His words were iron. They were law.
It infuriated Orion on a level she knew didn’t make sense. He had every right to refuse her. But not fucking once over this past decade did she get the right to refuse a man she didn’t want to have sex with. In her cold, evil mind, she wanted to finally have the right to fuck who she wanted to.
Even if she didn’t really want to have sex with Maddox. Not her whole self, at least.
But that didn’t matter. That anger, that fury, was easier and more comfortable than the shame.
“Dark reason.” She repeated Maddox’s words, then she stepped forward. His body stiffened further, braced for attack. “Everything I do, everything I say, everything I feel is dark, Maddox. You’re a cop. A good one, a smart one, at that. You know what I’ve been through, where I come from, doesn’t foster any fucking sunshine. I’m a midnight person. The time of night where there’s nothing but darkness. Where the people sleep, and the monsters roam. That’s all I know anymore.”
She stepped forward again, speaking before he could protest. “I claw myself out of nightmares, only to find that reality is worse,” she whispered. “That I don’t have an escape, a respite, even in my dreams. This feeling follows me. My throat burns with the urge to scream, but my tongue knows there’s power in my silence. My legs ache to run, but my feet need roots. My brain craves a normal life, like one you might promise, but my heart, my dead soul, their thirst for blood and darkness is insatiable.” She moved farther forward. “So, you’re right. I want you for a dark reason. But that doesn’t change the fact that I want you.”
It was half true. Half of her did want him. The half that put on the human mask and sat at Italian restaurants drinking wine and eating tiramisu.
The dark half of her, the monster underneath the mask didn’t want him. No, that monster needed him.
“No.” He yanked the word out of his very soul. It might as well have been dripping with blood and marrow.
Orion narrowed her eyes, holding his icy stare for a moment. Then she stepped back. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll just find it somewhere else.”
She turned to leave, but his hand darted out to encircle her wrist. It was a violent grip. Painful. The very first time Maddox had ever touched her so forcefully.
Her dark side reveled in it.
“No, you fucking won’t,” he growled at her. A warning more than an order.
She looked down at her wrist, so small, almost birdlike compared to his meaty hand. “Let go of me, Maddox.”
Orion expected the immediate release of her hand. Maddox was the good, honorable man after all. He didn’t hurt women. He’d hear the way she’d made her voice small, vulnerable, and he’d release her.
But he didn’t.
He squeezed tighter. “No, you won’t, Orion.”
She met his eyes. She should’ve been afraid, disgusted at his touch. But she was almost impressed.
He had a little bit of monster in him too. That might prove useful.
She yanked her arm away, forcefully releasing his grip.
And then she turned and walked away.
Eighteen
Two Months Later
Orion had taken great care with the details.
From what she could understand—after her extensive research—it was the details that got people caught. Little things. Rogue hairs, traffic cams. The kind of stuff that through sheer luck, she had not been caught by. It had been months now. The case was all but officially closed. The news coverage had stopped. The world had forgotten about the good doctor. Plenty more murders were happening around the city.
Orion felt safe enough to continue with her planning. She knew that she wouldn’t get lucky again. That was the singular time in her entire life she’d get a break from fate. The rest was up to her.
So, no hairs, DNA, no stupid shit like that.
Then there was the body.
No body, no crime.
And disposing of a body wasn’t easy. It wasn’t meant to be, of course. Kidnapping young girls and keeping them captive for years wasn’t easy either, but these monsters managed it.
She’d started by buying property. A nice little plot of five acres—an old farmhouse with the paint chipping, a big red barn out back that was one stiff breeze from falling over, and thick woods surrounding them both—near the bootheel of Missouri. No neighbors, and it was bought by the shell corporation she’d learned how to create. It had been easy, especially now that she was sort of a whiz on the computer. The property could not trace back to her unless the law enforcement in southern Missouri had some computer hacker extraordinaire. She highly doubted they had the budget for that.
The house was exactly the kind of place where she’d imagined she was all those years. It fit perfectly for her needs. No one to hear the screams. No one to watch her get rid of the bodies. Plenty of land to bury them in. A backhoe stored in the rickety barn to do the digging. It wasn’t hard for her to learn how to use it. With enough time and patience, coupled with the power of the internet, anyone could learn just about anything they pleased.