Her gaze flicker back to mine. “I’d still let you,” she rasps, before clearing her throat.
When I just stare at her, hope flickers in her eyes. Pathetic, desperate.
“Kudos for trying to seduce me in your current state. But I’d rather fuck a corpse.”
All emotion bleeds out of her features. “I take it you’re speaking from experience,” she says in an uneven voice, one eyelid trembling. Her lips twitch into a rictus grin. “Of all the kinks I thought you’d be into, necrophilia was nowhere near?—“
I slam her head back against the cabinet. Not hard enough to knock her out, but hard enough to stop the words.
She whimpers, dazed, as I drag her out of the kitchen, down the hall, toward the study. As soon as she realizes where I’m headed, she starts fighting. Flailing, grabbing at the wall, digging in her heels—but she’s exhausted and weak, and I’m done being gentle.
I open the concealed door beside Warhol’sElectric Chairpiece, punch the code into the keypad that looks like it’s part of the AC unit mounted inside. A hidden door swings open.
When she sees the stairs descending into the darkness, she breaks.
“No!” she whines like a child. “No, no, no, please, not there, please, please, you can do anything to me, please, I have money!”
She’s grabbing at my shirt, my arms, anything she can reach. “Just say how much you want! Five million? Ten? I can get youwhatever you want, just please don’t put me back in there with them,please—“ The last is a hair-raising shriek.
“Move,” I say.
She doesn’t.
I shove her forward.
She falls down the first few steps, catches herself on the railing, and I follow her down into the cold, into the dark, into a space that doesn’t—shouldn’t—exist.
Like me.
Melissa shies away from the chair bolted to the floor, even though she knows that’s her place now. Her head is down, eyes squeezed shut.
“Please,” she whimpers. “Please, please, please…”
I grab her shoulder, shoving her roughly into the chair. It takes effort to focus on the leather restraints as I secure them over her wrists. I’m not sure how she got loose. I tug on the leather just to make sure she’s fastened, then step back to stare at her.
This is my fault.
I should have given her a larger dose before I left for my meeting with the dean. Why have I been playing it safe?
She knows what I am. What I plan to do with her when this is all over.
Melissa’s head falls forward, letting out a low keen as she starts sobbing.
This should have been over days ago.
The soundproof door slices through her misery as I pull it closed behind me, but her words play on repeat as I head for my bedroom.
…don’t put me back in there with them, with them, with them?—
“No!”
I spin around to pinpoint where the voice came from, heart thumping.
…no one’s there, Bash…
Christ.
I grab my leather pouch from my nightstand, upending it on the bed. Syringes and baggies full of drugs and pills fall onto the mussed sheets.
