Page 21 of Burn (Two Wheeled Psychos #2)

“Owww.”

I moan as the door behind me opens quickly and smacks me in the back. The bottom corner of it digs into my spine, making the burnt-out cigarette filter drop on the ground.

I’m lost in the afterglow of the kill, and the lightheadedness of the smoke, and it takes my brain a second to realize that I’m still at the scene of my crime, and now someone is coming out. A witness.

“Shit.”

I curse, slamming my back against the door, forcing it closed, keeping whoever is behind it from coming out.

“Zeph?”

Phoenix’s voice comes through the metal and glass.

“Zeph, is that you?”

I freeze, my body leaning on the door, my ears perked up at the sound of my angel, my voice silent in apprehension of it really being her. She couldn’t have seen me; I was so careful.

Your voice fucker. She knows it.

Shaking my head ‘no’ I ignore him and tell him that he’s wrong without having to say a word. But I know he’s right. She didn’t see me, she couldn’t have, but that one word, ‘shit’ has sold me out.

“Open the door. I know you’re out there.”

She calls out, trying to push the door, making it rattle against my back.

Pressing harder against it, I try to buy myself time. Do I let it go and quickly run away, leaving her to find the fire and call 911, or do I stay and own up to what I’m doing, and watch her run away screaming? I don’t know what to do, and I don’t like it. I’ve never been an indecisive person before. Yet one more thing that she’s changed about me.

She’ll call the cops. That is if someone else hasn’t already, you stupid fucker.

“She didn’t call them before.”

Because she was an accomplice. This, idiot, is all you.

“You’re not helping.”

When have I ever?

“Touché.”

I chuckle, slamming my back into the door, stopping it from opening up the tiny fraction she’s pushed it.

“Zeph, I smell smoke.”

Phoenix calls out from behind the door.

“My waitress disappeared, and I need to pay my bill. Is she back there?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”

I grumble to myself, finally making a decision.

Standing up, I dodge the swinging door as Phoenix bursts through it, stumbling out onto the stoop and right into my arms before she falls on her face from the force of throwing herself against it.

“Easy there baby girl.”

I say to her, holding her to me until she gets her bearings, pushing her black hair from her face more gently than I should with how hard she just slammed into me.

“Zeph? What are you doing out here?”

She asks, both pushing herself up, and getting closer to me.

“Nothing. Just having a smoke.”

I say, setting her on her feet and rocking back and forth on mine, shoving my hands into my pocket, and looking anywhere but in her dark eyes.

“Oh my God, a fire!”

She exclaims, looking around me, finally catching on to the inferno brewing in the dumpster.

“Call 911.”

“Sorry sweet cheeks, can’t do that.”

I say, leaning into her face, staring at her now, letting her see the seriousness in my ice blue eyes.

You trying to scare her? I thought that’s what you didn’t want.

“Again, not helping.”

“Do something.”

She cries out, trying to get around me to the trash fire, making me grab her by the elbow to keep her away from the scorching heat and danger of what’s burning.

“I am. I’m making sure it stays put. It’ll burn out soon. Wanna sit with me and watch it? It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

“You’re nuts, aren’t you?”

He is.

“I am.”

“I can’t be part of whatever this, you out here taking to yourself, and a fire. This is madness.”

She says, pulling on her arm to break my grip on her, but I hold on tight.

Whispering in her ear, I lick the shell of it with the tip of my tongue.

“Just a week ago you wanted me to burn you. What changed, baby?”

“You did.”

She growls, looking at me defiantly, lowering her brows with a wrinkle of her forehead.

“Right before you ghosted me.”

“I’ve been here all along.”

It’s true, he has been.

“You know she can’t hear you, right?”

“Hear who?”

Me.

“Him.”

“Who?”

Phoenix asks, yanking herself from my hold, and pushing me back a step from her.

Me.

“Him.”

“Him who?”

I can see the aggravation rising in her, and it gives me a satisfying little chuckle that my madness is as annoying to her as it has become to me.

“The one in my head.”

I say for the first time out loud to anyone.

