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Honest Self
1. Attraction
The jeep bounced and rattled like a bona fide army bucket. They were all three looking at him. They took it in turns: subtle little bitchy glances in the rearview mirror. He hated them already.
He looked into the rearview mirror to see if he could catch one of them at it and met weird, violet eyes. Rows of pointy teeth gleamed through the shadows.
It was smiling at him.
‘We’re here,’ said the snake, Martel.
The teeth gleamed at him again. He watched, fascinated. Like a shark’s mouth.
‘I said we’re here.’ Martel pulled off her seatbelt, slammed open the jeep door.
2. Romance
He stared at the dirty child standing in the middle of his bedroom. She had wet herself with terror.
Greed slid long arms around his waist and said in his ear, ‘Show me.’
It was like orgasm – so good and pure and right – and he was almost laughing with delight, the way they always went off so perfectly, wet bags of blood and piss and bile exploding like grenades –
He staggered, overwhelmed, blood roaring in his head, but it held him steady.
‘I enjoyed that,’ it said, thumbing open his belt.
And he stood there trembling with a different darker pleasure and wanting, oh, needing to do it again.
3. Passion
He blew Greed up. It reformed, smug, perfect, standing in a puddle of its own entrails. He wanted to break its smile, make it hurt, make it explode a million times over.
That night the door clicked, the bed creaked and it was there, pressed against his back, long and lean. It bit at his neck – broken glass – and the blood trickled warmly down. Wet bloody fingers pressed into him and he jerked, biting his tongue.
It fucked him hard and brutal, scored scratches across his heaving belly with its claws. Finally brought him, shuddering, moaning, into the sort of intense bright white he’d only felt before when he made bombs of human beings.
4. Intimacy
At about half past four, on the very brink of dawn, Greed came, threw a casual arm over the back and sat beside him on the sagging leather couch. It drew a lazy circle on his thigh with its finger. ‘Can't sleep? I could—’
His temper spiked and he shoved it away. ‘No,’ – but it pulled, stronger, and held him there.
It was warm, like a real person. He could hear its pretend heart beating, the blurred thump of his own pulse in his ears.
‘I can't.’ Drowsily, despite himself.
‘Try. I'll stay.’
He'd try. It wouldn't stay.
Hell to sleep with, he twitched and hit out and woke from nightmares.
Greed stayed.
5. Commitment
Frank Archer sat next to him in the car: tall, thin, neat, with eyes a cold committed merciless blue.
Archer liked wars, he said.
Kimberly liked him.
Between them lay the bag with Greed’s skull.
Kimberly grinned, thinking of Greed’s expression in the basement when their eyes had met: utter what-the-fuck with a swift chaser of I’ll-fucking-kill-you. Greed had growled his name. Afterwards, if he’d stayed, the sex would have been angry and painful and deep. If he’d stayed—
‘Why the sigh, Lieutenant Colonel?’ Archer asked. Kimberly looked down. Archer’s hand, pale against the dark blue of his starchy new trousers.
‘Nothing,’ Kimberly said. ‘No reason.’
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