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April 10 - August 19, 2024
A serial killer went out of his way to return my most important belongings. The thought alone is unsettling.
“Everything that happens to you is a big deal. Say the word, and I’ll take care of him.”
“I promise, I’m the one thing in this city you never have to be afraid of.”
“He’s not going to make accusations like that to my face and get away with it.” His tone comes out nonchalant and suave, all the while I’m strung tighter than a drum. “The way he spoke about you made me want to throw him off the roof.”
“It means that I’m going to make you want me as bad as I want you. I’m going to make you fantasize about how it feels to have my fingers in your greedy little cunt. I’m going to make you beg for my tongue against your clit. I’m going to make you so wet and needy for me that you’ll do anything to get me to relieve that hot, achy feeling inside you. Once you admit you want me, that’s when I’ll show my appreciation. With every part of me. On every part of you.”
When Christian was six years old, his parents were both murdered in front of him. According to the police reports, they found him sitting in a puddle of his parent’s blood, and when the police asked him what happened, all he said was that a man with a gun ambushed his father and shot both of his parents in cold blood.
“You don’t even have to ask. I’d be lost without you by my side. In fact, I’d like to promote you. Since you no longer have a supervising attorney, I’d like you to be my personal secretary instead,” Christian suggests casually, as if his words didn’t just sucker punch me square in the mouth. I’d be lost without you by my side.
“I haven’t been able to get you out of my head since we met.” He twists a finger in one of the loose curls in my hair. “Let me take you to dinner. Please?” After a second, he adds, “I’m not a man who says please often.”
“You’re nothing but trouble, Elena Young. Want to know why?” He leans over, folding me in half again so he can whisper into my ear. “Because I know there’s a part of you, deep down, that’s upset I don’t have you bent over my lap right now, punishing you for letting another man touch what’s mine.”
“It’s in case you ever need help,” he explains. I lift the chain to examine it. “The charm attached is a silent panic alarm. You turn it on by clicking it five times. You’ll feel it vibrate, and it will send me an alert with your exact location. If you press it, I’ll come. No matter what.”
“I don’t want to kill you, angel. I want to keep you all to myself. You’d better take off those rose-colored glasses and accept that the only place you belong is in my black heart.”
“I’m not strong enough to stay away from you. I couldn’t live with myself if someone came after you because of me.”
“Who did this to you?” he asks quietly, though his tone couldn’t be any more venomous. When I don’t answer, he sends his fist flying into the wall next to us so hard that I’m confident I heard his knuckles break. I get the faintest glimpse of blood smeared over his fingers when his hand goes back to my cheek. “If you don’t tell me the truth right now, I will find out myself by burning this fucking city to the ground.”
“They need to know what happens when they touch what’s mine, Elena. They’re going to convert religions, because they won’t be praying to God, they’ll be praying to me. Begging for my fucking mercy after I hunt them all down and show them the true meaning of fear.”
“Why didn’t you press your panic alarm?” “Because you would have come in there and gone on a murder spree to get to me, and I didn’t think it was enough of an emergency for that. I’m okay. It could have been worse.” “If your safety is even slightly in jeopardy, it’s an emergency to me. Next time, press the goddamn button.”
“I don’t want to be the reason you lose your humanity.”
“If you’re so concerned about my humanity, Elena, then reach into my soul and find it, because I’m not sure I have any left.”
When I saw those fucking marks around her neck, my body was no longer running on blood and oxygen, but fury and vengeance.
“My angel told me that Valenti made her work naked, and you assholes touched her all night. That was a big fucking mistake on your part. Elena is mine. Mine to scare. Mine to chase. Mine to touch.” I choose one of the men at random, the one second from the right with the stab wound in his stomach and the missing ear, and I point my gun at him. “Tell me which one of you touched what’s mine first.”
what I feel when I kill can only be described as relief. Relief that the monster inside me has been fed and will recede back into his decrepit cave until he’s hungry again, and that’s when I’ll kill next. Eight. I’ve given him eight souls since September sixth. It should have only been one. It should have only been me.
“Mr. Reeves thinks you’re pretty too, ‘cause he won’t stop looking at you.”
“You can’t just keep killing people for—” “I can and I will, Elena. Until there’s no one left that can hurt you. That’s a promise.”
you are the object of my insanity.”
“I’ve got all the money in the world. Now beg.”
don’t deserve her either, but that’s beside the point. She’s mine. I don’t have to deserve her for her to belong to me.
I need to love her so violently that it breaks her, and then fill in all those cracks with gold until the only thing holding her together is me.
“I think if two people are meant to be together, then they will be. I don’t know if that makes them soulmates though. I feel like a soulmate implies some sort of…divine intervention. I think the best love stories come from the people who say that love came out of nowhere for them, not from the people who were looking for love in the first place.”
“Our world,” he corrects quickly after I finish. “Our world, Elena. There isn’t a you and me anymore. It’s us. You’re worried about not measuring up, but there’s no competition. Don’t compare yourself to women that don’t exist. We’re together now, nothing else matters. I know it’s easier said than done but try to let go a little bit and have some fun. This is a different life than you’re used to, and I get that, but it’s your life now too. You don’t have to feel bad about enjoying it.”
