Colour Series Box Set (62 page)

I should leave. Now.

HOME. HOME AFTER ALL the shit in the past 48 hours he brings me home. What a dick, is he just done now? I played my role for his fucked up family now he is done with me for the day. Fucker.  I need wine or Vallium or anything that will blank the last day right out of my fucking mind. The grey is seeping in; it is too soon to want to kill again, too early to start a new cycle. I usually carry the high of a kill for weeks after, the buzz of a good kill can last even longer. The high is gone already. Flat. Nothing left. I feel the need to start over again.
What if he makes me stay grey?
What if Callum makes everything grey? Right now I am tipping towards black. Complete darkness that I might never come out of, the grey is just fog I can still see through it. He is my weakness and I am scared.

I can feel his eyes boring holes into my ass as we climb the stairs to my home, my home, I didn’t invite him in, I didn’t ask him to follow me. Yet here he is invading my life again. I need to be away from him, I want him to just go. At least it is warm in here, he left me to freeze for ages before he even attempted to warm up the car. Asshole. He may look like a gentleman, but looks are very deceiving in this world. Callum is not a gentleman. There is nothing gentle about him. Nothing at all. My aching body is the proof of just how ungentlemanly he really is. I feel like I have sold my soul to an even bigger devil, at least I knew what kind of a dick Neil was.

The afternoon with the O’Reilly women has left me feeling drained and tired. I want a glass of wine, a shower and my bed in that order and without Callum. Just thinking about him hurts right now.

I hate sharing my space, this is my space. And he is in it. Why is he in my space and my head, and dare I say it my heart?

My first cold glass of Rose wine slides down my throat quenching the thirst and slowly wiping my mind clean of the changes in my life. Callum’s presence in the doorway sucks the wind out of that plan very quickly. God, he isn’t going to fucking leave! I pull down the sealed bottle of whiskey and glass and shove it at him as I push past to go and sit at the table to think. “Here, I haven’t poisoned this yet.” The sofa leaves him the option of sitting close to me and I can’t handle that right now. A table between us will stop my treacherous body from melting what little defence my mind has left.

My muscles feel stiff as I sit on the hard dining chair and try to drown my thoughts and aches in the second glass of wine. I should be drinking the scotch. I wish he would go; instead he sits opposite me with his drink in hand. He oozes power even now at the end of a long day, he fills a room his size and the presence he commands just by being in here. Those evil green eyes that pull me in, the body I know is hidden beneath that suit. Callum is the worst kind of villain because he looks like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. That sexy as all hell hair and the damn beard that make my lady parts turn all mushy when I see him. Damn the devil knows how to create a temptation so perfectly. I shift in my seat trying to get comfortable, but I am never going to feel comfortable with his evil eyes raking over every inch of me like I am a fucking meal he wants to eat. My body is in still in agony from last night and I feel my muscles protesting every movement I make. I won’t survive any more of the same.

His eyes don’t leave me for a second. I feel my skin heating up under his gaze as I swallow down my wine; I scrape my chair across the floor and get up to go shower I need to be in another room away from Callum. He is worse than a fucking stalker – I can see him following me. Which is somehow even creepier.

“I am going to shower Callum, you can leave now.” I sneer at him, I want him to go. His eyes dance with contempt and a wicked smile begins to play on his lips. My eyes are drawn to them as his tongue licks at the bottom one, my mind drifts back to what those lips have done to me and my blood begins to heat. Fuck this. I need to get away from him. Now.

“I am not leaving now Shannon. We are not done.” His voice mocks me, he makes me feel stupid. “Yet.” He adds and the greyness starts clawing at the edge of my mind and I imagine that smirk being wiped off his face as he succumbs to my poison. I turn on my heel and storm out of the room. I am going to fucking murder him. I am going to exterminate him, he needs to go. He is not safe here, he is not safe in my home. I can kill him here. We
are
done. I cannot feel like this all the time I will end up in an asylum. There is something that makes a killer snap and go crazy, lose all control and
get caught.
Callum is going to be that thing, because he won’t fucking leave! My hands twitch at the thought of going to get something out of my box to kill him right now. I force the thoughts away and go to the shower with a racing heart and a head full of tormented confusion. I am breaking.

I want to kill him here. Worse than that
I want him
and that is a thought too dangerous to even think. Callum doesn’t want me, he is using me, and he made that very clear this afternoon. He loved Cassie and I am not her. I am the consolation fuck. I am the ghost of the girl he lost. I am just the other sister the slightly less lovable and tragic one.

Of all the immoral, villainous, monstrous men in my life I have to want the worst one of all. The one that truly has the ability to not only kill me, because they all would, but to
break
me. I mean cut every part of me into a million pieces he is already breaking into my life and I am losing all control.

