“I’ll need ropes,” I said, investigating the area for somewhere to tie him.
Jules laughed and the sound made me jump in the otherwise quiet room. He straightened and headed back over to the cupboard where he’d replaced the drill and brought out a small vial with liquid inside, along with a packaged syringe and a box of disposable gloves. “Have you used drugs, Killer?”
I blinked, confused. “I don’t like the idea of them. I’d rather be performing at my full potential.”
His laughter grew louder and he shook his head. “Not for you, for him. This here is a neuromuscular blocking agent. It paralyzes him, but he can still feel the pain.”
I swallowed, excitement tearing through me. “I....Where did you get that?” For the first time I was at a true loss for words as exhilaration stole the breath from my lungs. I’d heard of these kinds of drugs, but I’d never seen the real thing.
“I caught a dealer when I was rolling by myself. He had these in his stash, a lot of them, so I stole them and let him go that once, if he kept his mouth shut and gave me more if I needed them.” He shrugged. “I thought they’d come in handy one day.”
“Did you... want to kill, Master?” I stepped over Donny’s body and walked toward him, my heart thumping against my ribs. My fingers tingled worse than ever, and my gaze darted to Jules’s lips, wet from his tongue and begging to be kissed. My cock ached, balls ready to burst. What had he done to me?
“I thought about it,” he whispered, hooking his finger under my chin when I reached him to raise my face toward his. He leaned in closer, his breath tickling my lips. His closeness had my cheeks flushing, and desire made it too hot in this small room. All he had to do was throw me over the workbench and fuck me right here and now. But he wouldn’t, not until I dealt with Donny. “I’m glad I waited. It will be more fun with you, my sweet little killer.”
I shuddered and nodded eagerly as he scratched his fingernail over my chin. I took the vial and packaged syringe from him and placed the drug on the bench. I slipped the gloves on first, and yanking open the syringe’s plastic wrapping, I stared at Jules hungrily. Once I’d constructed the syringe by screwing the barrel into the needle, I pulled out the plunger and dumped the drugs into it, Jules’s stare on me the entire time. I was an artist, a performer, showing off to my audience, and I couldn’t be more in my element than I was now.
“Tell me,” he whispered into the quiet room. “How many people have you killed, Ari?”
I sucked in a deep breath as pride swelled inside me. Glancing at him, I smiled. “Not including what I’m about to do... thirteen, Master.”
“Thirteen.” He rolled the word around his tongue and leaned back against the tarp-covered wall, crossing his arms. Humming, he nodded. “Who?”
I licked my dry lips and stared down at the syringe in my hand, fingers placed on the plunger. Kneeling beside Donny, I thought about all the people I’d killed. “My first was my parents.” He let out a hard breath, but I ignored it. “They weren’t good people, Master. They took money from the poor, promising them they’d make them double. They didn’t. These poor men and women were left without retirement funds. They had nothing and my parents didn’t care. My mother laughed about it.”
The sound of the tarp crunching under his boots had me glancing up at him. When I wasn’t looking, he’d put on a pair of gloves of his own, and he dropped next to me and took the syringe out of my hand. He pressed the sharp needle into Donny’s neck, pushing down the plunger so the liquid was shoved into Donny’s body. While doing this, he stared at me, mouth so close to mine that all I had to do was tilt my chin and we’d be kissing.
The room around us sparked with electricity, at least, it seemed like it did. The air was charged and my skin prickled.
“Father said there was something wrong with me and I was fucked in the head.”
Jules’s jaw tightened.
“Not like my brothers. We’re triplets, and my brothers were perfect in my parents’ eyes. So, they tried to control me.” I closed my eyes, hoping he’d finally kiss me, but he didn’t. After tonight, everything would change, I could feel it, even if I wasn’t very good with emotions. He and I were like two red crayons in a box of neutral colors—bright and different. I opened my eyes again to find he hadn’t moved. “I was tired of being told what to do by people who didn’t understand me. So, I knocked them out when my brothers were at a friend’s party, and I tied them to chairs.” I laughed. “They thought I was being ridiculous, that I wouldn’t hurt them, but they were wrong.” I bared my teeth. “They were my first knife kills. I slit their throats and watched them die, and then I staged the house to look like a robbery gone wrong.”
“The cops never suspected you,” he said, more of a statement than a question.
I smiled. “I was just an innocent teenager,cryingat the news of my parents’ deaths.”
His eyes glittered and he appeared proud.
“Bad people get what comes to them, Master. If karma won’t do the job, I will.”
He laid his palm on my cheek, and I tilted my head, leaning into his touch, even though I couldn’t feel the warmth through his glove. “And I’ll help you. But I need to know. What happened with Wengrow? You did perfect work with the trucker, but Wengrow was messy.”
I winced, embarrassed by my imperfect murder. An artist never admitted his mistakes, but Jules was my Master and deserved the truth, even if I wouldn’t let it happen again. “I was going to waterboard him, but I didn’t plan it out correctly. He was able to dislodge the towel because I didn’t have anything to hold his head still.”
He caressed my cheekbone with his thumb, eyes hard. “Death isn’t perfect, my sweet killer, but I needyouto be. I won’t let you get caught by my coworkers, okay?”
A shiver went up my spine and I smiled. “Yes, Master.”
“Good. We’ll talk about waterboarding later. Donny deserves a worse death than that.”
As if he heard his name, Donny groaned. His eyes blinked, although it took a few minutes for them to fully open, and when he finally came to his senses, he stared at us from the corner of one eye. Every limb of his was still; the only thing moving was his eyelids. The more he looked at us, the louder the noises that came from his mouth got.
Jules dropped his hand from my cheek to Donny’s chest, patting it while he smirked. “Good evening, Sleeping Beauty.”
I chuckled.
