Page 237 of Coal Hearts

I wanted her tears.

Her struggles.

I wanted her to break.

Yet she merely blinked with dead eyes and did her best to ignore me.

Let’s see how she ignores this.

Dropping to my knees between her spread and buckled legs, I looked up at her as if I truly did dwell in hell. She stiffened as I pressed the knife against her ankle, nicking her with a nasty flick.

Tears trembled on her lower lashes, but she didn’t try to kick me again. Didn’t mutter words I didn’t know or see things I couldn’t envision. She merely sighed and closed her eyes as if she sought inner peace.

Allowing her to avoid me for just a little longer, I siphoned up her blood, surprised at how many drops filled the pipette.

I must have cut deeper than I thought as fifteen pretty beads of blood filled my palm.

I smeared them on my matching ankle before reaching for her other one.

She didn’t even suck in a breath as I sliced her again just above the leather binding her.

Not as much in this harvest.

Merely eight little droplets to stain my skin, painting me in primitive ink.

What’s that? Sixty-three so far?

My mind didn’t want to keep count anymore.

It wanted more than just one hundred and two measly drops.

It wanted all of them.

As I worked my way up her legs, cutting and drawing, counting and smearing, my humanity kept falling away. Stripping me from clothes, shoes, and belongings. Erasing money and hardship and ego. I reverted to my ancestors who painted their conquests on cave walls. Celebrating their hunts as they killed their prey and used the blood of their meals to tell stories of their mightiness.

The insides of her knees bled nicely. Giving me thirty combined from both.

Ninety-three.

Panting heavily, swallowing hard against the vicious urges to taste, I reared taller on my knees and clamped my hands on her hips. The slim switchblade kissed her where I held it, the dropper in my other hand.

Her eyes flared wide.

Her breath caught.

My thumbs moved of their own accord, caressing her like I’d done in the past when all we’d had was secrets and whispers.

I did my best to stop, but they kept stroking her delicate, almost translucent skin.

She shifted in her binds.

Her pulse pounded against my fingertips.

Her skittering heartrate revealed the truth.

“Does it hurt, little nightmare? Or will I find you’re secretly wet again?”

Ily looked away, colour scalding her cheeks.