“You mocking me, darlin’? Because I don’t think that’s a wise move. No more games, you're not going to make a fool out of me any longer. It’s time to start screaming, darlin’.”
Chapter
Five
January 11th
5:06 P.M.
The control he was clinging tightly to snapped, and without conscious thought, Blade had his knife held to the woman’s neck.
“You think cutesy comments are going to save you, darlin’?” he asked as he pressed the sharp blade into her skin enough to draw blood.
Instead of soothing him, the sight of her pale skin painted red stoked the fires of his rage.
All day, he’d been drawn to the window, unable to look away from the pretty blonde hanging helplessly. He should have been thrilled to have caught her, be excited about the screams that would soon be echoing through the forest, but he wasn't.
Anxiety sat like a heavy ball in his gut.
Each time he went to head outside and begin his interrogation, he found he couldn’t make himself do it. This woman wouldn't be the first he’d killed, but she would be the first woman he’d ever tortured. Evil was not confined to a singlegender, he knew that, and yet something about her soft curves and the gentle swell of her breasts was messing with his head. Add in those angelic blonde locks and the fact that he was a sucker for a pair of baby blue eyes, and in the end, he’d had to force himself out there.
But even then, he hadn't done what he intended.
When he was shaking up that can of soda, Blade had every intention of allowing the fizzy liquid to spray up her nose, but for some reason as soon as he popped the can open, he’d lowered it, spraying her clothes instead.
What the hell was wrong with him?
Why did this woman stir up protective urges when he knew who she was and what she’d done?
“Umm … no … I just … when I'm nervous … sometimes I say random things,” she stammered, her cheeks red like she was embarrassed by spouting out random facts he couldn’t care less about.
“Nervous, are we?” Blade pressed his knife a little deeper into her skin. More blood bubbled out, and he fought the urge to allow his tongue to dart out and lick it off her. He’d always had a bit of a blood kink, but he wasn't there to explore his sexual needs, he was there to get a job done.
“I … I don’t know … am I supposed to answer you?”
There was genuine confusion in the woman’s tone, and along with it a desire to please. Part of having enhanced hearing wasn't just the ability to hear things from a greater distance than the average person, or to hear them with better clarity. It was also the ability to detect all the intonations that allowed him to read more into the words someone chose and the way they spoke them than most people could.
Was the woman’s desire to please him just because she wanted to spare her own life or did it run deeper than that? There was no denying she had an innocence to her that he hadn'tbeen expecting, possibly because she looked so young, younger even than he’d expected based on Cassandra’s sketch.
“You're supposed to scream, that’s what you're supposed to do,” he snarled. It didn’t matter how innocent she looked, how young, she was involved in Dr. Gardner’s experiments, and that made her an enemy.
Fear danced in her eyes, and he knew that he was hurting her. While he had to be careful not to cut her neck too deeply because he didn't want her bleeding out on him before he got a chance to question her, she still didn't scream. Just hung there, like a deer caught in the headlights, trying to figure out how to live but unable to do anything at all.
“Your boss, he likes to make people scream, too, doesn’t he?” Blade asked as he shifted his knife, moving it so the point was now pressed to her skin, right at the base of her slender neck, above the neckline of her long-sleeve sleep T-shirt.
While her breathing quickened, she didn't answer, and her gaze remained on his face, not bothering to look down at the line of blood on her skin and the knife that could end her life in a single heartbeat.
“Certainly liked to make us scream as rage assaulted our systems because of the drugs he gave us. Some days, it was all I could do not to pound into my teammates over and over again, just to get some relief from it. But they weren't really the ones I wanted to hurt.”
As he spoke, Blade edged the knife down so it began to cut through the flimsy material, now soaked with soda. Because they were pajamas and he’d snatched her from her bed, there was no bra beneath it, and he bared inches of creamy soft skin with each drag of the knife.
“How many other people did your boss make scream? How many like me and my team? Only they weren't as lucky, werethey? They didn't survive what your boss did to them. They gave their lives so he could enjoy playing God.”
Her breath hitched, and tears swam in her eyes, making them seem bluer. Seemed the mystery woman didn't like being reminded of just what kind of man she worked for.
Good.
She needed the reminder.
