Page 93 of Lady Killer

As the world went dark, one last thought echoed in my mind.

Theirs . . .

Chapter twenty-six

Luz

Waking up surrounded by a cloud of Egyptian cotton and the faint scent of lavender, my body ached as though I had put it through a punishing ten-kilometer run.

The woods . . . the sheep . . . Everest . . . Alister . . .

My toes curled, as I wet my lips, swallowing down the memory of their taste.

There was something so perverse about what I’d done, what I had allowed them to do, and yet it felt so . . . right?

I didn't struggle with the darknessin my soul.

I never made the decision to kill lightly, so when I did, it was with judicious certainty. The need to kill was a part of me that I could turn off with ease. Survival always came first.

That was why I recoiled at the idea of being a serial killer when Everest brought it up. There was something . . . indulgent about killing for pleasure.

But last night had been delightfully wicked. Primal. There was no calculus of risk, no efforts at thinly veiled control. Just the pursuit and the punishment.

Maybe I was more wicked than I had ever dared to dream.

Sitting up and out of bed, I stretched my legs, surprised to find myself still in my clothes from the night before. The knees on my leggings were filthy and stretched out.

The familiar buzzing of my phone sounded, and I shook my head in a vain attempt to clear the lingering fog.

Someone else had put me to bed last night, and I couldn’t remember where I’d left my phone. And having just woken up, I had more pressing needs.

As I hurried to the bathroom, I finally looked at myself in the mirror and was relieved to see it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected.

My hair was wild, my smooth waves having given way to loose, frizzy curls due to the wind and the sweat. The bagsunder my eyes were a little more pronounced, my skin a little duller from not having been washed. But other than that, I looked rather unremarkably the same. You would never have known by looking at me that I had let two violent men use my mouth for their own needs and reward me in return.

By the time I finished up in the bathroom, my phone was silent again, and I looked around the room, wondering where on earth it had wound up.

The creak of a door opening had me spinning around, and I found the quiet twin standing there, head cocked in observation.

Huh, I would’ve thought Ever would be the one to check up on me.

“He’s working on something for Lucian,” Alister said, apparently having read my mind again.

“Oh. Well, I’m sorry you got stuck with . . .” I wasn’t sure what this was, so I gestured vaguely. “But as you can see, I’m fine, so . . .”

With three long steps, he was in front of me, close enough that I could smell the clean scent of soap on him, cutting through his natural scent. “So, what? Scurry along?”

“I just meant you don’t have to worry about me having regrets or second-guessing what we did last night. I’m a big girl.”

His lips pinched together flat as his eyes turned icy, and I wondered what I’d done now to upset him.

For a man who seemed immovable, he was awfully sensitive around me.

“Is that what you think? That I’m here because Everest told me to be?”

I tried in vain to smooth my hair. “No. It’s not like you listen to each other.”

“Then you think, what? That I’m covering my bases, making sure you won’t run to the police crying about what the big bad Blackwells made you do?”

---