Page 70 of Executing Malice

Feeling pretty good about my mental instability, I start to push to my feet only to spot the square of white perched on the edge of the blankets, next to the pillow. Even at a glance, I recognize the glossy back of a polaroid. I have to practically stretch my entire body to reach it and flip it over.

It takes only a second to figure out the image. There’s no mistaking it for anything else. It’s a slightly grainy snapshot of a beautiful, male torso standing before a familiar mirror. One hand flat against the glass, fingers extended. The other holds an old polaroid camera at face level, shielding him where the harsh flare of the flash doesn’t. The horrific depiction of art painted into his skin is unmistakable, even if I didn’t already know who it was.

But he’s topless. The front of his cargos are pulled apart in a wide V that is concealing nothing as they slip down his lean hips. I’m given a clear view of his cock poking up the front, steel bars glinting.

I stare at it, at him too long. I know I am. I can’t take my eyes off all those muscles and ink. I can’t stop imagining him pushing that thick head inside me, piercings and all.

The area in question pangs with the need to have him again. To get pushed across the bed and wrestled into submission. I want him to force me onto my stomach, hold me down and make me take every inch.

It’s a depraved thought linked to images of him fucking me so hard we wreck the wall. That he breaks my bed. I want him to use me until it hurts to walk.

I fall back against the pillow and hold the photo up. I trace every line and curve of his arms, the chiseled landscape ofhis chest. I can’t see his hands, but I know how they feel manhandling me, holding me down.

I’m so lost in the sight of him that I don’t notice the scribble of words along the bottom.

“Matching brands.”

I’m about to curse him for yet another cryptic message when I see it. The spot he’d worn the gauze back in the butcher’s basement, right along his lower abdomen is gone.

My name, not written, not inked, but carved crudely into his flesh. Each jagged letter swollen and angry, the skin puckered around the wound.

It’s not a tattoo.

It’s not something easily covered or concealed.

It’s carved into him so there is no mistaking that he belongs to me.

And after the incident with Felicity, I know this is his way of telling me he’s mine. Only mine.

God, I’m fucking insane.

I have to be. Or he is. Maybe both of us, because why does the sight of my ownership on him turn me feral? Why am I so turned on I can barely breathe? It’s a wildfire crashing through my system, a devouring force upending all my common sense.

But the longer I stare, the harder I study the photo, the sicker the scene becomes.

The hand on the mirror is bloodstained. It streaks across the glass in an almost brown tinge resembling shadows at first glance.

The shower curtains behind him, faded and grainy over his shoulder are mine. The sink near his bloody abdomen is mine.

What isn’t mine is the crisp, green candy apple with caramel drizzle sitting just along the edges of the photo.

Or the razorblade resting in a shallow pool of red on the counter, a gleam of silver in all that darkness. He must have dropped it after the last stroke, after the final letter.

Disgusting.

Psychotic, unhinged, deranged behavior.

Everything he’s done so far has been out of pocket and certifiable. He needed his own cell. Padded with bars.

A laugh escapes my lips. A thin, shaky sound that hinges on disbelief and something ... visceral and heady. Not disgust. Not even shock. Because even as my stomach flips, it’s heat that pools low in my belly. It’s my thighs pressing together with a greedy hunger. My mind flashes with the image of him doing it while I slept just down the hall. Being so careful not to wake me as he disfigured himself in the name of reckless obsession.

An obsession with me.

He stood there with the blade in hand and dragged the fine edge into skin. He would have hissed at the initial pull, thesting. He would have braced himself against the pain, teeth bared, eyes wild, thinking only of me.

“God, you’re sick,” I whisper, though the words are more reverence than accusation.

My free hand drifts down before I can think to stop it.