Page 96 of He Sees You

She gasps and moans not just from my touch but from the plan, the violence we'll create together exciting her as much as my hands.

"We're really doing this," she says after, lying across my chest, the ring leaving cool circles on my skin. "Getting married. Killing together. Building a life on blood and darkness."

"Having second thoughts?"

"Never. This is what I've been writing toward my whole life. I just didn't know it was possible in reality."

"Everything's possible in reality. Fiction has rules. Reality just has consequences."

"And we're both willing to live with those."

"Or die with them."

She props herself up on an elbow, studying my face. "Would you? Die for this? For us?"

"Yes. But I'd rather kill for it."

"Good answer." She traces the scar through my eyebrow. "Christmas Eve wedding?"

"If that's what you want."

"I want to marry you on the anniversary of your first kill. The night you freed yourself and Juliette. It seems appropriate."

"That's in two weeks."

"Perfect. A Christmas wedding where the bride and groom have matching blood under their nails and a fresh body in the woods." She smiles, wicked and perfect. "Very us."

"Very us," I agree.

We spend the rest of the night planning two things: a wedding and a murder.

By dawn, we have both perfectly arranged.

Morrison will die on the trail by Miller's Pond.

We'll marry at midnight on Christmas Eve in the abandoned Lockwood estate, with Juliette as our only witness.

Two ceremonies.

Both sacred in their own way.

Both binding us together forever in darkness.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Celeste

Five in the morning shouldn't feel like it’s foreplay, but here we are.

I watch Cain prepare for murder with the same precision other men use for shaving.

Every movement is deliberate, economical, and practiced.

He checks the syringe of a paralytic agent, taps it twice to remove air bubbles.

The digitalis is already measured, ready in a second syringe.

His hands are perfectly steady, those same hands that were inside me an hour ago, that know how to bring both pleasure and death.