He shakes his head and drags me back to him so fast I giggle.
He moves against my hand, betraying how much his body wants this even if his brain is trying to be logical. I grip himharder. The desperate sound he makes goes straight between my legs, my thighs clenching around nothing. His fingers slide under my jacket and spread over my stomach. I can feel him losing the battle against his self-control with every labored breath, every involuntary thrust of his hips into my palm. I love that I can make him lose control. Love that I’m the one turning his brain to static, because he does the exact same thing to me.
My hand strokes him with more pressure. He breaks our kiss and buries his face into the soft part of my neck.
“Eden, I can’t—” But his hips are moving against me, seeking more friction, more pressure, more of anything I’m willing to give him.
“You can.” I kiss his temple, and he turns his face back up to look at me. “I got you.”
Because I do. Because he’s mine. In this moment, he’s completely and utterly mine, and I am his, and nothing else exists except the way he raises his lips to meet mine, the way he’s shuddering under me, the way he’s saying my name like he’s making a wish, the way his entire world has narrowed down to his hand on me and?—
The door scrapes open.
CHAPTER 48
The autopsy revealed the woman had been stabbed 147 times. Entities don’t have an off button. They’re anger without reason, violence without limit. They keep going until there’s nothing left to destroy.
—Donald Dellman’s Field Guide to Possessors and Other Spectral Entitiesby Donald Dellman
I climb off Nico. The world crashes back to me so suddenly it’s as if I got a shot of cocaine to the heart, but my mind lags a few steps behind, unable to process anything beyond the feeling of Nico.
A man walks toward us from the opposite end of the room. It’s the same cop as before, not in uniform this time. Seeing him in this context, I’m struck by how ordinary he looks. If I met him in the grocery store line, I’d probably think he seemed nice.
Just like Stanley Daniels. He would have seemed nice.
But there’s nothing ordinary about his eyes. It’s like looking into the eyes of a shark, and right now, those dead eyes are locked on us.
Every hair on my body stands up.
“Well.” His voice is mild without the usual electronic distortion. “Isn’t this touching?”
Nico drags himself in front of me.
The Game Master tilts his head with interest, like he’s observing a particularly fascinating pair of animals in a zoo.
“It appears you both need some convincing,” he says.
He may sound calm, but he’s pissed. I can see it in the rigid set of his shoulders and the way his knuckles are clenched at his sides.
I look up at Nico, who’s watching the Game Master with the tactical focus reserved for full team leader mode.
“Do you know what he did to them? The Boy Next Door?” The Game Master turns those shark eyes on me. “He killed those women while they begged for their lives. And the whole time, he was rock hard for it.”
Gross. I wrap my hand around Nico’s wrist. He may not have moved one muscle, but I know those words found their mark. The Game Master knows exactly which buttons to push, and he’s hammering on them like he’s trying to break Nico’s console. But I want Nico to know that those words don’t have any power over me.
I scoot out from behind Nico. “I got to say, it’s funny you didn’t come down here to join the party until we were about to fuck. Tell me, Alan.” I lower my voice and try to sound as sultry as I can: “Did that get you hot?”
The Game Master’s eyes flash. His muscles bunch so suddenly that I brace myself for him to charge, but he keeps walking.
“I see now why you hide behind those cameras,” I say. “If you didn’t, your subjects would find out who you really are: a shrimp of a man who couldn’t keep it up long enough to keep his own girl, so he has to take other people’s away. It’s not our fault nobody wanted to fuck you.”
“You have no idea how much worse this can get for you,” the Game Master says.
It’s true he has supernatural strength coursing through his borrowed body, whereas I can barely stand on my mangled feet. What are the odds we could overpower him? Probably the same as Bob taking him down.
Screw it. At least Bob would try.
The Game Master is getting closer now. Nico hauls himself to his feet, helping me up with him. I lock my knees and force myself to stay standing.
