Cold Dark Souls : A Dark Reverse Harem Romance (Cruel Black Hearts Book 2) Read online

  I took my plate and made my way to the couch, sitting beside Lincoln. He was casually flipping channels, going right across the Sunday news. A split-second was all I needed to see huge white lettering on thick, red banners. Snatching the remote from his hand, I flipped it back to the news.

  “What the fuck is your deal?” Lincoln asked, grouchy. He sat back on the couch, utterly exposed.

  I nearly smacked him, but I held back, too engrossed in what the newscaster was saying. Last night—technically early this morning—another body was found, praying to whatever God they believed in. Another victim of Stella’s serial killer.

  I did not particularly enjoy the fact her attention was on another killer. Call me selfish, but I wanted her attention on me, on Lincoln, on us twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. She was ours; she did not belong to this killer, to this Angel Maker, and if I had to track this fucker down and strangle him just to show him she was already claimed, I would gladly do it.

  Nothing was off the table when it came to Stella and keeping her.

  Lincoln still stared at me, pissed off. “Tell me you’re not obsessing over this guy now, too?”

  My mouth full, I only glared at him. I reached into my pocket, pulling out my phone and dialing Stella’s number. Listening to the ringtone ring over and over, stopping only when her automated voicemail message erupted in my ear, I couldn’t think of anything to say. If Stella was still sleeping, if she hadn’t seen the news yet, I wanted to be the one to tell her, the one to hear her reaction.

  The only thing I said was “Call me back.”

  I finished eating, listening to what the people on the TV were saying. They referenced Stella’s article onscreen, saying the Sunday Tribune dubbed him the Angel Maker. The nickname fit, I thought, considering how the bodies were found. Stella would be so fucking happy to hear there was an official serial killer on the loose, one whom she could write about to her twisted heart’s content.

  “She didn’t answer?” Lincoln eventually asked.

  “No.”

  “That’s weird. I feel like her sleeping pattern sucks ass, so I would’ve guessed she was awake by now,” he said, dragging his fingers along the arm of the couch, gently tugging on the stray strand of fabric that had started to unravel.

  For all we knew about Stella, there was still so much more we had to learn. I couldn’t wait until the day I knew her as well as I knew the man beside me, until we got her to move in and made her ours in every single way each day.

  Still, for all that said, Lincoln occasionally surprised me.

  I turned to look at him. “You worried about her?” I wasn’t sure why the thought surprised me so much; it wasn’t too long ago when Lincoln had ventured to her house without my knowledge to kill her—which I supposed I should’ve been madder about, but I wasn’t, because he didn’t kill her. If anything, going there with the intent to harm her had only brought them together, brought all three of us together.

  Now, if he would’ve actually done it, then he and I would’ve had a problem. A big one. A problem so large, so gargantuan it might’ve pushed me over the edge.

  “Hell no,” Lincoln answered quickly, shooting a dirty look at me. “She’s probably at the fucking crime scene, getting her panties wet.” Though his voice dripped disdain for our precious Stella, I knew he felt anything other than disgust. “Worried about her?” He chuckled. “The only thing I’m worried about is my dick, which could use a pair of lips like hers right now.” As if on cue, the dick between his legs twitched, growing hard as he thought about our Stella.

  Ours.

  Because that’s what she was—ours.

  She was ours, and I wasn’t about to let any local serial killer take her away from us. Not when we’d just found each other.

  I’d like to say Lincoln was just for show, but I’d known him long enough I knew the truth of his words. His darkness was the type of beast who liked immediate release, instant gratification in all its most pleasurable forms. Right now he wanted to shoot a load off, yes, but I knew he did care about Stella, in his own way. He and I were alike in so many ways, and yet so very different still.

  Lincoln mumbled something about getting back in the shower, to which I shrugged, my focus back on the TV after the commercial break. The words Lincoln had said raced in my head, but not in the way they should’ve.

  Stella. At the crime scene.

