Page 27 of His Trick

He froze as I stepped toward him, his eyes darting from my hands to the leaves behind me. I saw it. The flicker in his stare, the part of him that knew what he was looking at but was too confused to name it.

“You look puzzled,” I cooed, almost sweet, though my grin was cutting him sharp as a blade. “What’s the matter, Shiloh?”

His jaw clenched, but he didn’t answer.

I stepped closer, holding my stained hand out between us like I was offering proof. “You want to be a doctor, don’t you? All those textbooks, late nights memorizing bones and muscles. Go on then, diagnose it.”

His eyes shifted again to the lump under the brush, and he swallowed. There was just enough of a lapse in his focus that I was able to grab his wrist and pull him to his knees beside the heap on the twigs and dirt, partially buried in the soggy earth. The flashlight fell from his grip, skittering off into the brush, and leaving us in the moonlight.

I let a low laugh slip free at his squeak of surprise. His hands fell forward, right into the blood.

“I’m starting to think you aren’t a doctor at all.” I tilted my head, mocking and curious. “So what is it, genius? Some monster? A ghost, maybe?”

I stepped in close, forcing him to tilt his head back to look at me.

“Or maybe you’ve been staring at those anatomy charts too long, Shiloh, and now everything looks like something it isn’t to you.”

He flinched, just a twitch, but I saw it. I loved manipulating his reality, showing what I wanted him to see, despite the truth being literally at his fingertips.

“Come on, Sunshine.” My tone softened, taunting, like I was coaxing a child to steal the last cookie out of the forbidden jar. “If this were a body, don’t you think you’d smell it rotting? Don’t you think you’d hear bones cracking when I pressed down like this?”

I stood above him and ground my boot into the dirt where a pale wrist peeked through the leaves. The ground gave way, but I didn’t break eye contact with him even when the crack sounded in the night.

“See? Just brush, mud, and my hunt. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

He shook his head, but his voice cracked. “I saw?—”

“You saw what I let you see.” Leaning back down to him, close enough he could smell the blood still thick on me. He still smelled like come, even more so now. A cheap perfume coated him, making my nose wrinkle in disgust.

“Maybe you’re just tired from fucking whatever whore came your way. Infidelity is a full-time job, I hear. Why are you so worked up? Minds do funny things when they’re angry, don’t they?” My smile spread slowly as his beautiful face faltered, his hands rising to yank off the smiling mask before pausing. “Tell me, Sunshine…you sure you know what you’re looking at? Or are you just imagining other things in that pretty blond head of yours?”

I leaned in closer.

I could feel his bated breath on the chilled air.

“Perhaps you’re recalling my sister’s muted cries as you nearly suffocated her on your dick, or the random whore you got too rough with out there in the woods before you came to spy on me. Or maybe…”

Shiloh was hard as stone, the bulge in his pants clearly straining against the leather. His face contorted into enraged,wrinkled rows. He looked to be in physical pain, and it made me throb for him.

“Don’t you dare fucking say it, Carrington…I will kill you.”

That elicited such intense joy from me that I moaned, and my body leaned heavier into his. As if it had its own mind, my cock sought the beacon of his.

“Or maybe,” I panted, licking the skin of his neck, tasting the salt, and feeling the tension in his corded muscles. “Your mind is still so wrapped up with the way you came for me. How hard you orgasmed in my hands. Is that it, Sunshine? You can’t stop thinking about how hard you fucking came for me, and now your mind is as fucked up as the control you think you have?”

Something shifted in my sister’s boyfriend. His body was practically pulsing. His muscles retracted, and before I knew it, he lunged.

Islammed him against the tree so hard the bark cracked under his spine. My hand clamped around his thick, tattooed throat, and for a second, for one goddamn second, I thought I had control.

His pulse thrummed under my palm, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a fishing lure. But even with his breathing being heavier from the struggle. The smirk playing in his eyes never fucking faltered.

Your ability to remain calm is fucking annoying.

“You think you can fuck with my head?” I hissed. “You think I don’t know what I fucking saw you bury? I could take your ass to the police. ‘Sweet, loving Care-Bear kills people…oh my!’ I canhear the news plastering your egotistical face all over the fucking television.”

Carrington’s lips curved like he was tasting me, toying with my damn psyche.

“You saw dirt and sticks. Nothing more. I suppose playing with cadavers all day would make you assume otherwise, Sunshine.”