Page 38 of Welcome Home
A small smile graces his deeply bowed lips as he reaches forward wiping a smear of blood clean from my cheek as I heave up the arm I’m holding, tossing it into the large bin.
“You are beautiful Cora.”
I can’t hide behind my hair when I flush this time. It’s tied up high on my head, a lesson I learned with Oliver. I glance back down at what’s left of Rachel, knowing her body will soon be with herbaby. My chest still aches with my shocked laughter when Vosz told me about their mommy play games. There’s more than a little poetic justice in killing and dismembering her the way I did her lover. Vosz understood when I told him I wanted to do it, that I needed to, and it had little to do with the way I felt after shoving her down the stairs. He of course, insisted on helping with the heavy pieces. Gently pushing me aside,“Cora, my love, there’s no need in you straining yourself.”He said, before ripping her toned thigh from the base. Working at the joints seems to be the most effective, but it’s time consuming.
We don’t have any real plan now, perhaps hide out here until we can’t. Just hoping the heat will die down with the detective. To be honest, the idea of living here any longer makes me sick, but I can… with him. My phone chimes loudly, making Vosz flinch. I frown as I jerk my gloves off, grabbing it up off the bottom step, “So loud noises can hurt you?”
He cracks his neck. “One of the few things that can kill us for good at certain pitches. Some are just unpleasant, others deadly. Why? Planning on getting rid of me?”
I chuckle. “Tried that before, didn’t stick.”
Oliver’s laughter has always been beautiful, I’d always thought so, but what makes my chest flutter is the odd echoing behind it. The otherworldly notes that come from my monster. My smile fades quickly as I stare down at the emergency alert message on my phone.
“Holy crap… A nationwide alert. They’re telling people to steer clear of New York, some kind of drug epidemic making people act crazy.”
Vosz walks over reading the message from behind me. It's alarming… very much so but now I’m focused on his bare chest pressed against my back, the heat of his skin on mine.
“Symptoms include fever, low pulse and… violent outbursts, inability to consume food aside fromraw meat… Looks like the big apple is off the list.”
“You have a list?” I ask, letting my phone fall from my hands onto the pile below me. Not having it in me to give a shit.
The feeling of his lips brushing my neck wipes away all others as I lean into them. “You don’t live as long as I have without being well prepared.”
“So that’s it, we leave.”
He tilts my head back, letting it rest on his shoulder. “Once we confirm you’re no longer the subject of an investigation, we leave.”
My teeth prod my bottom lip, careful not to break flesh, just like he asked. “Are you mad at me?” I compound my question by gesturing at Rachel.
“I will never be angry at you for being you, my love. I am not him.”
I let him hold my weight, a question that shouldn’t matter to me balanced on my lips.
“What are you thinking about?” He asks, his hold tightening before he lifts me, holding me tightly against him, “There is nothing, Cora, nothing you cannot tell me.”
“Ol-Heuhm… you said I didn’t know why he wanted me. Why he married me…”
His deep breath has me bracing myself. Knowing Oliver whatever he’ll tell me next will be terrible, but I’m not the woman he married… I’m stronger now. It won’t break me. I won’t hide away from the truth, never again.
“His brother loved you.”
“Arthur.”
He nods, letting my head up from where he’d cradled it on his shoulder so I can look at him, look at the terrible man again. “He hated him. Hated him for being the perfect son, always living in his shadow, so you were-“
“Nothing more than his final fuck you to his brother…”
I eye the freckle near the tip of his nose as he leans in, kissing me gently. “Does it hurt?”
I flash him a little smile. I’m not sure why I do it, muscle memory or something like that, I’m sure. “When you get a thousand paper cuts, you often fixate on the first and the last. Never the ones that occurred in the middle.”
“That may be so, seems I have many wounds to lick.”
The next smile I flash is real as he makes a show of splitting his face. That long tongue sneaking out to tickle my neck. It laps down my exposed chest, wiggling between my breasts tucked inside my sports bra. I laugh, the deep belly kind and he pauses, a lovely grotesque smile curving up his mouth.
Heat rushes to my face as I try to wiggle away, caged helplessly in his arms. “We should really finish up here.”
A deep rumbling is all he gives me as I’m hoisted up higher. My skin prickles with goosebumps as the sound of ripping fabric fills the room, the sudden rush of cool air on my core. I don’t waste any time mourning the designer leggings he just tore the crotch out of as he directs my legs around his shoulders. His strong arms supporting my back. “I haven’t had a proper shower-“
