Page 14 of The Devil's Mercy

“That’s up to me.”

“Oh, sweetheart, no, no it really isn’t.” He sighed. “When you think about it, you only have yourself to blame for all of this. If you just told us the truth from the start, we could have skipped over all this training and gone straight to playing happy family.”

“Don’t you dare preach about honesty to me.” Calix tried to shake off the doctor’s hold, but Aodhan merely dug his fingers in, hard enough to make Cal wince.

“Everything I’ve ever said to you was true,” Aodhan told him. “Sure, there was a layer of deceit there, and my intentions for you were never pure, but I’ve wanted you since that night. I’ve wanted to make you mine and keep you forever. What’s more romantic than that?”

“You already have a boyfriend,” Cal snapped.

“You aren’t opposed to being a part of a throuple.”

“That’s besides the point!”

Aodhan grinned at him triumphantly, slipping a hand beneath Cal’s chin to force his head back so he couldn’t look away. “Got you.”

Shit.

“Why would I want to be in a relationship with you after everything you’ve put me through?” Calix countered.

“Why not?” He ran the pad of his thumb over Cal’s jaw. “I can give you everything you’ve ever wanted. In fact, I can give it to you doubled, because I come with Mercy. Isn’t that what you cried out for that night of the reunion? You said it over and over again. Mercy…Mercy…”

It took him a moment, but eventually he recalled seeing that part in the video. The words he’d been mumbling between tears and snot hadn’t been his own though, not really.

“I was remembering something else,” he said. “Something I heard from someone else. I was not calling out for your lover, or begging for you to take pity on me.”

“Pity?” Aodhan’s expression turned blank and he tipped his head. “Should I have pitied you?”

“You’re a damn doctor,” he reminded tersely. “Anyone who gets injured should be—”

“People break all the time. Unless I’m the one breaking them, I don’t see why I should feel anything toward them at all. Make no mistake, I’m good at my job. I wouldn’t let my indifference interfere with healing someone when I should, but if you’re asking me to also feel things toward them like pity and empathy…I apologize, Detective, that just isn’t going to happen.”

Cal frowned.

“Can you tell me you feel that way about the people you encounter on your cases?” Aodhan suddenly asked. “Did you feel pity toward Heathe’s girlfriend when you heard her skull had been bashed in, for example?”

His eyes narrowed. “Heathe claims there was someone else there that day…Was it you?”

“No, I wouldn’t have been of much use there.”

“How many people have you killed?”

“Does that really matter?”

“Yes.”

“I can tell when you’re lying, baby,” Aodhan confessed. “I think I forgot to mention that before, but you have a pretty obvious tick that gives you away.”

“I do not.”

“You do. Would you like me to tell you what it is?”

Calix tried to lower his head, but Aodhan held firm.

“Uh uh, no running this time. No hiding either.” The doctor produced a scalpel from somewhere, holding it up to the light as though showing it off to Cal. “I’m not supposed to touch your dick or your hole aside from giving my medical examination. But we can find a way around that, right? We can still play together and have a good time.”

His mouth went dry, but it wasn’t just from the threat of the sharp blade or the returning flash of fear. Calix remembered the way it’d felt in his hotel room, when Aodhan had given him one of the best orgasms of his life by carving the letter A into his ass.

“Do you miss my mark, baby?” Aodhan’s voice dropped into a low purr. “Did you wish I’d given you something lasting instead?”

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