I try to squash and shove away the disappointment that attempts to make a home in my soul. He can’t feel what I desperately need him to for us to be...us. Carter can’t feel love.
He said it himself—care is a logical reaction that he understands, but anything more intense is simply unfamiliar to him. How can I be with a man who would never love me?
No. Not “would,” but “could.” Hecouldnever love me.
One can argue that his love is the last thing I should want since he clearly lacks certain parts of his humanity. I’ve looked into it before, back when I was trying to understand my own murderous tendencies. I would have preferred to be like what I think he may be—a psychopath—but sadly, I discovered I’m simply evil. Or maybe he’s not a psychopath and he has alexithymia, an odd, fascinating condition I discovered as I fell into that research hole for weeks.
I’m curious. I’ve seen the emptiness peering back at me.
It’s as if his eyes are made of precious stones—beautiful, but cold. Like all emotions were stripped long ago, yet they still linger deep in the untouchable abyss of his soul. Because he looks like he was born of despair that finally accepted its condition.
I think there’s more to him than a simple diagnosis, and I shove back that intrusive voice that tells me he’ll never be able to give me what I want, because I crave to peel his layers and find out more about him.
Especially when he’s so keen to keep me.
“And you, Scarlet?” he asks, pulling me out of my thoughts. “What’s yourpoison?”
Only my family knows my deepest, darkest secret—my need to inflict pain on others. I even kept it away from Bernard, and I can’t pinpoint why I didn’t feel like I could share it with him. Now I know that deep down, I never trusted him.
Yet, as I stare into Carter’s devastatingly beautiful gaze, something clicks.
“Pain,” I rasp.
Fuck, it feels good to say it. It feels even better to see the slight twitch in his eyes, like surprise and intrigue mars them.
“Brutal, raw pain is my poison.” I exhale a breath of relief. “Iloveseeing how it lands.”
“Really?” he asks, genuine interest in his voice. No judgment. No horror.
“Oh, yeah! Their reactions to it are addictive. And I—What are you doing?”
Carter slides down my body, his lips dragging over my breasts, reaching my peaked nipple. He sucks on it until pleasure ripples deep in my belly.
“Continue, Scarlet. Tell me more.” He dives beneath the blankets, tongue and teeth brushing around my belly button, over to the sensitive dip next to my hip bones, before he continues down.
I yelp when he grips my hips and yanks me sideways so I’m on my back. He situates himself right between my thighs, breath close to that aching spot that still bears traces of him.
“Carter, I—Aaah!” I cry out when he pushes his tongue inside my core, regardless of his cum still coating my walls, then sucks my clit like he genuinely wants to take my breath away.
No warning. No teasing.
“Tell. Me. More,” he orders, punctuating each word with another stroke of his tongue.
“Oh, fuck.” A few centering inhales are required to find some stray brain cells through the mind-bending zaps of pleasure. “I-I love how crushing their bones twists their vocal cords.”
I grip his hair with one hand, steadying myself on the wall behind me with the other, my breaths sawing out of me as hard as his tongue presses inside.
“How the indignation and...ego shining in their eyes turns into a sheer veil they think I can’t see through,” I continue.
Fuck, he’sso goodat this. A surge of pleasure crests inside of me, tearing at my walls to rip their way out as he builds the pleasure higher and higher, stroking my clit tortuously slowly with his thumb.
The peak is in sight once more.
Just at the edge of rational thought and pure, unkempt oblivion.
“What else?” he presses, before he licks me with the flat of his tongue. My back arches off the bed in response.
“It-it’s a marvelous thing,” I blurt out between whimpers, “affecting the body—Ah.” I cry out when his tongue dives back inside me, eating me out like a man starved. “And the mind. It quickly makes an atheist choose a god to believe in.”
