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Olivia Grayne never imagined that her life would end this way. None of the crime novels she’s read or any of the morbid poems she’s penned could have prepared her for what is happening to her now: about to be murdered, all because she lives in a lonely old cottage in the middle of the woods, employed by her unpleasant, cantankerous cunt of an aunt. Bramson’s lifeless body must be decaying somewhere in the house. Briefly, she wonders how Dan would have done it. Would he also have decapitated her after, like he did Mrs. Shellbrook? Would he have poisoned her? Smothered her to death, maybe? Whatever it was, good riddance.
As Dan takes another step toward her, backing her closer to the desk, the space between them disappearing, the phone rings. He freezes.
Olivia waits for his next move. The phone rings again.
Unfazed, Dan closes the gap between them, his hand settling on her waist. Olivia finds herself frozen in place, the ringing of the telephone drowned by the sound of her heartbeat in her ears. Dan’s eyes are so deeply blue they’ve become black. “Answer it,” he whispers. He lets her go, just barely.
Olivia walks to where the telephone is, regulating her breathing before picking up the receiver. “Hello?”
She watches Dan’s face, which, for the first time in the fortnight he’s lived with them, has finally shown true fear.
“Oh, Justin, hello ...” Olivia begins, breathing a sigh of relief. Dan’s face softens, the fear disappearing from his features, too.
“Yes, yes ... sorry to have worried you ... I’m all right, I got here about five minutes ago ... I just thought it was foolish to run away again ... I have nothing to be frightened of, of course.”
“No, no, please ... I insist ... you don’t have to come over ... I’m okay, really. Danny is here,” Olivia continues. She looks at Dan reassuringly. “I’m safe.”
Dan smiles.
“Alright, Justin. I will see you in the morning. Good–bye.”
She puts the phone back on its hook but remains still, looking at herself in the mirror. Dan approaches her from behind, locking eyes with her through their reflection in the glass. She turns around to face him.
“You’re lookin’ at me as if you never see’d me before,” Dan says, wetting his bottom lip, a coy smirk on his face.
“I never have. Nobody has,” Olivia says. “You’ve stopped acting at last. You’re real. Frightened.”
“Miss Grayne,” Dan says, their bodies inches apart.
“Olivia,” she corrects him.
“Olivia,” he starts again, a smile creeping across his features. His hands stay by his side. Olivia feels her skin buzzing. “Might I possibly kiss you?”
“Yes,” she says, her voice so low and soft it’s almost inaudible. She’s waited so long to hear him say those words, even as she would never admit to herself.
With her consent, he takes a step forward, as she takes a step back, until she’s against the wall, until their bodies are flush together, until she feels his arousal hard against her. Dan cups her face, his hands cold—how little she suspected that—and kisses her, finally, blessedly.
He smells like his cigarettes, the peppermint he constantly nicks from the kitchen, whisky he tries to conceal. And he’s gentle. It surprises her at first, then she remembers who he is. Remembers how she’s finally seen him—all of him—plainly and clearly. For all his facades and his pretences he’s still unable to mask the tenderness that she’s always suspected. He’s a monster, that much is certain—and she’s recognised that since the start. But there is a gentleness, a longing for something underneath it all that no one else has seen. And still, even this, she knows: he’s acting. This softness, this slowness, this call for sympathy and comfort—it’s all made–up. He is a monster, after all. And she should never forget that.
The kiss intensifies. Dan slips his tongue in her mouth, sending heat straight to her center. She does the same, which elicits a small groan from him. They kiss for what feels like forever. They kiss until Olivia feels like she’s running out of breath. But she doesn’t pull away; instead, she brings a hand to cup the back of Dan’s head, pressing him even closer.
“Olivia,” he says, his voice low when they finally break apart for air. Some of her lipstick has smeared onto his mouth, and his cheeks are flush with colour. His pupils are blown. His hair is mussed. The sight of it makes her ache.
“Danny,” she whispers.
He kisses her again, harder this time, tangling his fingers in her hair. Emboldened, she hooks her leg around him, keeps him close, close, close. She feels like she’s on fire.
Just then—
“The flame of passion is not red,” she hears him whisper suddenly as he cups her ass, bringing their hips closer until she feels him hard against her. He kisses her neck as he goes on, reciting her poem back to her as if the words have long been burned in his brain. “But white.”
Her breath catches in her throat.
“Not quick,” he continues, peppering kisses on her skin, soft and light. “But slow.”
She feels his hand start to hike up her skirt, then venture to where she’s aching, wet.
“What comes after?” Dan asks, his voice deep.
She’s unable to muster anything else except sighs. Dan asks her again. This time, a demand. “What comes after, Olivia?”
“Touches us not every day,” she says, making something up on the spot. She kisses the corner of his lips. “But once in a lifetime.”
The verse satisfies him, it seems, and he lifts his head to look at her. Olivia wonders how she looks. Her eyes must be glittering again, like that night in the kitchen. Her lips pink and wet and swollen from their kiss. Maybe her cheeks are red. She wants nothing more than to feel him, fully, and it’s time that she confessed.
“I need you,” she says as Dan finally slips a hand up her skirt, feeling her warmth against her gusset. “I need you, Danny.”
She’s not afraid anymore.
Maybe she never was.
“I need you,” she says again. “But not here.”
Olivia offers her hand out to him. He takes it. She leads him to her room. She gives way for him to enter before she does, and when he’s inside, she shuts the door behind her, locking it. They look at each other for a long time, not saying anything, not moving. Just looking.
