you’re a changeling or a doppelgänger? Do I think you just magically appeared to take over the body of Sierra Tova Morwen? Absolutely not.”
He sinks down impossibly closer, until his lips brush mine, and my heart pounds against my chest to escape the prison of my ribs in a rapid, rabbit-like frenzy.
I don’t want to hear this.
I don’t want to know what he thinks?—
“I think you were always a little monster. I think it was always inside you, growing like the sweetest rot.” He tucks my hair back from my face. “And I think your mother made you bloom into what you were always meant to be,Sierra.”He purrs my real name, and I swear I can’t breathe. I can’t take a breath, or move, or scream, or?—
“You bloomed into what you were always meant to be; a depraved, fucked-up little thing who takes what doesn’t belong to her and causes other monsters to fall in love.”
Wait…what?The words don’t make sense. I stare at him, baffled, though I can barely see the glint of his eyes as my mouth tries to form words. Larkin grins at my confusion, and his grip tightens almost painfully on my jaw.
“That’s right,” he chuckles. “Though I don’t know how you can’t tell, I’ll spell it out for you. I’m obsessed with you, silly girl.” Suddenly he kisses me, though that doesn’t feel like a proper word for it. This time, it’s mostly teeth and aggression. He bites and claims, leaving wounds and marks on my lower lip, my tongue, and finally the line of my jaw before he’s satisfied enough that he pulls away. When I try to move or fight back, Larkin grabs my wrists in the hand that had been gripping my face, slamming them onto the sofa above my head and making me cry out in discomfort and surprise.
“You’re mine, Sierra.” He leans back just enough to meet my eyes, and I feel like I’m drowning in his brown-black gaze. “You willalwaysbe mine. Until the day you kill me, or the day we die together.” Larkin doesn’t let me answer. He kisses me again and again, biting new marks into my skin as his touch and tongue wander further down, like he’s on a mission to leave his mark on every inch of skin he can reach.
No matter how long that might take.
Watching Larkin cook feels…domestic.It feels almost illegal somehow, to see a serial killing psychopath putter around in the kitchen makingmacaroni and cheesefrom scratch, of all things. Chewing a nail, my eyes never leave his, and I can’t stop thinking about the sting and ache of all the bites and scratches he left on my pale skin.
As if he can feel my gaze, Larkin, now dressed in a long-sleeved tee, glances at me. I’m back in my shirt as well, though he gave me a pair of sweatpants from his closet and a zip-up hoodie in lieu of the rest of clothes, which are currently still in the burn pile by the door.
Rest in peace, favorite leggings,I sigh internally to myself, just as a bowl of mac and cheese is slid in front of me.
“Feels very, uh, traditional of you to cook,” I venture, picking up the fork he laid down beside the bowl.
“A guy’s gotta eat,” Larkin chuckles, leaning on the kitchen island across from me instead of sitting. He likes to hover, I’ve noticed, and I can’t say I blame him. He doesn’t wait for me, and stabs a big bite from his bowl, watching me as he eats.
Feeling rude, I take a bite as well, eyebrows jumping upward toward my bangs. “Holy shit,” I mumble, covering my full mouth. “This is literally the best macaroni I’ve ever had in my life.”
“Figured it would be.” Confidence shines in his gaze as he takes another bite of protein-based noodles and cheese, inadvertently achieving a damn impressive cheese pull in the process. “I know what I’m doing, silly girl.”
“You’re uh, not going to keep calling me Sierra, right?” I ask, unable to get the whisper of it out of my mind. The way he said it made me feel something other than disgust and betrayal, but I’m not sure I’m ready to face that yet.
Larkin chuckles, his grin widening. “Why not? You didn’t seem to mind it on the couch…Sierra.”I swear he can see the internal shivers the name brings, no matter that I try to hide my reaction with a roll of my eyes.
“Because it’s not what I use anymore.”
“Too bad.”
We eat in relative silence after that, though when he offers me macaroni to take home with me, I can’t help cracking another seven jokes about his domestic kitchen skills, all of which earn me eye rolls.
By the time he’s parked outside my apartment building, however, a different kind of silence has settled in around me. Music plays comfortably in the car, which I’m finally getting to sit in for the first time rather than being tossed in the trunk, and I can’t help occasionally sneaking glances at Larkin.
His hand still rests on the console between us, like it did the entire drive, tempting me to take it. But his words still ring in my ears, and the subtle threatening promise about being stuck with him until I kill him, or we die together.
