Razors & Ruin (Rare Horrors #1)

Chapter 38

38

Nellie

I ’m ascending, moving through the air.

Shitting Christ, am I dead after all?

No. It’s Sweeney, of course, lifting me from the freezing floor where I was asleep.

He cradles me in his arms, my head lolling on his chest, and carries me up the stairs and into the light, settling me on my bed.

I knew he’d come back.

I’m soaked in sweat and dirt, every inch of my body tender with pain. Through my swollen eyelids, I see he’s clean, not a spot of blood staining his shirt, and I frown.

“Did you change?” I ask, my voice feeble. “If you’ve finally learned to get your shirts in to soak straight away, I will eat my arm.”

“That’s my girl,” he says with a smile. “As a matter of fact, I did change, but not my shirt. Things went contrary to plan, treacle, and I learned something about myself.”

I sit up and stare at him. “What the Hell do you mean?” I ask, a bitter edge to my voice. “You must know what happened to Johanna, but she’s not here. How can this be? Heads should be rolling!”

He tucks my hair behind my ear, revealing my bruised neck, and he rests his fingertips on the spots where he dug them in.

“The head that truly deserved to roll was mine, my pet.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Sommers never hurt any of those children,” he says. “He saved them, Johanna included. She was the child we saw at the church. He disguised her as a boy to protect her and cherished her all her life.”

My mouth drops open. After everything, Johanna was fine. Secure and loved.

It doesn’t make sense. After all the blood, the madness... she just walked away from it all, untouched by the darkness that followed him.

“And you left her behind?”

“Yes.”

My breath leaves me in a shudder of ecstatic bliss.

Gone . No more Johanna, no more Sweeney brooding over his wrongs. He can live knowing she is happy and never darken her life with his presence again.

Not when I want so much for him to darken mine .

I melt into his arms, and we collapse together, limbs entangled. The pain in my body eases beneath his caresses, and his kiss is hotter than ever, his tongue capturing mine.

“You didn’t kill me,” I whisper, wrapping my legs around him and drawing him closer. “Why?”

I know what he’ll say. I just want to hear the words.

“Because I love you,” Sweeney murmurs. “I never loved anyone else. Here’s how I know.”

I tug his shirt out of his waistband, my hands finding his rippled abdomen. “Tell me, love.”

“Because I remember what I did to Veronica.”

I pull away, searching his face. Her name again, refusing to disappear into the ether where the useless bitch belongs.

“Sweeney, I swear?—”

He clutches my waist and rolls on top of me, his hips heavy between my parted thighs.

“ I killed her, not Gerald. Choked her to death without hesitation. Held nothing back.”

His confession hits me like a blow. I should feel victorious, but instead, something cold and jagged lodges in my chest, and I realize it’s jealousy.

She did get his blood up after all, the fucking cunt.

Sweeney’s cock is hard, the length nestling along my slit, and he grinds against me as he speaks.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says, his hand scalding on the cold skin of my inner thigh.

“It’s the ultimate in possession, isn’t it, treacle? What did she have that you didn’t? Why didn’t I kill you, too, and lock your memory away forever?”

He tears my underwear against my hipbone, sliding it down my leg. “Do you think I wanted her more than I want you?”

My head spins with his words, the implications sinking deep into my bones. Why is he saying these things?

“Of course that’s what I think now !” I snap. “You bastard , Sweeney. I lay there on that bloody floor and thought I’d won. How can you say you love me only to torment me so?”

His fingertip finds my clit, and despite everything, I shudder as he works it. My body betrays me as it always does, responding to him no matter the words that pass between us.

I hate him. I love him. It’s all the same, and none of it changes how I feel.

I am bound to him, body and soul. His manipulative, vicious heart has claimed mine forever.

He sinks two fingers inside me, and my traitorous pussy clutches them, trying to pull him deeper. His mouth grazes my ear, and he bites it, driving a moan from my lips.

“You’re wrong, my love,” he says. “I killed Veronica because she came up short. And Johanna wasn’t mine after all. Deep down, I knew.”

I gasp in shock, and he skewers me deeper, silencing my questions. “But none of that shit matters now.”

My mind reels, and all begins to crystallize.

I’m starting to understand.

Johanna was a figment of his imagination, a delusion. And Veronica is nothing but dust. He couldn’t control her the way he controls me. She didn’t give herself to him the way I do.

That’s why she died at his hands.

“You said it, Nellie— you’re my perfect match.”

Sweeney withdraws his fingers and sits back on his heels, freeing his cock.

“The only one who’d kill for me, bleed for me, die for me. You’ve taken everything I had to give, deep and hard in every slutty hole, and never once did you try and make me into something I’m not. I murdered Veronica because she wouldn’t love me good, but you and me?”

He grabs my head with both hands. “We’ve got it bad, so sublimely fucking bad. You’re everything I need.”