He leads her to the edge of her bed. He sits down, looking up at her. She should’ve been frightened by how lecherous his look is, but it confirms something she’s long suspected. He’s wanted her all this time, just as much as she’s wanted him.
He pulls her down onto her, letting her straddle him. They peel off each other’s clothes, slow, like in her sonnet. An article of clothing falling to the floor, then a kiss, and repeat. Her cardigan, his tie, her top, his waistcoat, her stockings. She unbuckles his belt and unzips his pants. All the while, she’s grinding on him, trying to relieve the growing pressure, and he’s grinding back. Her skirt remains, bunched around her waist, and he brings a hand up to her, feeling her wet and warm on his fingers. “I’ll go slow,” he says. “Can you relax for me, Miss Grayne?”
Hearing him address her that way, she almost moans. But she presses on. Olivia nods, a wordless yes from her, and a sigh of relief. What do you know about passion anyway, Bramson’s resentful, bitter voice rings in her ear. Not much, until now. He knows this, and she knows that he knows this, and he makes sure she feels comfortable.
He angles himself to enter her. “Are you sure, Olivia?” he asks one final time.
“Yes,” she says; holds the back of his head to bring their lips together.
When they pull apart, Dan grabs her waist, never taking his eyes off of her. He licks his lips and Olivia kisses them. He enters her, finally, and Olivia’s breath hitches in her throat. Her eyes roll back, and her grip on his back tightens. He kisses her shoulder and begins to fuck her.
—
The rest of the night is a blur. Hot, fast, slow, sweaty.
Sometimes there’s nothing else but the sound of their flesh against each other. Sometimes it’s his voice whispering the dirtiest things in her ear. His moans, his grunts mixed with her whimpers. Sometimes it all of these at once, it seems.
Sometimes they’re both on their backs, his fingers on her clit. Sometimes he’s inside of her. Sometimes it’s his tongue. But the lilt of his voice remains the same. “Do you touch yourself at night, Olivia? Do you think of him? Or do you think of me?”
—
When she’s on top, he manages to say, “You are so beautiful, Olivia. So, so beautiful.”
“I’m sure you say that to all the women you bed.”
“You know I don’t,” he says, serious.
And she knows he’s not lying.
—
Eventually, he sits up to kiss her full on the lips. Dan maneuvers them so that she’s on her knees. She lets him.
He’s slow at first. He always is. Gentle, soft, until he’s sure she can take it. When her moans grow louder, when she asks for more, please, more, Danny, his hips start thrusting faster—and harder—too. She’s close. She’s so, so fucking close.
“This is what you want, isn’t it? To get fucked like this? So you could forget your dreary life of nothing, day in and day out? Isn’t it, Olivia? Isn’t it, Miss Grayne?”
That does it for her. She comes with him inside of her, in and out, in and out, his warmth and his hardness and his tenderness and his voice. It’s all too much. It’s like nothing she’s ever known. “Thatta girl,” she hears him say as she rides out her orgasm. “Come for Danny now.”
“Can you lie down?” he asks once she softens. She lies on her back, guiding him to her, and she watches his lips part and his eyes close as he enters her again. When he’s close, he pulls out as courtesy to her, his hot come spilling onto her stomach. His eyes are squeezed shut, pleasure painted all over his face. “Olivia,” he manages, soft and quiet. With her under him, he looks like a lost boy looking for refuge. He looks like he’s finally found it. He collapses next to her, taking her into his arms and kissing her again. And again, and again, and again.
—
“What do we do now? Are you going to kill me too?” she asks, half a joke, half curious to find out what his answer will be.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he says plainly.
Olivia smiles. He does too. A sincere smile, she thinks, if she allows herself to be delusional enough.
“I propose we take the cat, set this house ablaze, and run away. What do you think?”
She’ll never truly know if she’ll just be another one of his dead women, the newest addition to his ever–growing body count. Maybe one day it will happen. Maybe he will kill her. Maybe he never will. But if he does, oh—
What an extraordinary way to die.
“I think that would be marvellous,” Olivia says, closing her eyes. “Wake me up before sunrise. We’ll go away together.”
And, for good measure, in a voice so sugary–sweet that she mortifies even herself, she asks: “Do you promise?”
“I do,” he says.
—
That’s the kind of a fella I am. I make up my mind about something and then I do it.
Always one to keep a promise, Dan kisses the top of Olivia’s head. “Wake up, Miss Grayne,” he says gleefully. “It’s time to go.”
They dress together. He picks up her skirt from the floor; she hands him his tie. As she adjusts her clothing in front of the mirror, he approaches her from behind, moving her hair out of the way to expose her neck, kissing it.
Outside in the sunroom, she spies the cat on the sofa. Olivia picks him up and waits for Dan, who returns to the cans of kerosene he left by the fireplace when she arrived last night. How long ago that feels now. How far away. She watches as he pours their contents all over the wooden floorboards.
“Cigarette?” he asks.
“No, thank you,” Olivia says. “But I have matches.”
She lights his cigarette, cat in her arms. He takes a drag; offers one to her, shared smoke billowing in the space between them.
“Ready?”
“More than you’ll ever know.”
He flicks the cigarette to the floor, watching the flame dance with the liquid. Olivia and Dan head out the door quietly, walking across the garden, away from the cottage, past the bridge, farther and farther away from the forest.
As they reach the edge of the woods, just about ready to cross to town, the birds have begun to sing and the sky has become a dark, muted lilac.
Night must fall. But after it does, in just a few hours later, the sun will rise and morning will creep in once again. Behind them, the Bramson bungalow has caught fire, the flames roaring in the half–light.