Under Your Scars (Under Your Scars, #1)

by Ariel N. Anderson

“Do you want to be punished? Is that why you’re being so goddamn mouthy today?”

“Since you’re down there already, might as well make yourself useful, yeah?”

I’m not perfect. Far from it—I am unstable. I am broken and my soul is empty. I have nothing to offer her except pain and suffering and lies.

The hardest part about falling in love with an angel isn’t making her accept the fact that I kill people. It isn’t even keeping the identity under my mask a secret from her.

“There are not enough words in the English language to describe the shit I’m going to do to you.”

“I used to get off on the thought of breaking you, but now it fills me with fear. I have to be gentle with you now. If I break you one more time, I may never find all the pieces again.”

“I love you.” I say through gritted teeth, her hair wrapped tight around my fist. “I love you so much it makes me insane. I love you so much it makes me dangerous. I love you so much that I would burn this world for you and all the people in it just to keep you all to myself. Do you understand me? If it comes down to a choice, you will choose me. I don’t give a fuck if it costs the remainder of your soul. You are mine and only mine.”

“When I told you that you made me believe in soulmates, I didn’t just mean in this lifetime, or even in this universe. My heart has always belonged to you, even if I didn’t know it at first. I would love you even if I had no heart to give you, because you are the sole reason for my existence. My soul would love you if we lived on different continents and spoke different languages. My soul would be tethered to you across oceans and mountains and harrowing canyons as black as my heart. My soul would be yours if I pulled the trigger the night we met, because not even death could keep us apart. God couldn’t keep me from you, because God isn’t real, but you are, and that’s all the motivation I would have needed to find you.”

The man who would burn the world for me without so much as a second thought if I asked him to.

Love is the most volatile poison in the universe.

“I’d offer you my heart and my soul, but you’ve had both of those from the moment we met. What more of myself do I have left to give that you don’t already possess?”

I’ve fallen in love with the most unlovable, virulent, tragic parts of him. And I’ve decided I love the taste of poison.

I suppose falling in love with a serial killer has desensitized me to murder, because all I can think about is how satisfying it would be to get revenge.

God, I love it when he’s unhinged.