Page 35 of Dirty Hit
“You’re gonna keep it on,” I say, letting the words settle. “You’re gonna take it off to shower, but that’s it. You keep it on when you sleep, pray, or go to class. You’ll only take it off if I tell you to. You understand?”
His throat works. “And if I do take it off?” he asks, almost daring me.
I lean closer, close enough that my next words brush his cheek. “Then I’ll come get you, and we’ll have a much longer conversation about obedience than you’re ready for.”
I feel the way he shivers under me, a full-body tremor he can’t disguise. This has that same twisted thread of darkness woven through it—a curiosity that keeps him here instead of driving him to call for help.
“You can’t just… own people,” he says weakly.
“That’s the thing, you’re the one who handed me the leash, Brendon.”
He blinks at that, then lets his head drop back against the pillow with a quiet exhale, eyes closing briefly. His wrist, the one with the cuff, rests between us on the blanket.
I watch him—the flush still on his cheeks, the swollen mouth, the leather snug around his skin—and I feel that same sick little thrill, the one that used to come only when someone took their last breath under my hands. Different stimulus, same high.
I’m going to get addicted to him.
Not just to kissing him or to the sounds he makes, and how he looks under me. I’m going to get addicted to this process. To taking a pristine, polished thing and watching my fingerprints appear on it, one-by-one. To seeing my mark on him in places no one else will understand. To knowing that under his clean clothes and his cross and his polite smile, he’s carrying pieces of me around all day.
This is worse than killing in many ways.
Killing ends. This doesn’t.
I sit back slowly, letting a little distance open up between us even though every greedy part of me wants to press in closer to see what other noises I can pull out of him this morning. I need to ease off. He’s already overloaded. I can see his thoughts spiraling behind his closed eyelids.
He’s been chained his whole life; the only difference now is who’s holding the other end.
I reach out and tap the cuff lightly with one finger. “Get used to it,” I say. “That’s not coming off.”
He opens his eyes, looks at me, looks down at his wrist, then back. His voice is barely a whisper when he answers, but I hear it.
“Yeah,” he says. “I got that.”
Brendon
Jerichowakesmeupby smacking me in the face.
He does this thing where he sits on my chest and taps my cheek with one paw, claws just barely out like he’s deciding whether I’m worth the effort of keeping alive. I groan and roll my head to the side, trying to avoid him. He follows, of course, tail flicking right under my nose.
“Okay, okay,” I mumble, voice rough. “I’m up.”
Jericho blinks slowly, unimpressed, then walks off with the kind of offended dignity only cats and priests have, padding down to the end of the bed. I flop onto my back and stare at the ceiling, and for a second I forget why my stomach feels like somebody scraped it out.
Then I move my wrist.
Leather drags against the sheet, and my heart drops straight through the mattress.
The cuff sits snug on my skin, dark against my wrist and warm from sleep. For one long beat, I just stare at it. It’s the same thingI’ve done ten times already since he left my apartment yesterday and silence finally dropped over the space.
I spiraled—no other word covers it. I sat on this bed with my back against the headboard, heart racing, thoughts all over the place, staring at the leather on my wrist as if it might explode.
Jericho climbed onto my lap at some point, turned around three times, and flopped directly over my forearm so he could pin it down with his full, dramatic eight pounds. It was almost like he was personally offended that I’d let someone put something on his human without his approval. He kept looking up at me with those judgmental yellow eyes every time I shifted, as if he knew exactly how badly I’d fucked up.
I told myself I’d take it off, and leave it off.
I told myself I’d throw it in a drawer, in the trash—into a river if I had to.
Instead, I only took it off when I showered; fingers shaking as I unbuckled it, wrist feeling oddly naked without the weight. By the time I’d dried off, my hand reached for it again before my brain caught up. I slid it back on without looking in the mirror, buckled it one notch tighter than Dominic had, and then immediately wanted to throw myself out the window.