  Her panties wet because she couldn’t contain herself around violence, around killers.

  My hands balled up into fists on my lap. What if Lincoln was right and Stella was at the crime scene somehow, pointedly ignoring my call? What if she’d pulled it from her pocket, saw it was me, and purposefully let it ring and ring until her voicemail picked it up? Oh, no. That wouldn’t do at all. I would not lose her like this, not so fast.

  This Angel Maker was taking her from us.

  The fucker didn’t know who he was messing with. If he wanted to make a big scene in front of her, to attract her to him somehow…Stella might be naive enough to fall for it, assuming it was true and he was after her attention, like she’d thought. Stella leaving me for that fame-seeking shitshow made me a kind of furious I hadn’t felt in a long time. It was the same kind of fury I would’ve held for Lincoln if he would’ve succeeded in killing her.

  I would not lose to this Angel Maker.

  The bastard wouldn’t win against me, not when Stella was on the table.

  I would do anything I had to to keep Stella as mine.

  Chapter Three – Lincoln

  The thought of Stella getting all hot and bothered at the sight of a corpse made me hot and bothered in a certain kind of way. It would’ve been better if she was here to take care of it for me, if I could make her kneel in front of me and take me in her mouth like a good little girl, but she wasn’t, so I had to deal with it myself.

  It was nothing new. Half the time, my cock had a mind of its own.

  I was back in the shower, my hand pumping along my hard length as I imagined Stella taking the woman downstairs. Destiny, her street name was. What a shitty name. Plus, her destiny at the hands of Stella didn’t look too good. If anyone had a psychopath waiting to emerge, it was Stella. For fuck’s sake, I’d tried to kill her, and I ended up fucking her brains out.

  Days later, I still wasn’t quite sure how the hell that had happened. I wasn’t the type to let a pretty face sway me—plus, I wasn’t even sure if I could classify her face as pretty. Her eyes. God, I could not get used to her fucking eyes. One blue, one brown. Both of them liars, regardless of the color.

  Fucking weird as shit eyes.

  How would Stella react when Ed and I dragged her downstairs? Would she look upon the chained-up Destiny with excitement, or would she need prodding, pushing? Was she even ready to know our deepest secrets? Ed clearly thought she was, and I would admit, I was genuinely curious to know whether she would fit into our lives as perfectly as Ed hoped. Once we brought her to Destiny, we would know for certain.

  And if she did not react how Ed hoped, what then? Would he let me kill her? I’d be lying if I said the thought still wasn’t tempting, even after admitting to both myself and Ed that I liked her. I guessed I was just a particularly fucked up individual, willing to kill the woman I liked, the woman Ed practically loved.

  I wouldn’t think about that now.

  I let my hand do the work, imagining the blood. How Destiny would choke in her own liquid-filled screams before she died. How fantastic Stella would look drenched in bright red. My knees started to buck, my balls tightening. I held my eyes shut, the water from the showerhead coursing down my chest as I gave in to my urge. The orgasm swam through me, swallowing me as my body trembled, my pumping becoming erratic. Milky white cum shot out of me, landing on the wall near the faucet handle.

  I really should run a rag along that wall one of these days. Today was not that day. There were many things on my mind, but only one of them dictated what I did next.

  Within five minutes,
I was out and dressed. Ed was in the kitchen, washing the pan he’d used to make the omelets earlier. The news was still on the TV, its volume turned up so he could hear. I stopped myself from audibly groaning. The last thing I needed was for Ed to become obsessed with this Angel Maker, too. Just because Stella was did not mean he had to be as well.

  Grabbing my keys off the hook hanging near the door to the garage, I said, “I need to get out of this house. Do we need anything from the store?” I waited impatiently for him to purse his lips and glance in the fridge, quickly jotting down a list of things we needed.

  See, what Ed clearly didn’t get was that I didn’t really want to go to the store. I didn’t want a fucking grocery list. But he gave me one anyway, and I left the house without saying another word.

