I let my gaze drift over him, examining him thoroughly. He’s dressed down with jeans and a gray long-sleeved button-up. He practically fades into the background of the city’s muted industrial tones. Alex has always known how to blend well.
His hair is longer. Unkempt and falling below his ears. I hate that I find it sexy. His build has changed some; more definition, toned, as if he’s been working out just as hard as I have in preparation for this reunion.
He lifts his bandaged hand to my face, his fingers stalling before making a connection, then he touches the strands of a loose wave. “I’m glad you kept it blond,” he says.
“What are we playing at, Alex?” I jump to the fucking chase.
“No games between us.” He caresses the strand of hair admiringly. “Just the meeting of bodies, both exerting equal force on the other, causing the exchange of momentum, of energy.” He moves in closer to demonstrate his point. “In the simplest of terms, a collision.”
I believe him. From the very first moment we met, we crashed right into each other.
“It’s physics,” he continues. “And you’re the only body I want to collide against. You’re a force, my force. The personification of power and raw energy.”
I hold his penetrating gaze as the club vibrates around us. “You destroyed your goddess, Alex,” I say, giving in to his delusion. “You killed the very essence of her soul. You broke her. Now you need to repair her.”
I should feel foolish talking in riddles, but with Alex, I have to get on his plane, I have to reach him. I’m either going to convince him to reverse the procedure, trusting that he won’t cause more damage….because what choice do I have?
I either let him potentially fry my brain, or live trapped in this hell forever.
And I simply can’t do that. One way or the other, this will end.
“No, you’re perfect,” he says, fingers trailing my neck. “You bleed now, you feel the wound. Every achingly beautiful emotion, you embody it. You’re so much more than a goddess, you’re what the goddesses envy.”
I’m breathless for a suspended moment as his intensity holds me captive, then I shake myself from the daze. Impatience curls my hands into fists at my sides as I restrain the desire to make him bleed.
I should feel vindicated. He’s confirmed at least one suspicion; he’s been stalking me. He’s seen me struggle, at war with who I’m becoming. But I don’t feel anything but a blistering anger and the overwhelming desire to cause him pain.
His thumb feathers my bottom lip, and a dark hunger burns behind his eyes.
I turn my head away. “So what you’re saying is, you have no idea how to reverse the procedure.” I laugh mockingly, knowing it will wound his ego. “What kind of scientist doesn’t know how to reverse his own treatment?”
He clasps my jaw and forces my face toward his, fingers bruising. “I know what you’re doing. That tired logic won’t work. Even if there was any way to reverse the process, I’d never do it.”
I lick my lips and smile. “You know what I swore. Your procedure didn’t corrupt the part of my brain that craves revenge.”
His mouth tips into devilish grin, his hand slipping down to collar my throat, and I sense a level of predator in him I never encountered before. “We can fight,” he says, “or we can fuck. It’s your choice. You came looking for me. Personally, I prefer the latter, but I’m okay with anything that promises your hands on my body.”
Apprehension threads my spine. This isn’t the Alex I left in a burning cabin.
When I don’t respond, he tightens his hold in warning, his touch igniting my blood like a lit match to kerosene. He moves in and gently places a kiss to my jaw, tracking his tongue over my skin. My body rebels and succumbs all at once, incapacitating me.
“Now that you have the ability, there are so many things I want to do to you, to make you feel.” His heated words whisper along my skin.
My eyes close, as if I can shut him out, turn off the receptors. When he pulls away, I open my eyes, stoic. “You’ve changed,” I say.
His features darken as he measures me coolly. “That’s what love will do. You changed me, made me a different man.”
Love.
That word is a weapon when he uses it.
Of all the poems and sonnets I’ve read, never once did I imagine the lovesick hero trying to destroy the object of his affection. I never understood what I read before, not deeply, not on an intuitive level.
But maybe those writers didn’t see what I do when I look into Alex’s eyes. Maybe there’s some deeper level of love that goes beyond poems and sonnets, a darker love that is so maddening, you crave to destroy what you love only because you want it so badly, it has to be consumed or demolished.
It leaves you no other choice.
That love isn’t the kind knights in shining armor lament about.
This is what it feels like to be loved by the villain.
“You’ve changed, too,” he says, stroking his thumb down my chin reverently. “So I had to be better, to become more, for you.”
I don’t know what true love feels like, I have nothing to compare it to, or if anyone truly does, for that matter—but if this is love, then it’s a vile sickness.
As he fixates on me, the club lights dim blue, shadowing his expression. My eyes are drawn to a patch of skin near his eye. My hand goes to his hairline, and I brush my fingers along his temple, feeling the rough scar. I push his hair aside to reveal the damaged skin. The wound is new.
My chest tightens, constricting the air in my lungs. I recognize the burn mark, because I have the same ones. I drop my hand as my mind goes to a dark place.
He captures my wrist and secures my hand between us. Then his gaze lingers on the scar along my temple. “Matching scars,” he says. “We should get tattoos, too.”
“Did you do that to yourself?” I ask, disgust evident in my voice.
A devious expression creases his eyes. “I was paid a visit by your friend Grayson,” he says into my ear, his hand clenched around my wrist to the point of pain. “You know, right after you met with his psychologist.”
A roar fills my ears, the music muted to a dull pulse.
London.
Too many thoughts crowd my head, but one fights for dominance: I told London that Alex was a killer.
Alex regards my expression, his features losing some of the edge. “It’s okay,” he says, dipping his head to find my gaze. “I forgive you. It’s my fault I wasn’t there for you.”
He’s reading the wrong emotions in my mortified expression. I don’t feel remorse; I’m petrified.
London deliberately lied to me. She knew, while sitting across from me and staring me in the eyes, that Grayson was already searching for Alex. She knew more than what I revealed to her, and…
“Do they know about Ericson?”
Alex doesn’t take long to catch up to my train of thought. Suddenly the delusion fades from his eyes, and he stares at me with clear comprehension.
He leans in to say near my ear, “They know. But they don’t know who killed him.”
I take a moment to process this information before I look into Alex’s face. Grayson subjected Alex to his own torturous treatment, just as London claimed he would. But he left Alex alive, an action not likely in a killer’s nature.