A blaze whips down my spine, igniting my actions before I realize I’ve made a move. I have Kyrie’s throat in my clutch, my palm pressed to her trachea, fingers anchored to the side of her neck. I look down into her sweet face and drink in the flicker of fear before she’s able to mask it.

“You’re not a girl,” I say, my tone bordering on lethal. “You’re an irritating inconvenience that is begging to have her ass reddened.”

Her pupils dilate. “And don’t you just hate how much that excites you.”

My cock jumps in response, the temptation to crush her windpipe a fierce need coiled around my shrinking restraint. I choke up on her throat as she swallows, and the feel of her hyoid enticingly presses against the web of my hand.

I bring her face inches from mine. “Give me one fucking reason why I shouldn’t smother you and put your limp body in one of these lockers.”

Struggling to breathe, she removes her hand from my chest and sinks her fingers into her skirt pocket. Placing the silver object within my periphery, she strikes the lighter.

I relax my grip, and she says, “Because you have no idea what else I have on you, Jack. Now be a good boy and remove your hand.”

I keep her in my grasp, some dark demand refusing to release her just yet.

Freeing her throat one finger at a time, I slowly withdraw. It’s like forcing apart two opposite poles of a magnet.

She touches her neck, her dainty fingers inspecting for injury.

“I know how to strangle without causing damage,” I say. “If I want to hurt you, I will.”

“Okay, Jack. New objective.” Lifting her chin, she squares her shoulders. “I say we up the stakes of the rivalry. Brad will be gone soon enough, and I agree we can call a draw there. But this special agent? He really does have to go.”

“And how do you suggest either of us accomplish that, petal?”

Her eyebrows hike at the pet name. “Honestly, you have no sense of fun, Jack.” She steps close. “Use your imagination.” Then she moves around me.

“Where are you going?”

“As much as I enjoy freezing to death with you in the cold room, I think we might want to leave. Separately. Soon. You know, so as not to cause suspicion.” She smiles and bats her thick eyelashes. “Unless you want our colleagues to think we’re having an affair.”

At my severe silence, she exhales heavily and says, “For appearance’s sake, I’m going to join the search party.”

I nod. “Good idea.”

“So thrilled to gain your approval.”

As she reaches for the door, I circle my fingers around her wrist. “Get rid of the ribbon from the flowers,” I tell her. “Dispose of the body.”

She holds my gaze. “Stay here for another few minutes before you leave,” she says, directing her own order. “Your cold-hearted self can take it.”

A fleeting image of being buried beneath a bank of cold white dust covers my vision, momentarily stalling me, and Kyrie pulls out of my grasp. The memory fades as quickly as Kyrie slips through the door.

I’m left in the cold room with more questions than when I entered, and a hard cock. A flare of anger bites into my resolve to remain behaved. The urge to stalk and hunt my prey pulses in my veins, but with a fed lurking around town, there will be no satisfaction tonight.

I’ll have to get my rocks off another way.

OceanofPDF.com

SEVEN

OceanofPDF.com

CAPTIVE

OceanofPDF.com

KYRIE

“You should be happy,” I say as I drag a chair to the security glass, its legs grating against the concrete floor with a piercing whine. I lower myself onto the clinical steel, bracing my forearms against my knees. “Jack was set to kill you in a matter of days. He’d probably slice you open, maybe even take some of your bones. If you meet all his discerning criteria, he might even do it while you’re still alive.” My eyes widen with theatrical flair. I even add a spooky ‘oooh’, twinkling my gloved fingers toward my captive.

The man on the other side of the glass sputters and sobs.

I sigh and rest my chin on my folded fingers as I regard my sniveling captive with a gentle smile. He’s handsome without being hot, athletic without being strong. Like a substandard tennis player. Maybe a golf wannabe. His big brown eyes shine with tears and I have a sudden urge to lick his cheek, to taste the fear on his skin.

“What I like about you, however, is that you fit my criteria too,” I say. “Not that it would have mattered if you didn’t tick all the boxes on my shitbag list. Right now, Jack is enough of a shitbag for both of you.”

“Let me go, please. Please. I promise I won’t tell anyone.” My captive presses his hands to the glass, his expression a delicious mixture of sorrow and terror. “I won’t go to the police. I’ll go somewhere else, whatever you want. I’ll leave town. I’ll make myself disappear.”

I give him a pout and a furrowed brow. “Trust me. You’re safer where you are.” The unspoken ‘for now’ lingers at the edges of my widening grin as I lean back in my chair and study the man behind the glass. “Colby Cameron. Frat boy pussy slayer extraordinaire. The Candyman, isn’t that what your loser friends call you?”

“No, I don’t—”

“Shut the fuck up,” I snarl, erupting from my chair to smack the glass with both palms. “I know all about you. I know all about your kind. I’ve been studying your species for a decade.”

I tamp down my menacing, feral glare, closing my eyes as I draw my dark waves over my shoulder in a soothing stroke. I tug gently on a thick strand as a steady exhale slips through my lips. When I open my eyes, my saccharine mask is back in place.

Smiles sell, baby!

“Did your friends know how you really got so many girls into your bed? It wasn’t just your all-American charm, was it. It wasn’t that cute face of yours. It was the little something extra you’d slip into their drinks. A sweet drop of sedation from the Candyman.” I swipe my latex-covered finger across the glass and turn away. “I think your friends knew what you did. Why else would they give you such a fucking stupid nickname.”

I walk away from the glass cage, heading past the stainless steel gurney in the center of the room, past the photos and notes taped to the concrete walls, past the table of implements chilled by the air from the whirling vent in the ceiling. I stop at the chest freezer and run my touch across the pitted white surface as it hums beneath my fingertips. “Like I said,” I whisper to the secrets in the cold box. “I know your kind. I have survived your kind.”

A blast of icy air caresses my hands as I open the lid of the freezer. Goosebumps stipple my skin and I think of Jack. Once upon a time, for a pivotal moment, his presence brought a blessed kiss of cold across my skin, a balm for the pain that burned like a flame in my chest. I thought if I could find him, if I could be near him, that it would always be that way. I believed that Jack was the only one who could numb this suffering. If I could create an environment where we could both thrive, then maybe I wouldn’t be so alone anymore. But that was just a naïve dream. In reality, little by little, he’s only made it worse. He’s stoked my rage into an inferno that simmers beneath a fragile shell, the lick of its molten heat too close to the surface for me to contain any longer.

There’s only one thing left for me to do now.

Make. Jack. Suffer.

I reach into the freezer and pull out Mason’s lower leg, keeping my back to Colby for a long moment as I examine the crystalline flakes clinging to the hairs on the gray, bloodless flesh. I almost feel bad about Mason. It’s not as though he met all my criteria, but I did what I had to so I could keep Jack under my control. That said, Mason wasn’t squeaky clean either, judging by his porn interests in underage girls that I found when I went through his laptop to wipe his evidence.