Page 37 of Born into Madness
“No lies between us, my little Cyn. Why did you wear the dress for me?”
She sets her pen down and smooths out the fabric of the dress along her thighs. My eyes follow every movement, memorizing the lines of her body, surprised by how badly I want to touch her.
“The truth is I’m not exactly sure. I’ve never worn it before, and I wanted to.”
“So my asking you had nothing to do with it?”
“No, it did,” she admits. “I’ve always wanted to, and I guess you gave me a reason to do it.”
“Why didn’t you ever wear it before?” When she hesitates, I say, “You said you wanted to, but you never did. Why not?”
She looks embarrassed when she says, “I guess I didn’t think it would look good on me, and I was afraid of looking stupid.”
There are a lot of things I don’t understand. I knew that before meeting Cyn, but every time I’m near her it grows painfully more obvious. I have no idea why she would feel stupid or think that she looks bad. When after several moments of quiet I still can’t figure it out, I admit the truth and say, “I have no idea why you would think that. You look beautiful in it.”
Her cheeks grow red at my words, and the corner of her mouth lifts up in a smile before she tries to hide it. I saw it, though. She can’t hide anything from me. I see it all, including the way she’s fidgeting beneath her desk and trying like hell to not look at me. Her eyes go everywhere but where I want them to, so I push off from the door and step closer. The room is small, and it only takes me two steps before I’m standing in front ofher. Without a word, I reach out and wrap my hand around the back of her neck. With my thumb grazing her jawline, I tilt her back so she’s forced to look up at me. When her green eyes lock on mine, I release the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and stare down at her.
“Why are you avoiding me?”
“I’m not avoiding you,” she says.
Her pulse races beneath my fingers as I watch the skin of her chest turn the same shade of red as her cheeks. It slowly blooms, traveling up her neck, and I have the sudden urge to sink to my knees and run my tongue along the trail of it. Just imagining what her skin would taste like has me growing hard again. This woman has a direct line to my dick, and I’m powerless to stop the thing from growing in her presence. I swear I can feel the three letters of her name heating up along my skin. I want to show her. I want to unzip my pants and let her see exactly what I’ve done to myself, what I’ve done forher.
Before she can look down and notice my body’s reaction, I pull a knife from my back pocket and hold it out to her. My other hand is still gripping her neck, and I reluctantly let her go so she can take the knife. When she sees it, her eyes widen in fear.
“It’s a present,” I tell her. “I’m not going to use it on you.”
I’m guessing other guys don’t need to say that when giving a girl a gift, but my words seem to relax her as she reaches out and grabs onto the black switchblade I bought for her. It’s much smaller than the knives I use, but it’s sharp and could easily do a lot of damage. Her hand is so much smaller than mine, making the knife look less like a toy and more like the weapon it is. She lets out a soft gasp when she turns it over and seesMy Little Cynengraved into the handle, the silver script filling the small space.
Reaching out, I make sure the knife is aimed away from her and push the small recessed button. With a soft click, the three-inch blade springs out. She turns the knife over, eyes wide,and her inexperienced grip makes it painfully obvious that she’s never held a real knife before.
She takes her eyes off the blacked-out steel blade just long enough to ask, “Why did you get me this?”
“Because your pepper spray isn’t good enough.” Pointing at the knife, I say, “Next time use this.”
At the idea of stabbing someone, her grip falters, and the knife starts to slip from her fingers. On instinct she tries to grab it, but I quickly wrap my hand around hers, protecting it from the sharp steel and letting it cut me instead. The pain is quick and intense as my skin splits and blood wells in the small slice on my index finger. The knife clatters to the floor as Cyn lets out a cute-sounding squeal while grasping my hand and pulling it towards her for a better look.
“I’m so sorry.” Her words are rushed and panicked, and I can’t take my eyes off her. Usually I’m around people who would like nothing more than to see me hurt and bleeding, but my little Cyn looks positively appalled at the very idea of it. The side of my mouth lifts in a grin, hidden behind the mask as she gives me a worried look and says again, “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have tried to grab it.”
“Then you would’ve been cut.”
Her brows furrow as she presses down to try and stop the bleeding. “Would that bother you?”
“It would,” I say, surprising myself just as much as her. She’s not family. I shouldn’t care if she gets hurt, but I do. The thought of her skin splitting open instead of mine feels wrong somehow.
“I don’t understand.”
That makes two of us, my little Cyn.
When I don’t say anything, she says, “I watched you kill those three men, and you didn’t seem even slightly upset about it, but now you do this to yourself just to keep me from gettingcut?” Her beautiful red hair bounces as she shakes her head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I told you before not to try and make sense of me. It’s a waste of time.”
She ignores what I’ve said and instead checks my cut. It’s still bleeding, but it’s nothing that’s going to require stitches, and I’ve had much worse. My blood stains her hands, and the sight of it has my cock starting to ache again. When I move my hand and drag the pad of one finger along her bloody skin, her body freezes and her breathing picks up. As focused as I am on the pretty picture of her wearing my blood, I keep an ear on her breathing, making sure she doesn’t start wheezing again.
My finger trails up her forearm, smearing the red on her in a way that feels like I’m marking her as mine.
“Krovinka.” I whisper the word behind my mask, but she hears it and turns her face up to look at me.
