Page 31 of Mutual Prey
“Cass,” he gasps, “please. I don’t want to die. Not like this.”
“Not like what?” I taunt him. “Not hanging upside down like an animal?”
He glares at me. “No. Not without my cock in your pussy. Please, Cass. It’ll drive me crazy if I can’t… fuck you one last time.”
I chuckle, but the truth is, the thought makes my pussy ache too. And my heart, oddly enough. At least, the space where my heart should be.
“Well, we don’t always get what we want, do we, Finn?” I tease. “Anyway, it’s a case of you or me. And I’d much rather it be you than me.”
But I’m aware I don’t sound as convinced as I’d like to. I mean… those abs. If only he hadn’t killed Cotton. Ifonly.
My body is all out of whack, and killing Finn is the only thing that can set it right again.
Still, a lump rises in my throat as I drag the sharp end of my knife up and down those insane abs, causing rivulets of blood to form.
“Cass, baby,” says Finn again. “It doesn’t have to be you or me.”
“Nice try,Daddy.”
“No, I mean, it will be… one day. You know? But not yet. I’ve started to realize just how addicted I am to you. Fucking you… it takes the edge off my need. Doesn’t it… doesn’t it take the edge off of yours?”
Well… not in the same way. But then, my fixation wasn’t on him. It was on the list I’ve slowly been working through since high school. I only fixated on him this afternoon, when I found Cotton’s body. And, yeah, I guess these past few hourshavetaken the edge off my need.
“What were the side effects again?” he begs. “You’re the scientist, Cass. What were those side effects?”
“Violence and hyper-fixation,” I recite.
“But not… not death, right? Just… violence and hyper-fixation. And I’m realizing… Iamfixated on you, baby. And Icanbe real violent. But I don’t have to kill you. Haven’t I been violent to you, Cass?”
“Yeah, you have.” I wince as my lower body throbs at the memory of all he’s done to it since last night.
“See? I can be good to you. Let me show you just how good—how violent I can be. I don’t need to kill you. We can keep doing what we’ve been doing. I’ll let you hurt me, too. You can stab me in all the places where I won’t bleed out. You can stab me while I fuck you.”
I shake my head. “I mean, it’s a nice prospect, Finn. But we have to be realistic. It would just be a temporary fix, at least for me. I’m a killer.”
“Yeah, well, I am too.” He blinks his eyes, and I could swear I see tears forming in his eyes. “We could kill together.”
“Stop with the romantic crap, Finn. It’s so cringe.”
“Fine.” He lets out a long sigh. “But, Cass… I’m so addicted to you, baby. I wouldn’t care about dying, honestly I wouldn’t, if it didn’t mean living without you, and—”
“Well, you wouldn’t exactly be living, since you’d be dead.”
He clicks his tongue in impatience. “You know what I mean. Last night, when I went back to my place to sleep… even asleep, it was fuckinghardnot to be with you. And it almost killed me when I killed Cotton… not seeing you, or smelling you, or…”
“How the hell can you kill me if you can’t live without me?” I question.
He lets out another sigh. “Exactly. I can’t. I can’t fucking do it, Cass. I can’t live with you—can’t live without you. All I can do is live with you while telling myself I’ll kill you one day. But not yet. Maybe when we’re like, one hundred years old. And until then, I’ll be fucking you so hard every day that it’ll take the edge off.”
“I guess thatispretty romantic, Finn.”
His face brightens, but darkens again when I shake my head.
“No, it won’t work. I don’t have till I’m one hundred. I only have… twenty-seven minutes.”
He frowns. “Twenty-seven minutes? Why?”
“I thought you knew everything.” As I speak, I keep my eyes glued to the pearls of blood that pearled on his abs when I grazed them with my knife. They make my mouth water. “Twenty-seven minutes is when the bomb goes off.”
