SERAPHINE
I lie in bed, my gaze fixed on the patterns of sunlight on the ceiling.
It’s just as expected.
Leroi is ditching me along with his promise to help me find Gabriel.
Maybe I wanted to leave him at first, but he’s already the best thing that happened to me in five years. Now, he’s slipping through my fingers and I can’t convince him to let me stay.
I only stabbed that man in the eye to make him stop leering. Leroi slit his throat while he was unconscious. Yet he claims I’m the one who doesn’t know what they’re doing?
Leroi is a hypocrite.
I curl my hands into fists, letting my fingernails dig into my palms. His rejection hurts worse than the collar. Maybe I should have killed him when I had the chance. I thought he was different. Perhaps even a little like me. Pressure builds up behind the backs of my eyes, and I squeeze them shut. He’s just the same as Dad—kind one minute and casting me out the next.
Shit. I should have known better than to let down my guard, but I have no other options. I’ll keep Leroi alive until I find Gabriel, and then I’ll carve pretty patterns into his flesh and watch him bleed.
Until then, I can’t move into that empty apartment. Leroi’s presence is the only thing keeping away the intrusive memories. My mind is calm when I know he’s near. Without him, every moment would descend into that twisting turmoil of screams.
My eyes snap open.
I need to prove to Leroi that I’m not a liability that’s going to get him killed. I have to make him listen.
Sliding off the bed, I reach beneath my pillow for the stiletto daggers that I divested from the dead bastard I undressed. Payment for him forcing himself on me and Leroi making me clean it up. Leroi confiscated the knives I took from his kitchen and locked them up in the room with the guns.
Adjusting my oversized wife beater, I creep across the room and slide out of the door. A pang of guilt hits my chest at the sight of Leroi’s living room. It’s mostly empty now, all the blood-stained sofas were removed along with the corpses.
I cross the space on my tiptoes and ease open his bedroom door. Leroi lies on his back with his torso exposed, the sunlight caressing his olive skin. His sculpted chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm, and I pause for a moment to admire how his muscles flex and relax with each breath. He’s a work of art, a perfect specimen of masculine strength.
With the pulse between my legs pounding hard enough to fill my ears, I drift forward. My mouth waters at the sight of all that exposed flesh and how beautiful it would look smeared in red.
But I’m not here to kill him. Not today.
His rhythmic snores fill the air, the sound infusing my chest with bursts of warmth. Leroi might be an asshole, but he has a heart. Would it look as elegant as him if I removed it from his chest? Its pulse would slow in the palm of my hand and its arteries would ooze delicious red blood.
Clutching both knives, I mount the bed. My knees sink into the mattress, and I crawl the length of the bed toward my prey, and sit on his hips. Leroi loosens a deep groan that hits me low in the belly.
My breath shallows the way it usually does before a kill, only this time it’s accompanied by an excited flutter. I never feel this way when I’m with a man. Ever. All I ever care about is the kill. Leroi is so handsome that it’s distracting.
As I position the pointed tip of the blade to his carotid artery, I hold the second behind my back.
Leroi’s eyes snap open. “Seraphine, what are you—”
“You’re not sending me away,” I hiss.
His gaze drops to the blade. “Put. That. Down.”
I press its point into his skin, and he stiffens. “Not unless you let me stay with you.”
Leroi’s breath quickens, and the flesh beneath me shifts and hardens until his shaft nestles between my ass cheeks. Heat rises to my cheeks. I didn’t mean to make him erect, but it’s too late to think about that part of his anatomy.
“Seraphine,” he says, the same placating tone someone might use to call a rabid rottweiler a nice doggy. “I won’t ask you again. Put down the knife and we’ll talk.”
“Let me stay, and I’ll put down the knife.”
When I press the tip of my blade into a point of his flesh adjacent to the artery, his hips jerk. The movement makes me shift a few inches down his erection, and its crown presses into my slit.