For years he’s been with me, but never have I ever spoken about him to anyone. Not to my therapists as a teen, not to the outreach program director who took me in, not even to the captain who’s been my only father figure. No one has ever known that I’m not alone in my thoughts. Now she does, and it’s scary and…liberating.

“I’m sorry, the what, where?”

Me! The voice in his head that makes him crazy!

“Will you shut the fuck up and let me explain it to her?”

I yell to the empty air around me, making myself look even more insane then I already feel.

“Zeph, what the fuck?”

She asks, struggling to get past me to look in the dumpster.

“Don’t Phoenix.”

I say to her, but not stopping her from looking.

She gasps putting her hands to her pretty little mouth when she stands up on her tiptoes and looks into the burning trash bin, seeing the remnants of my “work”.

“Fuck Zeph, another one?”

It’s like something from the twilight zone watching her look into the dumpster then back at me, her face first growing white, then her cheeks reddening with some emotion that my little psychopathic mind can’t figure out. Is it fear? No. Is it anger? No.

It's lust you freak.

“No.”

Yes.

“No what?”

She asks, peeking back into the fire as if she didn’t get a good enough view the last two times now.

“No what Zeph?”

“Never mind.”

I say, peering at her in confusion,

She should be running from me, screaming, and shouting to the world that I’m a serial killer. That she needs help, and I need to be locked away forever. Not getting red in the cheeks from more than just the heat of the blaze, and definitely not stepping closer to me with her eyes alight with something I have no clue about.

“What did she do?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you kill in self-defense or the defense of others, what did she do?”

Her voice is low and gravely, and for fuck’s sake he might be right. She’s turned on the by the fire, by what I’ve done. Could this be why she hasn’t turned me in for what we did together? Is this the reason why she allowed me to put a flame to her skin while I was between her legs? Oh fuck yes, please tell me it is. No, I don’t want it to be. Do I?

“Phoenix?”

I ask as she comes to me, her hand grabbing the front of my leather jacket, her fist closing around it, pulling my face to hers, making me look at her right in those cat-like eyes that almost seem unreal.

“Zeph?”

She mimics me, licking her lips, staring at them like she needs them.

“Oh fuck.”

I moan, grabbing the back of her head and slamming my lips to hers so hard our teeth clack together.

“I know.”

She breathes into my mouth, sweeping her tongue across mine.

“Don’t say it. Not now.”

I murmur, afraid of what she’s going to tell me. But I already know. I can feel it in my bones.

She knows it was me when we first met, and I chased her down the street. She’s not stupid. I may be, but not her. She’s been playing me just like I’ve been playing her, and that makes her less of an angel in my eyes, and that I don’t want. Or do I?

“Okay. Kiss me harder.”

I wouldn’t be able to stop myself even if I wanted to. The feel of her tongue against mine and her body leaned into me as the fire blazes behind her is too much. The heat of the burning corpse is nothing compared to the inferno coming off her and her touch.

I want to slam her up against the side of the dumpster, take her, make her mine all over again, but the metal will be too hot and although I want to burn her, I don’t want to scar her. I want her flesh whole and untainted by my evils, even if the thought of her heart burning for me is too much to resist.

Well look at this. My, my, my. A little pyro herself.

“Mmmpphfffhh.”

Is all I can get out to him as she devours my mouth like she’s starving for me.

I get it, I’ve been wanting her since I fled her apartment, afraid that what I am, and what I’ve been becoming would hurt her. But now I know I can’t hurt the one who wants to be, unless I don’t give her what she wants.

With a grunt I wrap my arms around her, sweeping them under her ass and lift her up, coiling her legs around my waist. Her hands come to my face, her fingers tracing my cheeks as I turn us around and slam her back to the glass and steel wall of the building, hearing her back squeak against it as I adjust her on my hips.

I’m fumbling with my leather pants, popping them open as she’s lifting her shirt, giving my mouth access to those perky tits that I adore. My mouth latches on one as my pants finally open and my cock springs free like a coiled snake. It needs her, I need her, and she needs it too.