Page 41 of Cut Deeper

I noticed his knuckles were grazed. I reached for his hand and felt him tense as I gently touched the raw skin with my bloodied thumb.

“You should get these hands insured,” I said casually.“And make me the sole beneficiary of the policy.”

His hand relaxed, and he placed his fingers beneath my chin, tilting my head up.

“Would money make you happy?” he murmured.

There was so much emptiness inside me—a void that couldn’t be filled with something as mundane as money.

I shook my head.

This was something I couldn’t deny.

Ethan Hammond made me feel more alive than killing.

Chapter 22

Ethan

Something settled in my chest when she shook her head. She still held my hand. I thought about why she’d done it—why she’d picked up the scalpel and taken Gareth apart like it was nothing, why she’d told me to insure my hands. It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d been paying that kind of attention. It hadn't occurred to me that after only a few days, Anne would think to protect something of mine.

I raised her hand to my mouth. The blood had begun to dry. I pressed my lips against her knuckles and held them there.

The room was bright and very still. Gareth’s muffled sounds came and went in the background, and from Eva’s cage, the occasional wet noise that I’d stopped registering.

Anne smiled and looked away. A faint colour in her cheeks, almost shy—as though caring for someone was something she’d been caught doing.

The voice said nothing.

I turned her hand over in mine.

Someonecouldcare about me. Not the version I performed for the rest of the world, buttoned-up and bloodless, but this—the dark monster that lived beneath the flesh and bone.

Someone like Anne Selbourne.

“No one’s protected me quite so fiercely before,” I joked, raising my head.

“Call it professional courtesy,” she said, glancing up to meet my eyes before she looked away, unable to hold my gaze.

“Do you know why I gave you the knives?” I drawled, sliding my hand down the front of her see-through lingerie.

Her breath hitched, and her eyes snapped back to me.

“Why?” she whispered.

“For your craft,” I said, smoothing my fingers between her thighs.“For your protection.”

She rocked her hips, thighs clamping down to trap my hand in place. I brushed my fingertips along her wet heat, then eased two fingers into her tight little pussy, feeling her soak them as her breasts rose and fell.

I leaned in close, whispering in her ear.

“I’m going to lower the table. You’ll bend over Gareth while I fuck this tight little cunt. You’re going to put your face where his dick was, and you’ll only come when you’re covered in his blood.”

“Pass me the scalpel,” she said, raising her hand.

“No tools.”

Gareth groaned loudly—no doubt in protest. Neither of us looked at him.