Deadly (5 page)

“This is Georgina and Jack,” Ryan introduced, surprising me that he knew both their names. Ryan was one for solitude, with the exception of me. People exasperated him, so the fact he took the time to learn their names was new.

Jack had wandering hands under the table once we moved to a corner of the bar and he was heavy handed with his Georgina.

…Kill him.

“Let’s go back to ours,” Ryan announced. “I want you to show Cereus how to use a whip.”

My eyes widened at that statement but my veins warmed with the alcohol and the possibilities.

I was a natural according to Jack. The truth was I loved the feel of control over Ryan. The speed and power in which I chose to hit him with was mind-altering. The red welts rising bloody from my infliction knowing it gave him some form of pleasure sent pleasure through my own body. Ryan wanted this to be something just for him and me and I was grateful that he wanted this for us, to know that he was allowing me to give him something I knew he got elsewhere usually. Ryan was a pain seeker, he didn’t find pleasure in much, but pain he liked, blood and brutality was his thing.

… Our thing.

After strike five I sent Jack out of the room, he was trying to disagree, telling me I needed more training but like he said I was a natural and Ryan didn’t care either way.

Ryan’s naked frame stood spread-eagled against his bedroom wall, the only thing covering him was the rivulets of blood dripping down the back of his legs.

I stripped from my clothes, pulled my arm back and whipped it out fiercely, slicing the skin open. The hiss as the whip sliced through the thick, lust coated atmosphere caused goosebumps to sprinkle my naked body.

Another four strikes and the blood was thick, the crimson pool at his feet growing. I dropped the whip and walked over to him, laying my body against his, decorating myself in the gift he gave me, the gift I gave him.

We stayed that way until the blood began to congeal and became sticky between our bodies.

I pulled away from him and went to shower, coming back to find Jack had already cleaned Ryan’s wounds.

That was my job.

Drinks flowed after that and I can’t really remember much else.

I look back down at the cerise stain on my tank top. This was fresh on and from my room so this blood couldn’t be Ryan’s. The droplets on the floor have me rushing through the door. I follow a few blood spots to the bathroom, gasping when I come face to face with Georgina’s boyfriend who spent the entire night trying to slip his hand under my shorts. He’s laying in the tub, his breaths just a
puff…puff…puff.
His hands cover a wound to the stomach and blood was everywhere.

Dammit.

“Ryan!” I shout, ignoring the outstretched hand of the bleeding guy. I search my mind for his name but can’t recall it, there’s a buzzing in my head making my thoughts cloudy.

I sense Ryan before I turn to face him. “You killed him!” I whisper yell at him.

Ryan’s eyes follow mine to the bloodbath that was our restroom. “He’s still breathing,” he points out. He’s so nonchalant anyone would think I was berating him for not putting down the toilet seat.

He really doesn’t put the toilet lid down.

“Those sounds coming from him, that’s him breathing,” he again points out.

“Barely,” I growl, me, myself pointing to the almost dead man bleeding to death in our bathtub.

Holding his hands up Ryan’s eyes narrow on me. “Not my work, sweetness.” His eyes zero in on my shirt. I look down at the stain there and back up at Ryan.
What, he thinks I did this? No… I don’t remember. Did I?

“Oh God,” Georgina’s breathy voice joins ours in the room.

“Now look!” Ryan grumbles, tugging the knife from ‘Jack!’ His name is Jack!

Ryan tugged the knife from Jack’s chest before lunging towards Georgina with it.

“No! Don’t!” we both screech together.

“He was an asshole anyway,” Georgina pleads, holding her hands up in surrender. “I won’t say anything to anyone, I know not to, I promise. Please I swear.” Tears leak from her eyes, fear - sorrow?

Ryan’s eyes come to me, pinning me with such intensity I squirm from its force. “This is a fucking mess, take her back to your room.”

I don’t argue, I was surprised he actually listened to me and didn’t butcher her right there in front of me. I usher her back down towards my room in a rush, her feet stumble and she nearly falls. Once I get her in there I notice the tears wet on her cheeks. “Don’t waste your tears on him Georgina, he didn’t love you.” I sound harsh but I’m a realist. He was an asshole and she knows it.

“What do you know about love?” She asks meekly. She wasn’t accusing, her tone was soft, stricken with her emotion. She really wanted to know.