  Okay, so I had to go to the fucking grocery store like a good little errand boy and get what was on the list—though I had no clue how the hell to know whether bananas were ripe or not. If they were starting to turn brown, did that mean they were ripe, or was it the green and yellow ones that were ripe? Things like that I never had to pay much attention to. Growing up, we had people who did our shopping for us so we could focus on what made us money. Killing people who wronged the rich, mainly.

  Some people would call us assassins, but those people would discredit the immensely huge amounts of accidental deaths we’ve been a part of. My family was huge on the accidents, because that way no fingers could ever possibly be pointed at us; I hadn’t spoken to my family in a while, mostly because I was not a fan of the accidents.

  My favorite deaths were bloody, gory, spectacular things that would keep you up at night and fill your dreams with terror. To me, screams were music to my ears and their blood was the paint on the canvas. I was a bit of a brute compared to most of my family, and they were all too happy to let me go off on my own while still allowing me access to Frank and his useful junkyard.

  I knew if I went to my actual destination first, I wouldn’t end up going to the store, so I swung by the local grocer and got what Ed wanted me to get. The trunk of my car had seen a lot of shit; groceries, bodies, holiday decorations, because no Christmas was a Christmas without a real pine tree, according to Ed.

  It didn’t take me too long to finish up at the store, but instead of going home and unloading the food, I took the long way around. Meaning, I drove across town lines, to Stella’s house. It was just before noon when I pulled up, parking along the side of the road. She lived on a residential street where cars couldn’t speed by, unlike our road.

  A quiet neighborhood; the houses cookie-cutter, meaning they were all basically the same. Change up the color of the siding and everything was the same. I slowly got out of my car, making my way to the front door. I knew how to pick locks, but I would hold off for a little bit.

  Why was I here? Why did I feel the urge to see her? I couldn’t say. Fuck it, I didn’t even know why I knocked on her door, feeling my heartbeat speed up as I waited for her to open it. I didn’t like Stella as much as Ed did. My body shouldn’t be reacting to her like this. It’s what I told myself, at least.

  But, I realized, it might not be the truth.

  Maybe…maybe I couldn’t kill her, if I had to. Maybe I wouldn’t want to.

  It took me a minute to grasp the fact no one was rushing to answer the door. If anything, I heard nothing. Odd. I was seconds from returning to my car to grab the kit I had in the glovebox when I thought to try the doorknob. An instinct I couldn’t deny, and it turned out to be the right one.

  The door was unlocked.

  Make that extremely odd.

  I walked in, frowning to myself as I checked out the front room of the house. Living room and adjoined kitchen. Nothing felt out of place, and yet something was wrong. Deep down I knew it. Closing the front door behind me, I checked the house, calling out for her, “Stella? Are you here?”

  Stupid of me, because her roommate could’ve been home, but I found no one. No Stella, no roommate. Not a single sound in the house nor another person. I was alone, which I found strange.

  What I found even stranger was Stella’s cell phone, sitting on her nightstand, plugged in on the charger. Her roommate’s phone was the same.

  Where would two twenty-something women go without their phones? Nowhere I could think of. Nowhere good.

  It was then I had a thought. A thought that was so far-fetched, yet possible, I felt my blood pressure rising to a fucking boiling point in my veins. What if the serial killer had Stella? I couldn’t care less about her roommate, but no serial killer was going to get his hands on Stella, not while I was alive and breathing. Of course, the thought following that was a startlingly simple yet crazy thought.

  Stella was mine. Ed’s and mine. Not the damned Angel Maker’s.

  I pulled out my phone and dialed Ed. He picked up on the third ring. “Did you get lost on your way home from the store?” Though he didn’t outright accuse me, he knew I was someplace I probably shouldn’t be.

  There was no use trying to hide it from him, so I simply said, “I’m at Stella’s house. She’s not here, neither is her roommate. Both of their phones are plugged in and charging, and neither of them are here.”

