His

HIS

(A Dark Romance)

By

Aubrey Dark

I never meant to be here: tied up in bed next to a serial killer.

When I followed him home, I was just playing Nancy Drew. Trying to find out his secret. His kiss was intoxicating, and I thought he was harmless.

I thought wrong.

Nancy Drew never ended up in a basement, handcuffed to a radiator, teased to the edge of insanity, begging to be let go.

Soon, I stopped begging to be let go.

Soon, I started begging to be
his
.

Copyright © 2014 Aubrey Dark

All rights reserved.

First Edition: October 2014

ISBN: TBD

CHAPTER ONE

     Gav    

The best part about choosing a victim... well, for me, it’s the little things.

Seeing what they do for fun, that’s always eye-opening. This one, my next, he was a strange man. He normally went from his job as a university attorney to his home, where he would beat his wife and son and then go to sleep.

He had only one minor deviation in his schedule. Every week or so, on a Saturday, he would stop off at the college library to drop off and pick up a book. A legal thriller. They were always legal thrillers.

Legal thrillers and crime fiction...
bah
. The authors writing that stuff don’t know what it’s like, or they would write it different. They don’t know the pleasure of driving a knife into someone’s hand as they cry for mercy, the pleasure of seeing the blood bubble on their lips when their throat is cut.

The pleasure of all the screams: the screaming drowns out the thing that drives me mad. It drives away the shadow.

Yes, I’m sanest when I kill.

Usually, the men I kill are the ones who make sure their own misdeeds go unseen. When they beat their wives, they hit them in the stomach. They would never leave a mark, or society would know.

I don’t mind leaving marks. Nobody will see their bodies, anyway. They’re cowards, all of them, cowards and bullies that will disappear without a trace.

I climb the library staircase to the second floor, where the genre fiction is kept, thinking about how I will do it even as I watch him climb the stairs above me. His legs move like puppet legs, wooden and mechanical up the steps. Inhuman.

I’ll follow him to his car, I think. Then the syringe, the catch.

Then the kill.

     Kat    

It was a beautiful spring day in California. The arboretum glowed with dappled sunlight and college students wandered lazily through the green paths, enjoying a weekend off from class. In the native sagebrush, orange butterflies danced in the air, and above us, oak leaves glittered silver in the breeze.

I couldn’t have cared less.

“Will you hurry up, Jules,
please
?”

“Kat, you have got to be the most boring person I know. Stop and smell the roses! And by that, I mean there’s a super cute guy over there painting in the rose garden.” Jules tilted her head to one side, her purple-tinted bangs falling over her face. “An artistic guy. I like that.”

“We don’t have time for guys. We’re already late!”

I was shuffling quickly through the arboretum, dragging my coworker behind me through the gardens. All around us, college students wandered lazily around in pairs and groups. A dozen sorority girls had put out a blanket so they could work on their tans on the grassy lawn, and every guy who walked past slowed to half-time to gaze at the rainbow of bikini bottoms covering skinny tan asses. I shoved my way past the ogling meatheads.

“We’re only, like, ten minutes late,” Jules said, sighing as I yanked her out of the sunny arboretum and through the library doors. We hustled past the front counter to the back, where I grabbed a cart quickly and pretended that I had already started shelving.

“You’re
so
lucky Sheryl is late.” Our boss was, as Jules put it, more sadistic than Disney’s Ursula and less forgiving than Inspector Javert.

“Lucky, nothing. I knew she would be late. You want to skip back out to the arboretum and check out that artsy guy?” Jules gave an exaggerated wink.

“No.”

“You’re never going to find a date with that attitude.”

“I date plenty of guys.”

“Sure, Kat. Right.”

“I do!” My cheeks flushed as I pushed the library cart full of books to the elevator. Jules followed me, flipping through one of the books that we’d just gotten in.

“Since when do you read romance novels, anyway?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

“Ugh, never,” Jules said, tossing the book back onto the cart. “Such boring protagonists. The same old plot. Romantic heroes doing romantic gestures. Maybe you should read one, though.”

Ha. There was nothing in those bosom-heaving books I found sexy. I would never admit it out loud, but even the new “racier” stuff didn’t do much for me. I wanted a hero who would push me to the edge of insanity, a man who would make me
feel
.

“Why would I read, uh,
The Rogue’s Hidden Past
?” I asked.

“Let’s see,” Jules said, pointing to the back cover. “To
find out his terrible, dark secret
.”

“I bet it has something to do with kilts. Do you
see
this cover?”

“Those are some sexy manlegs. Manlegs that could be wrapped around your waist.”

“Jules!”

“You know why you should read this, Kat? You should read it because it might get you in the mood for some sexing.”

“Jules...” I pushed the book cart harder toward the elevator. So much for changing subjects.

“What? Kat, really? You haven’t gone on a single date since you started working here.”

“That’s because I
just
started working here.”

“Two months ago,” Jules said, rolling her eyes.

“Two months is not a lot of time to meet a guy.” God, had it been two months already? I definitely had to get out more. But overtime at the university paid well—
really
well—and I was saving up. “Plus I have to work.”

“Work, schmerk. Come out to the bars for once. Isn’t it your birthday soon?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Yes. Next week.” I sighed. I was turning twenty-three, and I was still a junior at college. Well, now not even a junior, unless I could get financial aid. All around me, I saw people a year or two younger than me graduating, getting jobs. And here I was, falling even further behind them. Ugh.