The emotion for how powerful things were between me and Ryan flooded my system and came rushing out my mouth to answer her. “I know a love so strong that I followed it into the darkest shadows, I bathed in the centre of another’s soul. You know you’re meant to be when you look into the eyes of the one you love and see yourself in them looking back at you, you’re one soul.”

“Is that how you feel for Ryan, do you love him like that?”

“Ryan and me are beyond explanation, Georgina but if you are asking if we belong to each other then yes, and no one will ever part us.”

Her hands rise in surrender. “I get it, he’s off limits now.”

“Now?” I ask grabbing her arms.

“Ever…always… you’re hurting me.”

I pull my hands from her. “Don’t act so surprised Georgina, you just saw we killed your boyfriend, a squeeze on the arms is nothing.” I was angry that she had touched him before, done things with him, things he wouldn’t do with me.

“I didn’t love him like that. Jack I mean. He treated me like shit.”

“Why were you with him?”

She shrugs like staying with an asshole was just something to do. “He was all I knew. I met him when I was young, my folks didn’t have much and as soon as I was old enough they wanted me out of the house. He got me hooked on coke and then the club scene. I loved that side of him but he kept pushing me past my limits and eventually he needed to go elsewhere for his kind of fix.”

“You had to share him?”

Her eyes fill with tears and she does that shoulder shrug again. “He didn’t just share himself.”

“Asshole.”

“Yes, sometimes my ass hole.”

My mouth pops open, forming a little O shape. “I meant
he
was an asshole,” I clarify.

A light giggle bursts from her chest, the sadness completely evaporated. “I know, I just thought I’d lighten the mood. Do you want to go to the beach?”

I study her, unclear if I heard her right. Her eyes were wide, her brows peaking high. We were going to be great friends.

FOUR MONTHS EARLIER

This was the reason I took her to the club, to hopefully kill some of her whim urges. A lot of good that did me and Jack, the stupid fucker, wouldn’t keep his eyes to himself and on occasion I saw his hand touch where it shouldn’t -
any fucking part of Cereus.

Fact is if she hadn’t killed him I would have. I was planning something good for him, break a few fingers before chopping off those wandering hands and shoving them up his ass.

I bat his pleading hands away and stick the knife straight through his windpipe before yanking the blade to the side cutting open the side of his neck. The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out of the body to squirt blood up to thirty feet … so very impressive.

His gurgles are quick, only three attempts at taking a breath before he is gone. Georgina was going to have to go too, there was no way we could risk keeping her breathing, what's more there was no point to either. She could suck dick but so could many other women and let’s face it, I don’t really look for that in women. I look for nothing, because that’s what they are to me. Nothing. Just like everyone, apart from my Cereus, and her death toll was going to get us noticed. She didn’t even finish Jack off which could have been the end for us if he managed to escape the apartment.

I won’t go back to an institution and I won’t let them take her from me, so I needed to wake her up to what she was doing. I expected her to refuse the knife back at the club. I thought in her lucid state she wouldn’t play but just like it was bred into her, she accepted that knife without question. She wanted to do it, she desired it. To see the blood flow from the wounds she inflicted. She didn’t know what was in store but she knew what she was there for. She held on tight and gave in to the cravings.

I close the door to the bathroom when I finish cleaning the blood and wrapping the body. Cereus is waiting for me with big searching green eyes. “I killed him, didn’t I?” she asks.

I crowd into her space, forcing her to back up against the wall. “No, I killed him but you stabbed him and left him, and you need to own it.
Remember.”

What if she blacks out and kills in front of people and gets caught? What if she’s this careless in the future, leaving someone alive, someone who could then turn on her? I can’t let this happen.
I can’t live without her now.

“I remember wanting to,” she murmurs, her eyes unfocused and her brow plucking. She begins slapping at her own head in frustration. “I can’t remember.”

I restrain her and pin her against my chest. Her hands claw at my back and she tries to climb inside my skin, burrowing into the heat of my body. I pull her back a few moments later and narrow my eyes on hers. “Georgina isn’t us Cereus, she will betray you and I will have to kill her.”

“We’re going swimming.”

“What?”

“Do you want to come to the beach? We’re going to swim in the ocean.”

I hate the beach, this was her changing the subject.

“No you go.”