  It wasn’t much to go on, I was aware, but these days, who the hell left their phone at home? Phones were either in back pockets, or in purses, or glued to people’s hands. There was no leaving it at home. Forgetting it just wasn’t a logical option.

  Ed didn’t ask me why I was at her house and not on my way home. How could he, when I’d just told him Stella was missing? “You’re sure she’s not there?” he questioned, his tone heavy as he tried to conceal his worry.

  I sighed into the phone. “Oh, would you look at that? She was standing behind me the whole time—”

  “Really?”

  “No,” I growled out, moving to the door that led to the garage. Pushing it open, I was about to swear up a storm at Ed, ask him how he truly thought Stella had been following me so quietly the entire time I didn’t know she was there, but the moment I stepped foot in the garage, I froze.

  The air was rank with a smell I knew well. It was a scent both Ed and I knew like the backs of our hands, because oftentimes our basement smelled like it.

  Bleach.

  Fumbling around, I found a light switch and flicked it on. “Someone used bleach in the garage,” I said, inspecting the floor. The yard tools were perfectly arranged on the walls, like someone with OCD had done it. Every item had a place. It was all so garishly clean, but as I moved to the side door which let out into the yard, I froze. Clean as it may be, there was a spot a bit darker than the rest of the concrete.

  Blood had been spilled here, recently too, by the strength of the bleach smell.

  “Bleach?” Ed echoed, sounding resigned. I did not like the sound of his voice; I didn’t want him to feel helpless, but I didn’t know what to say, because the only thing that could make this better was Stella herself, and who the hell knew where she was right now…if she was even still alive and breathing.

  “Yeah,” I said, going to leave. There was nothing here I could do. We would have to wait, see what happened. If…if that killer got to Stella. Then we’d figure out what to do next, although I already had a plan for him.

  If the Angel Maker got her, I would kill him.

  I would make him pray to whatever fucking God he believed in, and then I would rip him apart, piece by piece until he begged me for the sweet release and cold embrace of death. He thought he was the baddest shit to walk around this county, in this fucking state and this goddamned country? No.

  My beast was far worse.

  Chapter Four – Stella

  It was late afternoon by the time I was released. I was told I wasn’t allowed out of state lines while the investigation was underway, which I supposed made sense, since I was all they had in the way of the Angel Maker. A killer like him would never leave clues or fingerprints accidentally. He was too good to make mistakes.

  Before shoving me along
, they gave me a tiny business card, told me to call them should I remember anything else. They’d probably further investigate me, maybe even follow me. I didn’t have anything to hide, and it was kind of thrilling to know I was in the middle of the cat and mouse game the Angel Maker had with the police.

  If he kept it up, he might even get the FBI involved. How fun would that be? Super fun—and that was the first time I’d ever described anything as super fun. It was a good thing my parents were nowhere nearby, otherwise I’d never hear the end of it.

  I made my way to my house, walking along the sidewalk without a care in the world. Before letting me go, One had said they knew where I lived, that they could find me at any time. I believed them; they had access to databases the general public didn’t. What I still found hilarious was that they thought I had something to do with Sandy’s murder.

  Sure, pin Sandy on me, but what about the body in the basement? What about the other one in the house? I might’ve known Sandy, but I didn’t know them. I had no connection to the other two. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.

  The police made a big show about knowing where I lived, yet they couldn’t drive me? I knew I wasn’t the most fun person to be around, but I was shoeless. By the time I reached my front door, my feet ached, the soles hurting as I stood on the concrete and reached into my pajama pockets.

  Shit. My key. How the hell was I supposed to get inside without the key? I would’ve been able to call Callie or even the landlord if I had my cell phone, but I didn’t have that, either. I was screwed.

  It was late in the afternoon on Sunday. Was Callie even home? Did the Angel Maker get to her, too? Only one way to find out. I knocked and said, “Callie? It’s me. Let me in.” Nothing. No response, no answer whatsoever. Figuring I had nothing left to lose, I tried the handle, knowing it was going to be locked.