Pressing down on the blade, I watch as its sharp tip digs into his flesh. “I’m not fucking around,” I tell him, my heart thundering in my chest. I’ve never held someone’s life in my hands before, and knowing that I have the ability to end him with nothing more than a flick of my wrist is intoxicating.

  His gaze darkens, and as he holds my stare, I realize he’s daring me to do it. He wants me to know what it’s like, wants me to feel the power pulsing through my veins just as he does whenever he takes someone’s life, but I could never. Not to him. Because when I look down at him, beneath the eyes of my wicked stalker, is the heart of the man I’ve fallen completely head over heels in love with.

  A heavy silence settles in the air between us, creating a thick tension as we fight for dominance. His lips quirk into a twisted grin, and as his hand closes over mine on the blade, I suck in a terrified gasp.

  Then just when I think he’s going to turn the blade on me, he presses down harder, the sharp tip piercing his skin before he drags the blade along the length of his throat. My hands start to shake, my eyes widening. The cut isn’t deep enough to cause any real damage, but it sure as hell is enough to bleed.

  His blood begins to trickle down the side of his neck, staining the bedsheets and pooling at the base of his throat. The second he releases my hand, I let go of the blade, letting it clatter against the old hardwood floor beside the bed.

  His terrifying eyes darken with a fierce desire as he hardens beneath me, and he reaches up, clutches the hem of my tank, and pulls it up over my body until I’m completely bare before him. He takes my hand once again, and as my fingers shake, he swipes them through the blood pooled at his throat.

  I don’t say a word, waiting and watching what he’ll do, and as he turns my hand back toward me, I suck in a subtle gasp. He presses my fingertips to my collarbone before slowly dragging them down over the curve of my breast, leaving a trail of smeared blood over my body before lifting my fingers to my mouth and swiping them across my bottom lip.

  Alex groans as though the sight of me painted in his blood has him more turned on than ever before, and his hunger for me only works me up. My body trembles, heat flooding to my core as he grinds his thickened cock against me.

  I test the limits, reaching back down toward him, my fingers gently brushing through the small pool of blood, only instead of lifting them back to my body, I drag them down over his chest and abs, unsure of why I feel so desperate.

  His gaze widens, and in a flash, his big hand locks around the front of my throat. He pulls me down into him, our lips crashing together, and the second his tongue invades my mouth, a wild, desperate frenzy consumes me.

  The hunger is intense as I reach down between us, slipping my hand into the waistband of his basketball shorts and curling it around his thick cock. He groans, thrusting up into my grip as I work up and down.

  Alex quickly pushes his shorts down past his hips, giving me the freedom to work, but I need so much more, and I need it now. As if sensing the urgency pounding through my chest, he reaches around me, grabs the flimsy material of my panties, and tears them right down the seams.

  His strong arm locks around my waist, and he lifts me just enough so I can position him at my entrance. He doesn’t wait to lower me over his rock-hard length, and I groan, bracing my hands against his strong body as I sink right down.

  I ride him hard, bouncing up and down as I rock my hips, taking him deep as he locks his bloodied fingers around my throat. His grip tightens, constricting my airway, but it only has me desperate to ride him harder.

  Our bodies quickly grow sweaty, and when he can’t handle the lack of control for one more second, he grips my waist, throws me down onto the mattress, and fucks me from behind, my chest squished against the soft bedsheet while my ass hovers high in the air.

  He takes me even deeper, ramming into me over and over as I thrust my hand between my legs, greedily rolling my clit between my fingers. “Fuck, Alex,” I cry, my other hand fisting the bedsheets. “I’m gonna come.”

  “Show me, Kyah,” he rasps through a clenched jaw. “Show me how you squeeze my cock.”

  I do just that, clamping down around him as I detonate, my orgasm rocking through my body until I’m seeing stars. I clench my eyes as my pussy wildly convulses, and every last part of me shatters like glass.

  As my walls spasm around his thick cock, I cry out, loving the way his strong fingers dig into my hips. He thrusts forward one more time, and that’s all he needs to fall apart, coming undone as he empties himself deep inside me.

