Phantom (Cat and Mouse, #0)

by H.D. Carlton

“What’s your name?” I ask again breathlessly. “Ronaldo.” “Do you want to hurt me, Ronaldo?” “Never,” he answers. “I only want to cherish you, Genevieve.” “How do you know my name?” “I know everything about you. Just as I know you will love me, too.”

I’m not only riveted by her. I’m possessed by a need to have her. And she must be mine.

I shut the door to my Cadillac and can only sit there and mourn the life of John Parsons’s wife. She will never be the same, as I am not. Her husband has unintentionally dragged her into a world where she doesn’t belong. Yet it is I who will never let her leave.

To see her face as bare as her body, lying on her back with her legs spread wide for me, her beautiful eyes sparkling up at me as she waits for me to worship her.

He’s breaking my heart, and the only thing I can feel for him is resentment.

If Genevieve is my end, then I open the door to death with no hesitation.

Men. My disdain for them even surpasses the physical realm.

Then, one day, he came to her with a single rose in his hands, the thorns plucked from the stem. He handed it to her and asked her on a date. When she asked why, he admitted that he was dirt poor and stole that rose from his neighbor’s garden. The owner caught him and shot at him for trespassing. Clearly, he got away unscathed except for his bleeding hand. The thorns had pricked him, and he couldn’t fathom giving my mother a rose when it could hurt her. So, he sheared them from the stem and ran straight to her. He told her that despite his nearly dying, he’d do it again. That he’d put himself through hell just to see her smile. That he would take all her pain so she would suffer none.”

“That’s it, baby. You’re doing such a good job. Let me see how pretty you look when you come all over my fingers.” “Oh my— Ronaldo, I—” “Be a good girl and fucking come for me, Genevieve. Don’t make me ask you again,” he snarls, his tone dropping wickedly.

“Whatever gave you the impression that I was a scared little mouse?”

“You are otherworldly, Genevieve,”

Ronaldo used his mouth on me a second time after we . . . did whatever the hell we did. It was too carnal to call it lovemaking. Too animalistic.

Their blood would be on your hands, all because you can’t keep fucking quiet and take my cock like a good girl.”

Poppies are my favorite. Or rather, they used to be. Lately, I’ve been favoring roses.

She’s always been prone to dancing while she eats, and it never fails to make me smile.

“Such a pretty whore for me, mia rosa,” I growl. “If I were your whore,” she whispers, “you’d fuck my mouth like one.” I lose it.

“I rather like it when you beg.” “My God, Genevieve,” I choke out. “Are you trying to kill me?” She grins devilishly, crimson and saliva smeared across her chin. “How else will we spend eternity together?”

“Did you think I wanted reading material while you ride my cock? No, baby. I’m giving you the material. Now, write.”

I moan. “Good boy. You sound so pretty when you beg.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to only love you in the dark when you deserve to be loved in the light?”

He nods slowly, his teeth clenched and his fists tightened. “So then it is your phantom I will be.”

“Killing offers you relief. But you must decide if ending a life is better than experiencing your own, my friend.”

“Does one stand beneath a waterfall expecting to breathe?” he retorts, clearly unconcerned. “I beg you to suffocate me, mia rosa. I’ll die a happy man.”

I gasp when I lay eyes on a woman with curled black hair and bright-red lips, smiling up at a man much taller than her. He wears a hat and a black trench coat, and he stares down at her with unequivocal love. For a split second, I wonder if it’s my great-grandfather, but then I glimpse his face, along with the gold ring glinting on his pinky finger. I recognize him instantly from an old picture of him standing behind Angelo Salvatore. Ronaldo. Gigi and Ronaldo are dancing to Frank Sinatra in front of my fireplace, gazing at one another with so much love, it makes my heart ache. It’s the first time I’ve seen them together, though admittedly, Gigi has only shown herself to me once before. I always wondered if Ronaldo was here with her. Seeing them now—knowing that he is—sends tears rushing to my eyes. It’s been decades since their passing, yet still they remain together in the afterlife. Even death could not tear them apart, their love surpassing the inevitability of their mortality. One day, hopefully far in the future, Zade and I will join them, and I am so excited to meet them.