“You listen to me, you fuckhead. If you ever touch her again, I will kill you. Do you fucking hear me? I will make you regret your entire miserable existence and then I will kill you. Slowly. Don’t even fucking breathe in her goddamn direction or I will rip your heart out of your chest with my bare hands.”
I don’t just want to be a god anymore; I want to worship my goddess. I want to protect her. I want to take care of her. I want her to be mine. I want her soul to belong to me as mine belongs to her, even if she doesn’t realize she holds that power over me yet.
It’s a shame I’m already destined for Hell, because it’s not where angels belong. But I’m not going anywhere without her.
“You’re my everything, and I just want you all to myself.”
“Tell me the good thing first, and then tell me the bad thing when we’re not in a foreign country. That way, I can run away if it’s really really bad.” He laughs with a smirk against my lips. “If you run, I’ll catch you.”
Then I met you, and falling in love was like some nuclear catalyst inside me. I’ve been consumed by it—by you. I can’t think about anything else except how much I want you to be mine to love, forever.” He takes a deep breath. “I mean that in the kind of way that’s going to suffocate you one day but I can’t stop. I can’t fucking stop. I won’t be satisfied until I am every part of your existence as you are mine.”
“You’re not just some obsession I picked up out of boredom. You’re my life essence. The air in my lungs. The beating heart in my chest.” Goosebumps erupt over my skin as our hands trace over my stomach. “You are my everything. Mind. Body. Soul. I fucking love you, Elena, and you will love me back. I don’t care if I have to destroy you in the process.” He moves our hands even slower across my breasts, and I hate the way my nipples harden into tight peaks under the sensual touch. “You’ll be mine one day. Fully. I love it when you fight me, but if you would just shut up and stop, even for one
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“Do you believe in God?” I ask. He nods, and I laugh. “Look at me. Look at me. I’m your God now. Do you want to know why? Because I’m the only motherfucker on this planet that can show you mercy. Start praying. You’ll need it.”
“Elena, I swear on my fucking life I will hunt him to the ends of the earth. I will find him and I will make him suffer until even the devil himself fears me.”
Love makes people blind. It makes us blind, and selfish, and stupid.”
There’s a saying that every seven years, your body will be new. The same, but all your cells will be replaced. In seven years, I’ll have a body that Frank and Neil would have never touched. I wish that gave me comfort.
I never believed in love at first sight. I never believed in soulmates. I made peace with the idea of being alone, and I had even made peace with death. And then I met you.
I remember looking into your scared, tear-filled, honey-brown eyes the night we met and feeling an ache in my chest I had never felt before. I didn’t immediately realize it, but that ache was my soul latching on to yours, intertwining itself so deeply that no force on heaven or Earth could ever truly separate us again. That ache was my heart’s way of telling me that you would be the first and only woman I would ever love. You became my guardian angel. I will never let that sentiment go. If I wasn’t meant to love you, then fate would have let me pull that trigger.
I may have saved you that night, but you saved me too. My heart has been yours ever since. I don’t just mean my love. I mean the actual, functional, beating heart in my chest is yours. You’re taking it with you when you leave, and I’ll be nothing more than an empty shell with a gaping hole in my chest in the shape of you where my heart should be. I know it’s not healthy, and it sure as hell isn’t fair to put this kind of pressure on you—to make you the essential anchor of my mortal life. To make you the tether to which I stay on this Earth. But you are. I made you a goddess, Elena, and I
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Anger has always been my go-to stage of grief. A short fuse and a heartbreak are a volatile combination.
“Listen to me,” I plead. “I love you. I will love you forever. Even when we’re nothing but bones in the ground, I will find you in the afterlife and cherish you like I always have. I will hold you and kiss you and fall asleep with you wrapped in my arms. I will spoil you and give you a wedding ring with my last name to match. I will buy you yachts and islands and mansions all over the world so you can feel safe. I will do all of this even if you fight me because you know better than anyone that boundaries have never stopped me. One day, only when you’re ready, I will fill you with my love
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“When did you know that you loved me?” I suppose it’s only fair that he knows, though my story is less romantic than his. “When they asked me who you were.” I take a deep breath. “The moment Frank pulled down my shorts, I knew I would have never given either of them the satisfaction of breaking me. Of getting me to tell them your name.” My voice breaks. “They tried very hard. And when they made you watch and I saw how desperately you were trying to get to me…I knew you really did love me, and that only made me love you more. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. I didn’t want to admit
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“But you are worth that sacrifice. That’s why I’m still here.”
Logic says that rape victims don’t like to be touched. Now that I’m living through the aftermath, I’ve discovered that, for me at least, it’s not about being touched. All I want to do is hug Christian. All I want is for him to kiss me. All I want is to sleep in the same bed as him and wake up with his arms wrapped around me.
My entire life is controlled by him, and with that, my emotions too. He’s very good at saying all the right things. I don’t think he’s consciously making an effort to manipulate me; it just comes second nature to him now, and I will bend every time because I don’t want to know what it feels like to break.
I don’t understand how it’s possible for a man to be so huge. He’s literally Hercules. His shoulder to waist ratio is insane. He’s got that kind of build that’s tanky, but not necessarily super lean and shredded. He’s got a healthy, strong body, built for sheer power rather than aesthetics.
“Don’t you understand? I want you to hold me so badly, but I can’t stand the thought of you touching me at the same time.”
