Page 55 of Five for Silver

“Four different light switches in fourdifferent homes, and the click they made when I turned themoff.”

“Stop,” Chad whispered. “I can’t … I can’tlisten to any more.” He shifted away from Romeo an inch.

Romeo didn’t try to pull him back. “Detailis vital to people with a dark infliction like me. If I couldn’trecall what I’ve done, I wouldn’t be able to control it as well asI can. We’re monsters, but even monsters need control—they needrules, and boundaries.”

“Do you think about them a lot? Thefour?”

“Less so now I have an outlet.”

“And when you do, how does it make youfeel?”

Romeo sighed. “I know you want me to saybad, or guilty, or remorseful, but the truth is I don’t. My brainisn’t wired for those emotions. When I look back, it’s like thebuild up to amoment.”

“The moment you kill them?”

“Yeah. Vincent values the spectacle, and theterror that comes from it over the act of ending a life. I’m theopposite. Ending a life is the thrill I seek. It’s what the monsterinside me craves.”

Chad picked a thread coming from the duvet.He pulled it, until Romeo reached out and snapped it.

“I keep the details of other things, too.Nice things.”

“Like what?”

“Well,” Romeo leaned in to kiss Chad’s nose,“the taste of your kisses, of your skin, of your cum.”

“Romeo!”

Chad blushed and shoved him in the chest.Romeo smirked. “It’s true. The sound of your laugh, your outragedhuffs, and that weird clicking sound you make when you’re asleep,which should be irritating, but it’s kind of adorable.”

“I do not make a clicking sound.”

“Your scent on my clothes. The smell of yourhair gel when you put in far too much. Your sweat mixing with thesmell of earth when we’ve been digging in the field. Your smile,your eyes, the shape of your lips when you tell me you loveme.”

“Sometimes you can be a sappy bastard.”

Romeo chuckled. “Your hand in mine. Yourlips on mine. My hands stroking over your skin, over the scars Marcleft behind and the scarless patch in front of your heart.”

“They must bother you.”

“What?”

“The scars on my skin.”

Romeo’s eyebrow dipped over dark eyes. Hebrushed his hand over Chad’s cotton t-shirt. “The scars are areminder of what I almost lost, and how close I was to losing it.They are part of you now, part of the man I love.” He stoppedroaming his hand across Chad’s t-shirt and pressed his palm toChad’s thumping heart. “Marc didn’t stop this. It still beats inyour chest, and I’ll do everything in my power to make sure itstays that way. I won’t let anyone stop it. It’s mine.”

“Yours to stop.”

“No, mine to keep going.”

You’re gonna die at the hands of a serialkiller.

Chad thought better than mentioning Ally’spremonition and gave Romeo a weak smile.

“But my point is, I think aboutyoufar more than I think about murder. I remember details of you inmore clarity than them. Vincent only has terror, that’s all thatmade him feel in his life, but I have you, who has done theimpossible and made me feel more than murder.” Romeo gestured tothe window. “And don’t forget the others out there in our field, Ithink about them, too. The killers we killedtogetherandthe sex we had afterwards.”

The blush in Chad’s cheeks flared again.

“Don’t you reminisce over past cases?” Romeoasked.

---