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“I don’t want to,” I say again, more calmly, and I push myself up, bracing myself against the altar. “And that’s the problem.” My voice cracks. “Because I should. Because I shouldn’t—” I look at the church doors. He didn’t shut them all the way, and sunlight sneaks in. And the truth of things is right there beneath the surface of my tongue, and I know if I say it out loud, if he hears it, there’ll be no going back.

“Because what, Edie?” He steps closer to me. Bloody. Masked. Violent. He still says my name like it’s a prayer.

“Because I shouldn’t like watching what you did.”

He freezes, staring at me through the mask. I choke out another sob, the shame flooding through me. That sick feeling that I’m broken for wanting this. For wantinghim.

And then Sawyer moves.

He attacks, although not to kill. Instead, he pins me up against the altar, one blood-sticky hand curled gently around my neck, holding me in place. He slams the knife down into the altar, the sound making me jump against him.

Against his erection.

“You liked watching that?” I can hear the excitement in his voice. The lust.

“He was going to kill me,” I say in a tiny, tiny voice, as if that in any way justifies it.

Sawyer slides his hand up to cup my cheek, leaving streaks of blood on my skin. “I liked doing it.” The mask leers at me. “And I liked having you watch me while I did it.”

Then he pushes me back onto the altar.

I relent under his touch, spreading my legs wide as he wedges between me. When my thigh brushes against the knife, it doesn’t cut me, but the cold of its steel makes me gasp.

Sawyer unzips my jeans and then slides his hand into my panties, pressing one finger into my pussy. He groans at what he finds there, and I know he feels it, the thing I’m afraid to admit to myself.

I’m turned on, my cunt swollen and soaking. Not just by what he did but byhim, by the way he looms over me with the blood and the mask and the knife.

“Fuck,” he breathes. “You’re so fucking perfect.”

I moan softly—at his words, at the friction as he pulls his hand away from me.

Then he grips his knife and pulls it free of the altar. Fear shivers through me, but only for a second. I trust him.

I trust him.

He rubs Lamar Greer’s blood off the blade, polishing it with his shirt until it’s a shining silver mirror. I stare up at him, breath shuddery, growing wetter by the minute. I keep imagining him sliding the knife into my skin, as gentle as a kiss.

He doesn’t cut me, though. Instead, he slices my jeans away, shredding them to ribbons. I ought to protest—it’s not like I have a ton of clothes out here—but at this moment, I don’t care. I just drop my head back and moan, my hands curling and uncurling into fists. I don’t feel the blade until he presses the flat side against my thigh. It’s breathtakingly cold, and sensation prickles along my skin.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he says, although he sounds like a killer when he says it.

Then he swings the knife up and out, cutting my panties away. He grabs the fabric, balls it up, throws it aside.

“My perfect prey,” he growls, yanking down his fly, pulling out his cock. It looks almost painfully hard, the head swollen and leaking precum. He fists it at the base, squeezing it with a grunt, and then slams it up between my legs.

There’s no gentleness, no preparation. Not that I need it, not right now. He just shoves his full, rigid length into my cunt, and I scream at the sudden fullness, arching my back into him. He leans over me, the cool rubber of his mask brushing against my face as he thrusts into me. I match his rhythm, hooking my legs around his thin hips to pull into me. The blood covering him is tacky, half dried, and it sticks to me, sealing us together into one monstrous figure.

“I think your cunt was made for me,” he rasps, each word punctuated by a sharp, shuddery breath. “The way it wraps around my cock.”

“Of course it was,” I pant out, digging my nails into his back. “I’m your perfect prey.”

Sawyer groans when I say that, slamming inside me so hardand so deep that my pleasure sparks, briefly, into pain. And I want more of it. More pain. More desperation.

“Cut me,” I gasp, and it’s like I’m not the one saying the words. But I am. I feel them sharp on my tongue. And I mean them. “Cut me open. I’m your prey. Your prey.”

Sawyer makes a shocked, strangled noise inside his mask and fucks me harder.

“You are perfect.” He sounds faintly awed. I’m aware of his arm moving beside me, and then he pulls back, jerking me closer to the edge of the altar. He’s holding the knife. He’s been holding the knife this entire time.