Heat floods between my legs in a rush of pleasure so sudden I’m forced to swallow back a gasp. Sensation rushes to my clit, which pulses and swells. My gaze drops to his heaving chest for an instant to find his nipples puckering.
In a flash of movement, Leroi produces a gun and points it at my head.
My jaw drops. I jerk backward, only for my clit to rub against his hardness. Tingles shoot up my core, making my breath catch. What the hell is Leroi doing to me, and why do I want him to do it again?
“Put that down,” I whisper, my voice trembling.
“You first,” he replies with a smirk.
I swallow, but my mouth is dry. Every drop of moisture in my body rushes south, accompanied by a rush of sensation. When my hips roll, it takes every effort to force my attention back to Leroi and his bullshit. “This is all your fault. We could have avoided a stalemate if you hadn’t tried to throw me out.”
“Seraphine,” he says with an exasperated exhale. “You’ll be right next door, where I can keep an eye on you—”
“Liar!” He’s just saying whatever he needs to get out of trouble. I push the dagger deeper, making its tip glisten with a bead of blood. “You want me to leave.”
Leroi’s expression darkens, and he pushes the gun’s safety off with a click. “This is your last warning.”
My nostrils flare and the backs of my eyes burn. He thinks he can threaten me with a pistol when I know his weakness. The only time he ever lost his cool was when he found me slicing that penis.
I lower the knife behind my back to his erection. “Are you sure about that?”
He hisses through his teeth, his pupils darkening, his chest rising and falling with rapid breaths. My own breaths quicken in tandem with his and every nerve ending in my body thrums. Is this what it feels like to find someone attractive?
“Fuck,” he groans. “A-alright. You can stay, but only if you take that knife off my cock.”
“You first.” I nod toward the gun.
He enables the safety and sets it down on the bed.
“Throw it.”
With a growl, he tosses it off the mattress, letting it fall to the floor with a clatter. “Your turn.”
When I put aside the second knife, he closes his eyes and sighs his relief. “You really need to do something about your castration kink.”
“Are you making fun of me?” I growl.
“Believe me, angel, nothing about you holding a blade to my cock is funny. Now, please, take that knife off my throat before you puncture something.”
I pull back the blade so it’s no longer touching his skin. Blood trickles down his neck, and it takes every instinct not to lean down and lick it clean.
“Can I really stay?” I ask.
He nods. “But there will be no more knives. Understood?”
My heart thuds so loudly that its vibrations fill my ears. Is he really giving in or is he playing along until it’s time to make his move?
“I asked you a question, Seraphine,” he says, his voice stern. “And I expect an answer.”
“Yes,” I whisper, trying to keep my voice from trembling.
He flicks his head toward the dagger. “Put it down.”
I pull it away, not releasing my grip.
Leroi smiles, but it’s more like a grimace. “Good girl.”
“You’re still going to help me after what I did?”
“Seraphine,” he says with a sigh. “When I pulled you out of that basement, you became my responsibility. I’ll do everything I can to help you, but you need to trust me. Can you do that?”
Leroi looks me full in the face, his gaze steady. Everything from his body language to his words are consistent. He means exactly what he says… for now. My throat tightens. He could have shot me, but he threw away his gun to prove himself trustworthy.
“Can you trust me?” he asks again.
I nod.
“Alright,” he says, his voice so gentle I could cry. “Now, get off the bed and get dressed. After getting you seen by a doctor, we’ll go to breakfast, and I’ll talk you through the leads I gathered last night.”
I scramble off the mattress, my feet hitting the floor. Leroi smiles and nods, but I can’t take my eyes off the thick erection pushing up the sheets. My fingers twitch with an urge to pull off the sheet so I can get a better look, but he follows my gaze and glances away.
“Go.”
His voice is so commanding that I bolt out of the room, my heart thundering just as rapidly as the pulse between my legs.
This reaction to nearly killing him is unexpectedly arousing.
I want to do it again.
