Page 34 of Welcome Home
I nod, my belly filling with flutters. “Come on,” I don’t ask, gripping her back just as hard and pulling her with me towards the basement. She’s babbling incoherently as I wrench the door open, “He’s tied up. We have to keep him that way until the detective brings the police.”
She’s shaking so violently her teeth chatter in her mouth as she leans in peering down the dim staircase. Another thing Oliver never did. Install better lighting, a deep thrill settles in my gut making me press my legs together tightly as I shove her. The first knock of her head against a wooden step is so loud in the quiet house. It renders her unconscious.
“Cora, my love?” The detective's voice calls from the hall.
I hadn’t even heard the door open, and I can’t take my eyes from Rachel’s unnatural position at the bottom of the stairs, a crimson pool building underneath her skull.
I hear his exasperated sigh from behind me. It tickles my neck, adding to the pulsing in my core. “Are you hurt, love?”
I shake my head.
Her hands aren’t as fun this time when they grasp my waist, tugging me back against him? “What am I going to do with you?”
I don’t answer, finally pulling my eyes from her bloody form and back to him. I feel my cheeks flush with heat, the words on the tip of my tongue.
He smiles, cupping my face, tilting my chin upwards towards him. “What is it?”
“I- I missed you.” It comes out breathy. It’s not what I meant to say, but it’s a start.
His groan adds that odd, echoing quality to her voice as he captures me with her lips. My own moan is desperate, my live-wire body responding immediately to his touch.
“Not with this body.” He urges, all too soon breaking our kiss.
“Can I… have the real one?”
My heart is thundering in my chest, those milky white eyes settling on mine. “It’ll frighten you.”
“Maybe.”
“I won’t let you go. I don’t care if I disgust you. No one leaves.”
He’s nervous. The detective’s skin is quickly losing its life, looking alien and waxy. Pressing my chest to his, I reach up cupping his face in my shaking hands, but I’m not scared. Not so much now that he’s home. I’m… excited. My arousal coating my inner thighs. “No one leaves.”
15
Chase
Out like a Light - The Honeysticks
Heliftsmepastthe carnage at the bottom of the stairs, keeping me high above Rachel’s cooling corpse as we venture deeper into the unfinished basement. My weaning tan looks even paler in the harsh fluorescent lighting, my teeth digging into my bottom lip.
My eyes widen as he heaves the discarded skin he’d hung over his opposite shoulder back onto the ground, using his newly free hand to tug my lip free. “Never make yourself bleed again.” The command is possessive, laced with authority, but gentle, as he lowers me. Allowing me to slide down his front. The tip of my tongue darts out to clean the blood away before being halted by his growl. “I will clean it.”
I breathe out. “I have so many questions, Vosz.”
“Then ask, everything that I am, what little I know about it, will forever be yours.”
My heart flutters, my nails digging into my palms. Finally getting answers is daunting. The tightening in my chest and the swirling in my gut offer emotional overload. “So where do the skins go…. After you’re done with them?”
He shifts, the detective’s curls bouncing. “We dispose of them; some bury ones made from the dead for later use. Our kind has caches of skins, but they only hold up for so long after they’re removed, they will eventually decay.” Holy shit, that’s creepy. I can’t stop from picturing warehouses of skinsuits hanging like jackets.
My eyes nearly pop free from my skull when he lifts a hand, allowing the skin to part down the inner forearm, splitting and rolling back. “I- uhm…”
“Your questions, my love.”
“Right.” I don’t continue, only watching intently as blood-tinged milky translucent flesh becomes more and more visible until his arm is finally freed.
“Cora…” he says it in a placating tone like I’m a jumper posed on the ledge. Maybe I am.