  He groans low, and as we both come down from the high, he collapses onto the mattress beside me, opening his arms for me to climb right into them. I move in, my knee hooked high over his hip as I feel his warm cum leaking out of me, but I love every second of it. And I realize that right here in this moment, I’ve never been so content in my life.

  My fingers trail up over his chest to the small wound at the base of his throat, still confused about the whole thing. I mean, I was down with the fear kink, but I didn’t realize I had a hard-on for blood play as well. I let out a heavy breath, my gaze locked on the ceiling. “Wow,” I murmur. “I really am fucked in the head.”

  Alex scoffs. “As much as you liked that, that one was all for me.”

  A sly grin cuts across my face. “Yeah?” I ask. “You liked that?”

  “Oh yeah,” he rumbles in that thick, delicious tone. “We’ll work you up to it, but soon enough, it’ll be you bleeding, and when I fuck you, I won’t be able to control myself.”

  My tongue rolls over my lips at the thought of Alex becoming unhinged while inside of me. “I don’t know how I feel about the idea of you cutting me, but I don’t want to say no just yet.”

  “It’s okay, Mace. We’ll explore your limits and figure out what you like.” A soft smile spreads across my lips as he pulls me in closer, that deep tone rumbling through the room again. “Baby, where the fuck did you think you were going?”

  I swallow hard, a strange nervousness pulsing through my veins, and while I feel I can trust him not to hurt me, I’m not quite sure if that trust expands to my friends. “I, umm . . . I wanted to go and see Nat,” I admit, choosing my words carefully. “When I showed up to her apartment the other night, I was a mess, and then she woke up to find me gone, and it’s not in my nature to just disappear like that. It’s already been a few days, and at some point, she’s going to call the cops. Same goes for Big Jim. It’s not like me to fall off the face of the earth. They’re going to be looking for me, and knowing Nat, she’s probably a wreck right now.”

  Alex reaches over to his bedside table and grabs one of the phones. “You don’t need to worry about them,” he tells me.

  “Uhhh . . . I don’t know how much recon you’ve done on my friends, but you’re dead wrong.”

  He rolls his eyes and hands me the phone. “I’ve messaged both of them and said you were sick. Big Jim knows not to expect you at work for a few days and Nat has been sending you ridiculous memes to make you feel better.”

  “Ummm . . . what?” I mutter. “What do you mean you’ve been messaging them? How? I left my phone at Nat’s apartment.”

  “Yeah . . .” he says slowly. “No, you didn’t. I went back and got all your shit so it was believable that you’d gone home during the night.”

  “Wait,” I say, pushing up onto my elbow and gaping at him. “Does that mean you went back into her apartment while she was sleeping?”

  “Well, yeah,” he says slowly, clearly not understanding just how fucking crazy that is. “How else was I supposed to get your shit?”

  “Jesus Christ, Alex. You can’t be sneaking into women’s apartments in the middle of the night anymore. It’s messed up.”

  A cocky grin stretches across his lips, and I know what’s coming out of his mouth before he’s said a single word. “You seem to like it.”

  “Yeah, well apparently, I’m not a regular woman,” I mutter. “Now, where are these messages? I need to see the damage for myself.”

  He indicates the phone in my hand, and I unlock it before my brows start to furrow. It has the same setup as my phone. All the apps are in the same position, not to mention, the same wallpaper image of me and Nat is staring right back at me. Only it’s not my phone, not even close. “What the fuck is this?” I ask, glancing up at Alex. I know crossing boundaries gets him off, but having a copy of my phone is messed up.

  He shrugs his shoulders, not even a hint of guilt in his eyes. “How else was I supposed to know what was going on with you?”

  Realizing I’m not going to get far by scolding him about the phone, I open my texts and scan over the messages Alex has so thoughtfully sent on my behalf. “Yeah, I give it another twenty-four hours before she calls the cops and demands a welfare check,” I tell him, shaking my head. “I mean, you didn’t even respond with a laughing face emoji when she sent those memes. She definitely thinks I’m dead in a gutter somewhere.”

