Colour Series Box Set (70 page)

I am going to kill Callum –
slowly
– promises be damned to hell along with this villainous soul. He promised me normal and I don’t want it anymore.
Normal
hurts. Being loved is the most God awful thing I have ever had to live through and I have lived through hell.

When I do come to, the grey is gone and something new has settled in me I feel it seep over the illusions and claim them. Black, the madness of Callum has consumed me and turned the grey black. A new desire grows in the pit of my soul. I am going to kill him slowly and watch his torture while I play with that fucking heart I see in his eyes, trying to make its way out of his evil fucking mind.

We eat, I smile. But only on the outside.

THERE WERE BENEFITS to my
no
relationship,
no
sleepover and
one-time
only policy. I never had to actually
live
with what I did. I am not good at living with anyone I cannot even keep a house plant.

I am awake but it’s so dark that my eyes strain, but I can see it. I tied her to the bed when I was done. Now I cannot hide from it. An image that cannot be washed from my mind reappears. I see Lauri’s scars and in that split second, I know I am like
him
and I hate myself. I have done this before. I need help; I have to stop this before I turn her into the ugly that I know comes from what I am doing to her.
She is already ugly on the inside.
My mind whispers back and I know it’s true. I am terrified that I will kill her, that she won’t be able to take all of me for very long.

 I slide out of bed and cut the bindings that keep her from killing me in my sleep. I grab my gym bag and walk away from the woman I love with nothing but this feeling of shame clinging to me like filth.

I hide myself in the quiet gym, there are only a few tortured souls here at this hour of the day and I spend a few hours pounding my fists into the bags. Soon I am asked to spar with some hulk of a guy. These guys were not here the last time I was in that ring with a person; it did not end well for my nephew. The memory has me thrumming with energy, and I want to break this fools body then hand his soul to my Princess and watch her crush it beneath her sex kitten heels. My day just got better; maybe a gift will make her forget what I did to her last night. Every night since we have moved into the house where my ghosts haunt me I fight harder to control this need to torture her. This is exactly what we both need. I wonder if Renzo had ghosts, a reason for the scars he left behind on the body and soul of Lauri? I need to purge the ghosts haunting me so I can stop killing Shannon and try save her.

Right now, I am going to beat this man till he needs a doctor and then take him to mine. I type her text before I step into the ring.

I know she will understand it. I haven’t
let
her kill anyone since our engagement dinner three weeks ago when we moved into the house. She is a fucking genius. The quails confused me when she moved them into the courtyard. She fed them on hemlock, the birds are immune to its poison but one in four people who eat the poisonous birds will fall ill and even die from renal failure. My family devoured the dinner, my new fiancé and I are sticking to her vegetarian diet for health reasons. Two of her twelve birds were successful and the panic over the mysterious family deaths continues to make them all nervous and I love watching their silent suffering as they look over their shoulders everywhere they go. No one suspects us, Shannon will often slip in a comment when in public with them about her fear that she’ll be killed if she is my wife. She tells them how the target on this family is like the curse that befell the Spillane’s, but we all know that curse was my father. Now I am the curse on my own family.

I punch and kick at the big man in the ring, he is younger than me and he is a fighter his tightly wound body and grace of movement tell me this is his home.
I am about to fuck with your happy place boy
. I may be older than you, but the thing driving me is darker than anything you could bring to this ring. The prize is made sweeter still when I see the tattoo on his wrist, he works for my family. He is a foot soldier in the army of criminals that have survived because of my criminal enterprises. He isn’t one of mine though – he belongs to my brother. Sahib will be angry, but I don’t care. All, I care about now, is the relief I am getting from the physical torture I reign down on him. He taps out, begs, pleads and eventually passes out. The other guy with him tries to wake him, I know it won’t be easy.

“Oh for fucks sake, put him my car I will take him to Shannon; she can fix him up. I warned the fool.” I snap at them. They are too scared to argue and the two scrawnier men lug their large friend to my car. I shower first, slip on the clean suit that I had in my bag and make myself look like the man they expect to see at the office every day.

I drive to my house, where Shannon is waiting for me in her office, she is dressed but the dark circles under her eyes tell me I did too much damage last night. Her body is going to break if I don’t stop. Her movements are slow deliberate and strained as she walks towards me and presses a cold kiss to my cheek and hisses, “Thank you Callum.”  Her relief is confessed in those tender words and feel a little lighter for them.