I step out of my clothes and into the shower as I turn the hot water on full. I like the sudden burn on my skin and the steam fills my lungs and clears my thoughts just a little. The water burns where my skin is broken, the welts are tender and I can see bruises everywhere I look. His fingerprints are bruised into my shoulders and breasts. There is a blue mark where he bit into the soft flesh of my ass. The marks on my wrists where he tied me to the bed are raw and sensitive, they are seeping a little and will need an antiseptic. I probably need a Tetanus shot and an antibiotic now that I think about it. Every inch of me hurts and yet as I feel the pain as it slowly wipes the grey away. The opposite of what my reaction should be. He is breaking me already. He taking away my identity, the thing that makes me tick. The one thing that was
mine.
Murder, and I selfishly don’t want to give it to him.

Tears fall down my cheeks silently under the shower. I hate crying, but the tears won’t listen they just fall. For the first time in my life, I don’t know what to do. I have always been alone but now I feel lonely. I almost wish my mother wasn’t senile and I could ask her advice. Who am I kidding, any mother, insane or otherwise, would say run a mile from any O’Reilly man! I let the water wash the tears as they fall and my chest heaves with every silent sob. I hold myself up with hands pressed against the shower wall and try to pull these emotions into control. As my tears disable my defences I slide down to the shower floor and crumble into a pile of bruised broken flesh. Just because I am a killer doesn’t make me immune to emotion. I still want the feelings that everyone else gets to have I just have no clue on how to get them without killing for them. Or what I should do with them when they rampage through my life. I have no clue what to do with feelings, they are more foreign than Chinese to me. On the shower floor drowning in my own tears and the hot water, I realise that all, I want, is not to be alone. I don’t wish to feel the bitter bite of loneliness every day. I want to know how to feel. “
Focus on the job Shannon!” My father would yell at me anytime I even hinted at being close to finding someone to love – or kill. “You cannot have feelings and be a doctor, patients die and you need to be fine with that. Stop your sappy girly crap you little whore, sex is sex not love!”
I am attacked by memories of my father as he beat and raped the feelings out of me yet again. I hate remembering as much as I hated him, my father was not worth the air he breathed.

I feel a cold breeze on my back, it makes me shiver, but I don’t move I lay there and wallow in my heartbreak over my shitty life a little longer. I inhale a deep breath and prepare to stand when I open my eyes to a man’s dress shoe standing in the water pooled around me. My eyes follow the leg up and find a soaked Callum standing over me fully clothed with his big hand out for me to take. His eyes do not seem evil like they did earlier; they are soft and almost sad. I shiver from the cold and the thought of Callum feeling anything at all. I put my hand in his, and he pulls me to my feet slowly and gently. I feel so small next to him without my heels on. His other hand brushes the wet hair off my face softly pulling it behind my ear and out of my eyes. Then he wipes my tears, he knows I have been crying, and I wonder how long he stood there watching me cry on the floor before I noticed him. I close my eyes because I do not want to see his face when he is feeling sorry for me. I know I am pathetic right now; I just wish he never saw it. Closing my eyes doesn’t stop me feeling. I feel my heart cracking because those gentle eyes are not Callum. I have seen the truth and I cannot un-see it, can’t un-feel the pain he inflicted on me and I can’t undo the deal I have made either. Even now as his hands trace over the marks he made I stiffen in anticipation of more pain. I hold my breath until my lungs burn waiting for a repeat of last night. I try and stop my mind from drifting to the grey, stop thinking of lockbox filled with poison in the next room. My lungs burn for me just to breathe, but I cannot because I am afraid.

I feel his breath on me as he gets closer, I can smell the whiskey on it. His hands are moving softly on my skin, they are not hurting me as they trace over and over the marks he made last night. They cause a sting where my skin is grazed open. I feel his chest rising and falling against my own with every breath he takes. His shirt brushed against my bare nipples and I can do nothing to stop them from reacting to him. I have to exhale as I start to feel faint and the second, I open my mouth to breath in the oxygen my body craves, it is stolen by his mouth taking mine. Gently with a soft passion that cannot possibly be real. I must be dreaming this. “Stop.” I whisper, but he doesn’t listen.

The quiet indulgence of his kiss has my mind at war with my body, he has ignited something in me. He is still possessive but softly so, and his touch is not to wound but to want, I am confused and aroused and not grey at all as my hands claw at his wet clothing. I know the power his body conceals and it scares me, but I want it, I want to embrace that fear right now. At this moment, Callum wants me, in my weakness and brokenness despite my being a killer right now he wants me. In addition, my stupid body betrays me by wanting him too.

There is no grey, there is no grey and he isn’t hurting me. I may not kill him - today.

“What are you?” I whisper to him as his soft touches drive me a little crazier.

“I’m too many things to define, Shannon, but right now I am yours.” His deep voice melts any defence I thought I had. He has removed the fear from me and I forget everything.

“How can you be both?” I let my jumbled thoughts escape through my mouth as he kisses a trail down my neck to my breasts. His hands are still rough, but there is no pain.

“Shannon, shhh, stop thinking. Feel me.” He silences me with a kiss before we stumble onto my bed still wet.