  Alex scoffs. “I’m sure she’ll be fine for one more night.”

  “One more night?” I ask. “Does that mean I’m going home?”

  “Yeah, Mace. I think it’s time to go home.”

  A smile pulls at my lips, and I scramble back to my knees and straddle his hips once again. “Does that mean you trust me not to run?”

  Alex laughs. “Not even a little bit,” he admits. “But I trust that if you do, you’ll come back. And if you don’t—”

  “You’ll be right there to find me,” I finish for him. He nods and I grin. “You know, just in case it’s slipped your mind today, you realize how fucked up all of this is?”

  “Trust me, it’s not lost on me,” he says, those strong blood-stained hands gripping my thighs.

  I press my lips into a hard line, my gaze shifting to the window above the headboard, trying not to think about just how fucked up it really is, but I can’t help but wonder just how much he still hasn’t told me. “Can I ask you a question?” I murmur, my gaze shifting back to his, watching as he nods. “The night I heard you in my apartment and ran across the hall in nothing but a towel to knock on your door, how’d you get back into your apartment so fast?”

  An amused grin stretches across his face. “I didn’t,” he says, softly chuckling to himself. “I was in bed the whole fucking time. I hate to break it to you, Mace. But that shit was all in your head. I was never in your apartment that night. At least, not until after you’d gone back to your place. Then I came over to play. But what you heard when you were in the shower was just your paranoia fucking with you. Why the hell do you think I ran across the hall so fast? If it wasn’t me, that meant it was someone else, and I’m the only bastard who’s allowed to be sneaking through your apartment and fucking with your head. I was ready to tear some random asshole to shreds, but it turns out, your imagination is just as wild as you are in bed.”

  My cheeks flush, and I let my gaze fall away, not sure if I’m supposed to be happy that there was no one there or concerned that my head was screwing with me just as much as Alex was.

  “So, what about the night you took me along the river walk and we got back to find my door kicked in? I had assumed that was Crew, but a part of me had also wondered if it was the stalker.”

  He gives me a blank stare. “I’m gonna give you a minute to think that one over,” he says, a smug grin pulling at his lips.

  My brows furrow, and I think back over my question, wondering what the hell he’s getting at when it hits me. Alex couldn’t have kicked my door in. He was with me all night. But during that time, I hadn’t considered the fact that Alex and my stalker could have been one and the same. In the back of my mind, I hadn’t bothered to connect those dots, and now that I’ve said it out loud, I feel like a complete idiot.

  “Forget I asked,” I say, my cheeks flushing all over again.

  Alex laughs and grabs my waist, rolling us until he hovers over me. He slowly inches toward me, his lips barely a breath away. “I fucking love you, Kyah,” he rumbles as his hand trails down to my thigh, hitching it up over his hip. “But if you ask me about another man while I’m in bed with you, I’ll hang you by your wrists and fuck you until you can’t even remember your name.”

  I swallow hard, a thrill pulsing through me, and before I can even respond, he crushes his lips down to mine and kisses me until the darkest night turns into day.

  40

  KYAH

  It’s late on Tuesday night when Alex leads me down a familiar street before coming to a stop outside of High Voltage Ink, and I turn to look at him with furrowed brows. “What are we doing here?” I ask. Though I should just be happy that I’m not chained to a bed in some old run-down home, but I’m not going to lie, despite the cuff around my wrist, those three days with Alex were some of the most thrilling days I’ve ever had.

  “We’ve got a lot to talk about,” he tells me, taking my bag off my shoulder and digging through it until he comes out with the keys to the shop.

  “Okay. We could have done that at my place,” I say slowly. “Or when you had me locked up for three days.”

  Alex rolls his eyes. “I’d hardly call it locked up.”

  “I was chained to a bed.”

  “Jesus Christ, baby. You’re acting like I’m some kind of psychopathic serial killer. You were safe with me. I wasn’t going to hurt you. Not unless you wanted me to.”

