She didn’t know what it meant to wear or why her grandfather had given it to her. I couldn’t imagine being so sheltered, purposely shut in the dark by my own family.
“You’re lucky she didn’t aim any higher,” Charon grumbled, pushing a needle through my flesh for the third time.
I grunted in response, ignoring the sting.
“He’s right,” Jewels echoed his concern. “She could have killed you.”
“You both know better. I wouldn’t go out that fucking pathetic.”
“Are you sure you weren’t trying to go in for the kill?” Kyrous asked.
“That’d be anticlimactic, don’t cha think? It’s too early in the show for that.”
“You’re good,” Charon cut in, finishing off the last stitch and snipping the extra away.
“Why drag it out? I thought you were in it for the hunt this time,” Jewels stated.
She was still in her full getup, face freshly applied, blonde hair in pigtails. Kinks was already on her way to the next set, otherwise she’d have been here too. I’m sure she was causing as much havoc as she could along the way. She lived for that shit.
“You know Ciaran likes to play with his toys before he breaks them,” Maverick replied to her.
“Don’t we all?” I probed.
“I’ll get back to you on that. In the meantime, can you not try to break mine too?”
“Sure,” I replied nonchalantly. I had no reason to feed into his melodrama. He knew I had control of this situation. I could have kept Lana right where she was until that timer hit zero. I chose to let her go.
His piss poor veiled worry for Melantha alerted me that he was more affected by all of this than he wanted to admit.
There wasn’t any other reason for him to be so on edge. Between the four of us, Maverick had always been the most sensitive, but he usually did a much better job of hiding it then he was now. I wished he wouldn’t hide it at all. None of us were ashamed of who he really was. Besides, any concerns he had were unnecessary, which is why I wasn’t didn’t go out of my way to console him.
This wasn’t my first rodeo—or theirs. I’d done these segments so many times I could go through the motions with my eyes closed. The only difference this time around was that I gave a fuck about who I’d be tormenting. And yet, I couldn’t--wouldn’t make this easy for her. Doing that would fuck everything up. There was no room for error. I needed Lana to come out of this alive. Death wasn’t an option, not for her.
I’d never believed in soul mates or fate. I don’t think any of us did. I wasn’t big on relationships either.
While I could easily have been a man-whore fucking someone new every day of the week, I preferred for my dick to remain disease free.
That lifestyle never appealed to me.
There was the occasional groupie but that never lasted long. They ultimately joined all the others we grew tired of, down at the bottom of an unmarked grave.
I’d never saw a point in forming any kind of lingering attachment. My older brother was still reaping the consequences from doing just that. I knew one day I would have to marry someone of my parents choosing. That’s the way the founding families worked. Bringing in an outsider was asking for problems. They lacked the understanding or ability to learn what was necessary to thrive.
Trying to be with someone terrified of you wasn’t all that enticing.
I had zero interest in placating anyone that thought there was something wrong with me. With any of us. We had no reason to be ashamed of who we were. They could get fucked with a nine to the temple.
So, for my sanity and my family’s sake I was prepared to deal with whoever was tossed at me. Not ecstatic about it, but willing to comply. And then I met Lana.
I wasn’t seeking a damn thing.
She didn’t want to be sought.
We were an unlikely match, one that shouldn’t have been lit but I couldn’t deny we made a fuck ton of sense.
She’d simply come to the wrong place at the wrong time. I couldn’t tell you if I noticed her first or vice versa. We skipped over attraction and went straight to a carnal kind of lust. Half the night was spent avoiding the unavoidable.
We engaged in a game of cat and mouse where both of us believed one was the predator and the other the prey.
It was amusing, the way she tried to come off as such a simple, ordinary girl. I saw right through the façade when she let me stare into her pretty brown eyes for a second too long. You can’t hide a beautifully demented soul from someone born to raise hell.
The night ended the only way it could’ve--with blood on our hands and our bodies tangled together. Everything in our lives changed after that. It was a shame she couldn’t remember all our firsts together, but that only gave me stronger incentive to recreate the moment--bloody corpse and all.