Kill Switch (Devil's Night, #3)

by Penelope Douglas

His eyes darted up to mine. “You hung your queen. I didn’t teach you to do that.” Just then there was a knock on the door and my driver moved to open it. Erika Fane entered, and I stood up, fixing my jacket as the driver closed the door behind her. “The queen is the most powerful piece on the board,” I told Mr. Garin, keeping my eyes locked on Rika’s. “Why not use her?”

“Because pain in the body quiets the pain in the head. It feels good, like a kill switch for your brain.

“Acting like that time with her wasn’t the only fucking time I didn’t hate fucking.”

Will. And Winter. Will and Winter.

“Leave her alone, Damon.” “Suck me, Fane,” he shot back.

You’ll hate me. I’ll love you. We have to stop. Make me stop. I can’t. I won’t.

“I do love your anger,” he said. “I’m glad it’s still there.”

She smiled less the older we got, but just now, it came so easily. I could tell already. She was different.

Fucking Kai. He’d clearly treated her how she deserved.

“You were the only loner I knew who hated being alone,”

You fucking little shit. Will was nice…until he wasn’t.

“I never really knew why you were drawn to Winter. Michael and Kai thought she was just a one-night stand to you, but I knew better.” He raised his eyes, meeting mine. “They didn’t see the way you would look at her at school, during lunch and in passing in the hallways. And how no one—no one,” he re-emphasized the words, “fucked with her behind her back after what you did to any guy who disrespected her, like making an obscene gesture right next to her that she couldn’t see.”

“She loves you in the dark.

The secret of life that everyone knew and everyone forgot was that we weren’t alone. We thought we were unique. We thought we were the first. No one has been through what I’ve been through. No one else is feeling this. No one knows what it’s like to be me. This is the first time anyone has endured what I’ve endured, right? They’re lies we tell ourselves, because we think we’re special. Because it would lessen the entitlement to suffer to know what we’re going through is not uncommon. It was a secret I never forgot and was able to use to keep things in perspective, so I could get through the shit in my head, but now... Now I wished I could forget it. I wanted to be alone.

This is special. It’s different. It’s unique and all mine. She and I…we’re alone in the universe. No one was us.

Little Devil.”

“This is black,” he said. “Fear, falling, release. Excitement, risk, danger.”

“I can fuck my beautiful fiancée any time I want,” he went on, “and she looks really amazing dressed only in that quarter-of-a-million-dollar necklace around her neck right now. A necklace I bought without asking my daddy for the money.”

“It is an art how quickly you can make everyone want to kill you.”

“Are you sure you hate me?”

“that’s what red feels like. Anger and fury and heat and need so strong you’re a fucking animal, Winter. It’s primal.”

“Well, Kai’s the nicest,” Rika’s friend, Claudia, said. “He’s bad in all the right places, though,” someone else teased.

“Yeah, like Damon,” Noah chuckled. “They’re very close. Like really close, I hear. He keeps Will on a leash. Figuratively speaking.”

“Oh, my God,” someone said and laughed. “What?” I asked. “What’s going on?” “Will Grayson is dancing,” Rika answered, sounding like she was embarrassed for him. “Oh, my God, he’s on a table.”

I’d probably like Will. “Such a lover, not a fighter,” someone said. “He’s so hot,” Claudia added.

“If you ever fall for one of them, make it Will or Kai, got it?”

Being with him was like dancing. Dancing with death.

“Queen takes rook.” You fucking bitch.

“God, you’re like a female version of me,” I said. “It’s turning me on.” “Makes sense. You love yourself best.”

“Hey, Little Devil,” he whispered.

She smiled at me, and I held her like that, refusing to put her down as we just stayed there. But then, tightening her hold, she slowly brought herself in and hugged me. My chest swelled, aching like shit, and everything washed over me at once. Her smell, her warmth, her hair and body… My lungs caved, and I didn’t know why, but it felt so fucking good. I wrapped my arms around her like a steel band, almost feeling relief at holding something—or someone—for the first time in forever.

They were so boring. She was incredible.

“I love how the world looks when I’m with you.

Red. Anger, fury, heat, and need so strong you’re a fucking animal, Winter. It’s primal. So that was red. I’d wanted to do it. I loved the flames. I had dived in. But now, the pain of the burns. I hated him.

“I want to talk to you in private,” he said. I straightened my spine, meeting him eye to eye. “Private?” I teased. “Like steam-room private? I’m game.”

“Believe it or not,” I told him, “she’s the one who has my neck in a noose. Quite the little dominant, your monster is. I’m kind of digging it. If you want to share.” And then I shot my eyes to Kai. “With everyone, I mean.” “Jesus,” Kai muttered.

Bet his dick grew another fourth of an inch off that big boy threat.

I stopped cutting when I was fifteen. The night my mother left.

“My kind of fun has a price.”

“No matter what you hear or what they say, don’t let me go.”

Please no. Please don’t find out like this. Fuck.

It was over. She’d hate me. “Torrance,”

Please don’t leave me.

“Winter, listen to me,” I said. “It’s not what you think.”

“Winter, please.”

“I just wanted to hold you,” he said. “One last time.”

but I felt numb now, and I didn’t want to run. I wanted to win.

I loved the danger. The way he brought me to life.

“And I learned, really quick, that life wasn’t going to be pretty. Not until…” Until…me?

I just wanted to be a part of it all. Of everything beautiful you were going to do.”