Marrow

by Trisha Wolfe

By the time we’re standing at the gates of damnation, Jack Sorensen will beg me to throw him to the Devil. I will paint our path to Hell with his blood. With his dreams. His aspirations. His failures, each one rendered by my hand. I will leave a trail of his destruction behind us that will shine for all eternity. And I will enjoy every fucking second of his torturous journey…

Because of me, Jack Sorensen shines like the harvest moon. I am the sun whose light reflects on his cold, remote mask. And I am the celestial fire that will destroy him.

We both know he can’t escape our boss now that he’s been spotted, and it’s common knowledge that he despises sweet-talking the old woman out of her cash.

Oh how naughty, Dr. Sorensen.

Sometimes, the universe gives you exactly what you need. And I’m not the kind of girl to just take what it has to offer. I’m the one to seize it.

I don’t like the loss of control.

I had one objective in mind for tonight, and it didn’t involve stalking Dr. Roth. In fact, she’s managed to upset more than a few of my plans this evening.

I’ve never been one to pretend to fathom human nature—but everything about Dr. Roth is infuriatingly confusing to me.

Because Dr. Jack Sorensen doesn’t make a mistake.

God, I almost smile, the sensation so fucking foreign a morsel of unease burrows in deep.

“He’d sent a departmental message with your photo that morning. But it didn’t look like you, not when you were standing before me with a smile that could consume every sin.”

But he is a beast. He’s feral beneath this angelic façade.

And he still can’t seem to accept that he’s not the only apex predator here.

“You’re wrong, Jack,” I repeat in a whisper, a wraith to follow him into a dreamless sleep. “That wasn’t the first time we

Dr. Kyrie Roth has presented an enticing challenge.

I relied on my preconceived notions, and that was my fatal flaw. Always confirm your conclusions.

What could’ve happened to a girl like Kyrie to turn her into a killer? Women serial killers are a rare breed, rarer even than duos.

She has shown no clear sign of being a psychopath, so she wasn’t likely born this way. Some inciting incident in her life...

the longer I stare at Dr. Kyrie Roth, caught in the knowing gleam banked behind her pale-blue eyes, the more curious I become.

The truth is—as petty as it sounds—I was here first. If she wants to get primitive about it, I marked my territory long before her cute ass pranced into West Paine.

I snort a derisive huff of a laugh. “Is this your weak attempt at seduction, Jack?” He leans a fraction closer, his arm mere millimeters from my shoulder. “If I wanted to seduce you, I’d have you on your knees right now in the cold room with that treacherous little mouth of yours wrapped around my cock, begging me for more,” he whispers.

“You’re not a girl,” I say, my tone bordering on lethal. “You’re an irritating inconvenience that is begging to have her ass reddened.” Her pupils dilate. “And don’t you just hate how much that excites you.”

Jack was the person I emulated. Someone who could crush the breath from an enemy while still navigating a successful life in society, his dark secrets hidden from view. I wanted to be like him. In control. Impervious to the cruelty of time. Powerful. And I wanted to give Jack what he had given to me; a way to thrive in the absence of light.

I chuckle, feeling a rare euphoria. Or maybe she’s just driven me completely out of my mind. I’m being brought down by a girl with poppy blue eyes and bubbly smile. The sheer weakness of it.

But I still see her—feel her. Want her.

I want to tell him he’s wrong, that every memory leaves behind something real in its wake. Real scars. Real repercussions. But I don’t have the energy to battle him right now.

I’ve been watching Jack Sorensen since I was seventeen and as he slows to a halt and drops to a knee to take my injured hand, I feel like I don’t know this man any better than I did when I started.

I roll up my sleeves and power through a pile of tedious paperwork, feeling more at ease since I fed the urges. I’m not completely satisfied…but the recent kill was enough to suppress my more animalistic desires that have recently surfaced.

I tower over her and stare down into her beautifully flushed face. “Who did this to you?” I demand.

This entire time, she wasn’t dead. She’s not the dead one at all. She’s been what’s sustained me here. She’s the marrow. She’s my marrow. Kyrie didn’t start as a killer—she was made. And I helped make her.

Jack presses in closer, enough that I notice the warmth of his chest against my legs. I could count every shade of gray in his eyes as they remain unerringly fixed to mine. “I can assure you, we are not on the same page. But we will be.”

“Your sounds are mine,” Jack hisses, and before I realize what’s happening, he’s pushing my damp panties into my open mouth. I look down my body at the fierce command in Jack’s eyes, whimpering at the erotic taste of my own arousal.

He pushes the last of the fabric past my lips and holds my jaw shut with his thumb. “They are only mine. Now come on my fucking tongue and keep quiet.”

And we lay on the bloody tiles for a long while, as silent as the body in our midst, three souls claimed on the twenty-fifth floor.

But the decisive difference is that I wouldn’t just kill for Kyrie—I would give my life. Hell, I’d even let her take it.

“But look around you, lille mejer. You are not unwanted. You are not alone. You are unique.” Jack bends his head until his eyes are level with mine and I have no choice but to meet their sharpened determination. “You are a bright and blinding light in the dark. Luminous. And I’m sorry I made you feel like anything less than that.”

Syringe gripped in my hand, I drop close to her ear and whisper, “You know how to make me fucking feral, petal.”

I need to remain focused. Practical. Because I don’t know the difference between fantasy and reality anymore.

And I know in that instant, with absolute certainty, that he would do it. He would revel in it. He would never take his eyes from mine as he sliced through flesh and spilled blood across the floor. He would fuck me in the sticky warmth. He wouldn’t stop until I was screaming his name.

“You are mine.”