When I reach him, he looks away, and I pause beside him, looking down at the ground where he is looking. There is a pile of ashes near our feet.
My throat tightens, and my heart gallops in my chest.
“What happened?” I ask moments before I spot the remains within the ashes. “You burned his body.”
I know I’m answering my own question, but I need to hear him confess to it. It’s like him admitting it makes it more real, even though the proof is right before my eyes.
When I look away and back to Markus, there is no remorse in his liquid amber eyes. There is, however, cool indifference. I don’t understand. How can he just shoot, kill, and burn someone without caring? Without being eaten up with guilt or pain? He’s someone else entirely, and if I look too closely, I’m afraid of what I’ll find. I’m not cut out to deal with a man like Markus, but what other option do I have?
Without saying a word, he moves again.
I take one more glance at the gray powdery residue in front of me, hoping that this won’t be my fate. I wonder if he would really do it. There is no denying he could but saying and doing are two different things. As we walk, more questions appear in my mind and burn the edge of my tongue while trying to escape.
When we stop again, they pass my lips like word vomit, “Do you kill people often? Do you like it?”
I know I should keep my mouth shut, but I want to know. In my mind, this will all be easier if I see him as a monster instead of a man that makes me melt every time he touches me. Perhaps if I hear him say it, I can convince myself that he made me do all these things.
That he made my body react to his touch, that he made me want him.
Markus looks different in the sun. More human, and less dark growly beast. His dark brown hair shines, and his skin has a soft glow to it. When he turns to me, I almost gasp—the feral look in his eyes takes my breath away.
“You should’ve realized by now that I’m not a good man. I bought you at an auction and killed a man seconds before taking you. Don’t act so surprised. You know I’m a monster, and if it makes it easier for you to sleep at night, I’ll tell you. Yes, I kill often, and yes, sometimes I enjoy it. It comes with the job.”
“What job?” The words squeak past my lips.
Markus’s lip tips up at the side. He’s giving me what most would see as a lopsided grin, but what I see as a sinister smile that hides the devil beneath.
“You’re full of questions, aren’t you?”
“I just want to know more about you,” I confess.
The smile slips off his face as fast as it appeared. Taking two gigantic steps, he stops in front of me. Every part of me says to take a step back, to drop my gaze to the ground and cower like an injured animal at his feet, but I can’t, or maybe I won’t.
Amber pieces of glass shine back at me, and he plucks a strand of hair from my shoulder and rubs it between his fingers, almost as if he’s examining the fragility of it.
“If I wanted you to know things about me, I would tell you. You don’t matter to me. I bought you to fuck you, not to listen to you talk, and certainly not to get to know you.”
I’m not sure why, but his words slice through me, cutting me clean in half. It’s not like I expected him to say he cared or wanted to get to know me. That would be wishful thinking, but at the same time, I guess I expected anything but what he said.
“I’m sorry… I just thought—”
He shakes his head. “Nothing. You thought nothing. The only reason you’re out here now is because I know keeping you in that cell in the basement would break you, and I don’t want you broken, yet. So, while it might seem like I’m being kind, and maybe even sweet…” He leans into my face, and I’m hit with the scent of mint and an undertone of coffee.
My bottom lip trembles and my eyes well with tears.
I will not cry, not in front of him.
He analyzes my face for a moment, dropping the lock of hair before continuing, “I’m not. You’re alive because I want you to be. Your one job is to provide me with a spot to park my dick at night, so don’t get it twisted. My caring for you has everything to do with keeping you alive so I can fuck you and nothing to do with wanting to get to know you. This isn’t going to become anything, and you’ll be lucky if you get out of this unscathed.”