Page 99 of His Trick

“You. I want to fuck you and make myself forget anyone before you.”

The blinking continued, and she gasped. I wasn’t good at asking for this shit. Hell, I never asked, but to truly erase my Sunshine from her skin, before I painted it on his. I had to try to do this right. I needed to feign the light he didn’t give so that I could snuff it out.

“Will you let me destroy that perfect, fucking body? Will you give yourself to me, Carmen Vita?”

She laughed, a nervous sound. “That’s…why? Why would you want me? That’s silly.”

“Do I need a reason?” I said.

I meant it. And then I let my face be something else. Flat, patient, and cold as a stone you drop in a well, never to surface again. The calm before a raging storm. The bait before the trap.

She tried to make a joke about meeting strangers and never having much interest in sex because her past with sex didn’t have a great ending. Essentially denying me. I found myself feeling sorry for a second, but not sorry enough to stop what I had to do. Yet I still felt it enough to note I felt bad? I could allow myself that small amount of human emotion.

She took a step back, the kind that makes a person visible, and the light caught her eyes.

“I don’t want trouble, Carrington. I’m not one of those girls,” she said, the liquid courage fading as her fear took over.

“I don’t want to make trouble, Carmen.” It was a sentence built out of truth.

I reached out and pushed her, once, so soft that it might have been an accident. Her ankle hit the small cot on the floor, and she cursed, falling to her backside on top of it. Her squeak of surprise yanked me back to that night. And all I could hear was Shiloh’s moans and growls mixed with her pathetic whimpering—such a small human sound.

She looked up at me, ready to snap, to shame the man who’d pushed her, and wanted her body.

That would have been safe.

I could have walked away then, let her live her puny life until her path ultimately led to her ending her own life one day, when the knife she used on herself slipped too deep.

I could watch her die by her own hand and leave this to fate. I could play it safe just like Shiloh had.

But safe was not what I wanted.

She moved to bolt away from me, but I moved faster.

Her hands grappled for anything to hold onto, while her little dress was torn into pieces. Bones snapped like wet wood.

It wasn’t…clean.

I didn’t plan the way she hit the ground or how her breath came in shallow, uneven pants. I didn’t predict the way my stomach would twist when her eyes widened.

I saw that flash in her eyes when she realized this wasn’t a game at all. I waited for the heat to flood through me, waited for the warmth I missed.

But it wasn’t there.

All of this was turning into the sharp, ugly tone of that night. I heard her call my name, watched her writhe and beg while I took from her.

I heard broken moans and battered pleas like when she was under him. I saw the blood spill from her, coating my flesh and replacing every inch of his.

Not for long, my sweet Sunshine. Not for long.

Our dance ended when she stopped fighting. Her body became equivalent to a doll. I had not wanted that exact ending.

I wanted revenge, pain, and a reclamation. But once the fight fell away and there was only the sudden, quiet shape of a human no longer struggling, something in me turned from heated warmth to a cold stone.

I was left with the silence that followed. A silence so complete it felt like a shout in my ears.

“Carmen. Don’t be so dramatic. I was better than Shiloh. Admit it.”

Her bloodied mouth curled into a sardonic grin. “So that’s—what this is—about. I was—just a trophy you needed to take from someone else.”