“I can’t, Jules. My loans fell through, and if I don’t save enough for tuition, I—”

“—won’t be able to come back next semester,” Jules said, finishing my sentence for me. “You know, you don’t have to spend money at a bar.
I’ll
buy you a drink.
Guys
will buy you drinks. Especially if it’s your birthday.”

“I don’t want a guy to buy me a drink. They always think that I owe them something afterward.”

“You do. Just like you owe me some sex from the last time I covered you for a six-pack.”

“Is that an offer? I don’t even know how lesbian sex works.”

“It would work better than your current sex life. Or lack thereof.”

“Oh, man, better call the fire squad, I just got
burned
.”

“No, but seriously, I’m ready to do a sex intervention, Kat. A sextervention.”

“That’s not a word.”

“Stop being so boring.”

“
Boring
?” My mouth dropped open. “I am not boring!”

Compared to Jules, I
was
boring. If a seventies punk rock star had sex with a Japanese schoolgirl and had a baby, that baby would be her wardrobe. Her hair was buzzed and spiked except for her long bangs, her tongue was pierced - along with a few other body parts - and her roster of guys—and girls—rotated as quickly as her clothes selection.

“When’s the last time you kissed a guy? Or flirted with one?”

“I haven’t seen a lot of guys around,” I said, shifting my weight from one foot to another. I knew that was an excuse. There were plenty of hot guys around the university. I just didn’t want to be rejected again. It seemed like every girl at school was a hot blonde sorority chick, and I was a mousy brown pile of nothing. Even when I put on makeup, it seemed futile.

And there was something more than that. The boys I’d dated... they’d always been vanilla. Maybe it was all of the books I’d read, but I wanted more. I wanted the whips and ties, the spanking, the whole shebang. But I had always been too shy to bring it up except once, and the guy had looked at me like I was crazy.

Maybe I was crazy. Maybe nobody actually did that in real life. I couldn’t help but dream of a man who could dominate me the way I really wanted, even if he didn’t exist. I shook the dream out my head. I definitely wasn’t telling Jules any of that.

“Plus, they would never go for me. I’m not even a student here anymore now.”

Jules pushed the elevator button and held out a fist in front of me.

“Look. Do you see this? What is this?” She waved her fist inches from my nose.

“Um. Are you going to punch me?”

“No.”

“Are you trying to teach me sign language?”

“No.”

“Is this you coming out to me as a member of the Black Panthers?”

Jules opened her fist to show an empty hand.

“This.”

“There’s nothing there.”

“Exactly. This,” she said, waving her empty hand around, “is
all the fucks I give
about you not being a student. I don’t care.
Nobody
cares. All the guys looking to get laid do not give a single solitary fuck about you not being a student.”

“Fine. Fine.” Jules may not have had the most eloquent way of getting a point across, but it got there. “You tell me what to do to get a boyfriend, I’ll do it.”

Jules held the elevator door open for me. I pushed the library cart in. She followed and smashed the elevator button for the third floor with her fist. I winced.

“Okay, look. The next cute guy you meet, you have to kiss.”

“
What?!”
My pale skin immediately blushed red hot. “No way.”

“Way.” Jules raised an eyebrow at me. “You said you would.”

“I...” I looked over at my co-worker. She raised a fist, and I knew my pleas would fall on deaf ears. She truly gave no fucks, and she also might punch me.

“Fine,” I said, plotting to leave work early so I wouldn’t have to get dragged to a bar. If I never saw a cute guy, I wouldn’t have to kiss him. Right? Right. My plan would work perfectly.

“Fine?”

“Fine. You know what, fine. I will.”

“Good.”

“If it’ll get you to shut up about my dating life.”

“Or lack thereof.”

“Or lack thereof,” I repeated.

“Excellent,” Jules said. “You might escape a life of boring tedium yet.”

“And I’ll have nobody but you to thank for it.”

The elevator jerked to a halt at the second floor and the doors opened. The man standing in front of the elevator doors took a step forward. He was dressed in a crisp white button down shirt and black pants, with dark brown hair and a sharp jawline that hinted at a five o’clock shadow without admitting of stubble.

When he looked up at me, his eyes were like the ocean before a storm. Gray-green slate, calm and confident. I dropped my eyes and saw that the top button of his shirt was opened, his smooth chest peeking out from the fabric. He looked like a model from the cover of the romance novel Jules had just tossed onto the book cart.

He looked like someone who could tie me up, hold me down, fuck me hard and crazy. I blew a low breath through my teeth.

“Welp, this is my stop,” Jules said, hopping out of the elevator before I could think about anything other than those eyes. “See you on the third floor!”

Wait. Oh,
shit
. No, I couldn’t!

I tried to push the cart out but Jules shoved it back at me. A half dozen books spilled out of the bottom shelf.

“One more floor, Kat!” Jules said, her voice forced and bright. As the man turned and stood next to me, Jules coughed in his direction, her eyes wide as saucers. My mouth dropped open.
No. I couldn’t.
I couldn’t. Oh god, I couldn’t.

Jules raised her fist as the doors closed.

Oh god, I had to.

     Gav    

The days before a kill are delicious. I savor them. Every minute I spend tracking and following gets me more and more aroused. More hungry.

The thing I crave is a thrill I can only get from another’s death. The look on their face when they realize I’m about to end their life. Like a shot of heroin straight to the heart. Not that I do drugs, mind you. I used to, but you grow bored with drugs after a while.

And I’ve never grown bored of killing.

The shadow drives me out to look for prey, but that’s not the real reason I was there. I don’t just kill because I need to. I kill because I want to.