I heave the heavy man onto her examination table, he is starting to come around and Shannon takes over. I sit on my chair in the corner and watch my Princess work her poison magic. The way she changes when the killer in her emerges is a thing of graceful beauty that takes my breath away and makes my heart beat too fast.

Her body becomes lighter, her movements fluid and her mood becomes instantly different. She is like a playful cat with a baby mouse. This game is as much for me as it is for her. She likes that I watch her. This game excites me as much as it does her, I shouldn’t be seeking this high. I am treading on dangerous ground. I am a voyeur to her depravity and it turns me on, makes me want her more. I lust for her as she kills the man. The hours it takes him to die feed our undeniable passion and desire.

As the hulking man spasms and thrashes on the wooden office floor, just about half way to his excruciating death Shannon walks over to where I sit. Her hips sway as she takes each step closer to me the seductiveness of her insanity calls to me. Her eyes are full of life and desire as she kneels between my legs, her lips are parted and I see the slight lick of her tongue across them. She locks her gaze on mine, we cannot look away as her delicate deadly hands unbuckle my belt, I want to push her away and say this is sick but I am so turned on I want this too much to react at all. Her delicate fingers wrap around my hard cock and a secret smile makes its way onto her face.

My heart pounds at how wrong this is, yet my body wants this, the first swipe of her tongue over my cock and I fist her hair in my hand the strands tangling and snagging on my fingers. I push her down onto me, forcing myself down her throat those soft deathly lips around me feel like heaven. She gags but continues to take me down deeper, sucking harder, driving me crazy with the need to come in her sexy mouth.

Right there to the sounds of a man dying she shares her sickness with me and as I come down her throat her eyes give me a window into her empty heart and we find a new high together in our combined insanity.

Shannon takes her pleasure from the moment his suffering begins and her high is the second his breath is stolen and the life leaves his eyes. I take mine from watching him suffer even more because I broke his body first. We exist as one monster when she kills
for
me and it makes me love her more. I need to get rid of them all so I will stop hurting her, I know that will be my cure, but what will cure me if she walks away after they are all gone?

WE GO ON THIS WAY for months, when Shannon comes to find me in the kitchen one evening. Every single body that we bury brings me a little closer to peace, I hurt her less and she wants to kill me more. I don’t mean to be like Renzo, I don’t want to break her, scar her or destroy her. I am trying so hard not to, I fight it every time I look at her. I should ask her for a prescription, but then she would know how sick I am.

“Callum.” She startles me by disturbing my cooking ritual. I turn to see a grave look on her face. “Your brother has asked to see me at the surgery after dinner. I have been instructed to come without you, I was in fact, told not to tell you at all and lie about an emergency.” She is not happy about Neil’s summons she has been avoiding him for months now. Something has happened, and he wants me gone, she was supposed to kill me long ago. Our wedding is planned, and only a few weeks away now, he is nervous. Neil is afraid of me and even more so of us. You see it's just him and I left, slowly they have all fallen like flies, wives, children, cousins, aunts, uncles and even friends. He is the only thing left between me what was always mine. He is too stupid to realise I plan to take it from him, I am biding my time.

“Go, I will send Art to watch over you, he will have someone watching me. We are so close now I don’t want him to attempt to kill me.” I pull her towards me and kiss her sweet lips. I love her and I think she might just love me under her armour of murder and coldness. When I let her kill the sex is explosive and insane and I don’t hurt her, we feed of the person dying in front of us. I feel sick when I think about it afterwards, but when it happens there is nothing to stop the ecstasy we share in those moments. I shake my head just thinking of is makes me feel dirty. She kisses me back her hands sliding slowly over my chest igniting the slow burn of need and madness.

“Hmm, what are you cooking?” She asks me not breaking our embrace. I have become quite good at vegetarian cooking and I rarely eat meat anymore. The quail dinner proved her point rather well. “Stir-fry my Princess, it's almost ready.” She smells like heaven standing so close to me, her body is a constant temptation for the demons I am trying to purge. Just one to go.

She sits down at the kitchen table, the place we have made ourselves most comfortable in. The whole house is full of ghosts and I rarely go anywhere but into our room, the office and the kitchen. The wine cellar bellow the kitchen has been well used too. The incinerator housed down there has proven to be most useful. An old mob house holds so many secrets no one would think of today. My grandfather was a ruthless man with a thirst for blood and three sons who killed for him all their lives. This home was built for dark and sinister things.