Page 69 of Bells
He smelled worse than whenever Bobby let the trash pile up too high out back before finally lugging the bags over to the dumpster. And he looked worse than the roadkill that had been cooking on the sidewalk for the last week or so. It used to be a rat, I think. Now it was a rat-flavored meat patty. Not that I’d tasted it. Just what I assumed.
“I’ve had a long day. I need a good fuck,” Casper grunted, his hands moving off me to tug at his belt.
“And what if I don’t?” I sat higher on the bed and scooted back a few inches.
I wasn’t afraid of him. I was annoyed. I also didn’t want him touching me to change my mind. Because like that street cat, I was feral—and usually in heat—the moment his hands dipped lower. His mouth went softer, then harder. The moment I could forget about everything else and only think about the way he could make me feel.
It wasn’t a sin to enjoy sex. Itwasa shame not to.
“Not my problem.” He crawled closer. Stalking, cornering me in a small space.
This time, I didn’t move away. Meeting him head-on. “You can’t just come in here demanding sex because you want it.”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?” He threw his arms out before dropping them to his sides. His knees digging into the mattress as he balanced himself on the bed. He wasn’t a hundred percent. He was having trouble staying upright. I could see him swaying. “To do whatever I want in exchange for something you want?”
“I’m not a whore, Casper.”
“You’re right. Whores get paid and you jump on my dick for free.” He gestured to his pants, where the dick in question wasknocking against his zipper. He flexed it the second he caught me staring.
“What happened to you that put you in a chair?” I asked, clearly catching him off guard. His dick immediately stopped bouncing.
“What?”
“You heard me.” I wasn’t repeating myself so that he had more time to think up whatever bullshit he planned to tell me next.
“Car accident. Friend of mine broke up with his girlfriend, got drunk, and ran us grill-first into a cement block. He walked out of there.” Casper shrugged a shoulder. “Clearly I didn’t. Probably shoulda drank a little more. Might have been okay.”
“You’re lying.”
“So what if I am? What the fuck are you gonna do about it?” He slunk forward on his hands and knees, pushing me back against the wall, and crawled on top of me. Each of his thighs on the outside of mine.
He pulled his shirt up over his head and tossed it on the floor, and then his hands were working on his pants. He didn’t bother taking them all the way off, just tugged them low enough to yank his cock free.
I didn’t look at it, keeping my eyes trained on his face. “You’re pathetic, you know. A scared little boy stuck in a man’s body.”
“Yeah, and what does that make you? A perv? A kiddie fucker?” He grabbed on to his cock and gave it a few long strokes before dropping it and reaching down to wrap a palm around my throat. It was his go-to move. Cut off my airway so that he could feel a little bigger, a little more in control.
I didn’t fight him. Because sometimes I liked him in control, and sometimes I just wanted to give him the illusion of it.
It was more entertaining to watch his reality shatter that way…
“You know, some killers have moral guidelines. No women. No kids.” He added more pressure to my neck. “Something that helps them stay human. Or at least feel like they are. It’s how they justify shit in their heads.I’m bad but I’m not that bad—that’s what they tell themselves.”
“Yeah, and how about you?” I forced out through the bit of slack he was giving my throat. “What do you tell yourself?”
He dropped his face to mine, wiping his sweat on one of my cheeks as his lips crept closer to my ear. “That some kids are worse than adults. And not killing women would just be sexist.”
“You’re right. It would be,” I agreed. My fingers fumbling with the knife I kept strapped to my ankle. I got it loose just as he was dragging me down the bed and positioning himself between my legs. Then I raised it high over that spot on his back, where that original scar had made itself a home, and slammed the blade down into his spine. “One.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
CASPER
“She clipped the outer coating and punctured the skin to the left of the L-4. No notable damage to the spinal cord. Purely cosmetic.” Doc was talking to himself while he poked around my spine like he used to do when I was a kid. There wasn’t much need for him to do it now unless I happen to be bleeding out all over his floor.
The way he’d explained it to me was that he’d replaced all the bone back there with a device that resembled a slinky. A metal coil that protected the nerves but was flexible so that I could twist and move and flip in ways a normal human couldn’t.
The fact I was born without the ability to feel pain made me a freak show, while the work the doc did to allow me to walk again made me the main attraction—as well as his greatest medical achievement.