  I arch a brow and give him a blank stare. “You are a psychopathic serial killer,” I remind him. “And I never suggested I wasn’t safe with you. I know you’re not going to hurt me, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to have a very big talk about what society deems normal behavior. Because somewhere along the lines, you’ve got your wires crossed. Chaining women to beds isn’t normal.”

  Alex scoffs and shoves the key into the front door of High Voltage Ink. “What I was trying to say is that we have a lot to talk about. I know you have a lot of questions and you’re not going to stop overthinking shit until you get the answers you’re looking for. And I think it’s best we have this conversation while you’re calm, and I’ve never seen you more relaxed than when you were working on my tattoo.”

  A soft smile pulls at my lips, butterflies swarming through the pit of my stomach, realizing how well he notices the small things about me. When I’m working, the whole world fades away. A zombie apocalypse could be raging through the streets of Brooklyn, and as long as I was working on a design, I’d have no idea.

  I peer up at him as he holds the door open for me. “I’ll have to see just how much of it has healed, but are you sure?” I ask. “You nearly shit yourself when I held my tattoo gun to your skin.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he says.

  I hold back a grin as we walk into the shop, flipping on lights as we go, and judging by the chemical smell in the air, I’d say Big Jim only took off a little while before we got here. I turn on the music, not being able to work without it, and by the time I step into my station, Alex is already pulling his shirt over his head.

  As always, I get distracted by the sharp ridges of his toned body, and as he lowers his big frame into my chair, I force myself to get in the zone. Grabbing my gloves, I stride over to him and drop down onto my rolling stool before glancing over his tattoo.

  It’s only had a little over a week to heal, and while it’ll still be raw and scabbed, there are other sections I will be able to work on.

  I start preparing everything I’ll need and a few minutes later, I have my gun in hand. My gaze shifts to his face, holding back a grin as I find him white as a ghost, and without hesitation, I grab his hand and place it on my thigh, just as I’d done the first time. “How can a man who spends his days fantasizing about ending someone’s life be so terrified of needles? I mean, fuck. You cut yourself with a blade like you were chopping up a roast chicken, and you had no issue jamming a syringe into the side of my neck, but this has you breaking out in a sweat. It makes no sense.”

  “Fucking tell me about it,” he grits through a clenched jaw, his gaze locked on the ceiling, refusing to watch what I’m doing.

  I laugh to myself, pressing the gun against his skin and watching how he flinches away from it. My terrifying serial killer stalker boyfriend is scared of needles. Wait. Is he my boyfriend?

  “What?” Alex questions, his gaze coming to mine.

  “Huh?”

  “You made a face,” he comments, blowing his cheeks out as he clearly tries to use whatever this is as a distraction. “Something’s on your mind.”

  “Oh, I umm . . . it’s nothing, really,” I tell him, my gaze shifting back to his broad chest. “I was just laughing to myself about my serial killer boyfriend being a little scaredy-cat, but then it occurred to me that I didn’t actually know if you were my boyfriend. I mean, is that . . . is that what you want, or is that not how things work in the serial killer world? This whole screwing your stalker thing is new to me, so I don’t really know how it works.”

  Alex grins, his eyes softening, and for just a moment, he doesn’t look as though he’s about to throw up. “You wanna be my girlfriend, Mace?”

  “I mean, it sounds so trivial when you say it like that.”

  “How else am I supposed to say it?”

  I let out a frustrated groan, rolling my eyes as I try to focus on what I’m doing. “You’re impossible, you know that, right?” I tell him, before gently biting down on my lower lip, feeling shy all of a sudden. “But for what it’s worth. Yes. I’d like it very much if, from this point on, you referred to me as your girlfriend. Or your highness. Either works.”

  Alex winks, and every part of me swoons. “I think I’ll stick with Mace.”

  A stupid grin settles across my face. “I think I can deal with that.”

  His hand on my thigh squeezes. “Alright, let’s stop dancing around,” he tells me. “I know you have questions, and it’s been killing you not to ask for the past few days.”