Just as quickly as it happened, he shook his head and dropped his forehead to press it to my shoulder.
“If you punctured a lung, they’d be pretty distracted.” His head turned and the heat of his breath playing against my neck was just a little too fast, a little too sharp.
Something was wrong, but when I opened my mouth to ask, he scooped the knife from my fingers like I hadn’t had a tight grip on it and clicked the blade back into place.
“Be careful with this, but always keep it on you.” Otto searched my face slowly and frowned. “You never know where the monsters are lurking, London.”
He stepped away from me, and the sudden lack of proximity was enough to make me shiver. I didn’t have to question him torealize he wasn’t just talking about the world around us when he spoke of monsters.
Otto’s eyes were dark and fathomless, an endless void of haunting recollections I didn’t know… that I couldn’t touch.
There were monsters in the room with us—ghosts and memories with teeth and claws that seemed more than ready to tear into Otto whenever they had a chance.
If I could learn how to kill anything, it would be them.
Chapter 24
Otto
Therewasaknifein my side, and the pain was making it hard to breathe. I wasn’t looking at the person who was stabbing me, though—I’d long since gotten over the need to look at the people tormenting me. My eyes were all for Nikki… Nikki, standing in the corner with his arms crossed over his waist.
Nikki, with his lips pressed together in a hard line.
Nikki, who never took his eyes off me as the knife started to slide upward, peeling a layer of skin back in an agonizing burn that made my vision white out.
When I screamed, Nikki’s eyes widened and his fingers clenched… and I—
I could remember every man I’d found who looked like him… those same wide blue eyes, the dark hair. The expression of confusion when I wrapped my hands around their throat and watched the life leave their eyes… but it was never right.
It was never enough because it was neverhim,and the same instincts in my body that led me to killknewit wasn’t him.
It wasn’t Nikki.
It wasn’t…
I woke with my hands around London’s throat.
He wasn’t even fighting to get me off him. His hair was still wet from the shower he’d had before bed, sleep tousled and sticking up at odd angles. He looked so sweet, sosoft.
London was just staring at me with wide eyes—those same fucking wide eyes Nikki had—and holding my arm like I wasn’t trying to kill him.
I let him go, and he drew in a deep breath. Thankfully, the sound was clear. I hadn’t squeezed hard enough to hurt him, though I could see the red impression of my fingers against his throat.
“Are you okay?” The question came before he’d managed to catch his breath, and I shoved back on the bed like he’d burned me.
“I just tried to kill you.” My voice was deceptively calm when I spoke, but something inside me was trembling. It wasn’t just memories of being tortured—it was memories of the body I was in. Instincts that wanted me to spill across the bed and finish what I’d started.
I was some fucked-up amalgamation of trauma and response… pain and the desire to kill. I was two broken pieces of a person that still seemed incapable of coming together to make a whole, becauseallI wanted was to hurt the man in front of me.
All I wanted was to break the one person who’d never done a damn thing to me.
“Otto.” London’s voice was careful, soft, and he telegraphed his movements as he slowly crawled toward me. “It’s okay. You were having a nightmare. You were talking in your sleep and you said my name…”
Innocent.
So fucking innocent—an innocence that would get him killed. An innocence that made himperfect.
A perfect balm to my broken soul.
