Page 59 of Unhinged Cain

“You’re funny, a real comedian. Be straight with me, Cain. Why are you doing this? I mean, why are you doing this in front of me,” I pointed to the woman on the table, who was blinking but not yet fully conscious.

“Because Sunshine, you’re in here, and I need you to know all of me. Even the parts you don’t want to see. If you are looking for a reason why I chose her specifically, there isn’t one. She just happened to come upon me, and like a fly in a web, I am the spider looking for a meal.”

The last strap pulled snug, and he stalked toward me. Well, that was how it felt whenever he walked in my direction—like I was the next meal on the menu.

“Here is the thing, Sunshine. I want to answer the things you’re trying not to ask but still want to know. I like the heady, metallic scent of blood. I like the way it glides through my fingers when I work.”

He stopped directly in front of me and held up his fingers, rubbing them together like there was already blood on them. He took another step closer, and I had to tilt my head all the way back to stare into his eyes. Cain was imposing and didn’t need fancy gimmicks to act wild like I’d seen his brother do. He was the calm embodiment of death, the reaper that had been pulled from hell to walk the earth and take any soul he saw fit.

Just his nearness caused me to push all thoughts about the woman on the table to the side. She was going to die.

Why didn’t it bother me the way it should? My mind screamed because there was no point, but the real answer was much darker than that.

Reaching out, he pulled all my hair over my shoulder. “I’ve always liked the tightrope walk between life and death. How long can someone walk the line before they finally die? How much pain can someone take before they can take no more? I like to watch the light drain from their eyes and then wonder where they go.”

His fingers played with my hair, but I couldn’t look away from the blue orbs that held me captive.

“Most of all, I love the power and control I feel and the pride that courses through my veins with the knowledge that I’m the last person they’ll see. Those are the answers you wanted, aren’t they?”

Cain took another step forward. Mirroring the movement, I stepped back. He kept doing it until my back was pressed tightly against the unyielding, cold wall.

“You want to know something else, Sunshine,” he asked, his voice lowering to a gruff growl. It was safer to nod than to try to form words. “Other than killing and reliving my kills through the films I take, there is only one other thing that has ever got my cock hard. Do you know what that is?”

An inferno of heat erupted in my gut as he placed a hand on the wall beside my head. No words would form as my rapidly beating heart made the room swim.

“Do you, Sunshine?” He lowered his head to hover near my ear, and as he did, the heat and energy pressed in on me and made it hard to breathe. “I think you know. You just don’t want to say. Are you too shy to say the words, or are you scared to same them?”

Rolling my shoulders back, I straightened my spine and tried to push back the intimidating feeling.

“Me,” I said.

I hated that little bit of information made me feel special—just like how the last few days had made me feel on top of the world. When he was near me, I felt like the rest of the world didn’t exist, and I hated that he was the only one that had ever made me feel like that.

“Very good, Sunshine,” he said and nipped at my earlobe. I bit my lip as hard as I could to keep from moaning. “I’m hard right now, and not because of what I’m going to do to her, but because of what I dream of doing to you.”

“That’s not my problem.” I flinched as he pushed away from the wall and expected him to hit me for speaking back, but instead, he shocked me by breaking out in a deep laugh.

The sound made me squirm, and I put my hands behind my back and gripped my hands together to keep from trying to touch him.

“Say, ‘dude’ in front of that statement,” Cain said, his eyes holding the first real emotion other than a predatory one since I’d been here.

“What?”

“Put the word ‘dude’ in front of that sentence and say it again.”

Was this a joke? Maybe a test?

“Dude, that’s not my problem,” I said and added a dash of dramatic flare as I rolled my eyes.

Cain laughed hard. It was short-lived, but it was a real laugh. My chest warmed with this sensual gooiness I didn’t want to analyze. His eyes locked with mine, and his face softened.

“You sound just like Abel,” he said and turned away from me.

The image of his twin’s sarcastic banter and him doing a superman dive onto us to help contain me flashed through my mind. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure if what he’d said was a compliment or an insult.

The woman on the table moaned as she woke up. That could’ve been me. Instead of attached to a wall, Cain could’ve slapped me down on a table and tied me up, and I wasn’t sure what was worse.

Cain leaned over the woman, and her eyes grew wide as she tried to move and realized she couldn’t. She jerked hard on the bindings, and even though Cain hadn’t said a word, the woman began to scream and thrash. I covered my ears and winced away from the sound as the high-pitched octave hurt my sensitive ears.