Page 17 of Razors & Ruin

His smirk bewitches me. I thought he was getting Marianne all hot and quick back at Spitalfields, but this is how he really does it. He sees me with blood and brains on my hands, and he wants me. His eyes scan my body, his hands twitch, and I know it.

Sweeney and Nellie, Nellie and Sweeney. As the sun rises in the East, as sure as politicians are corrupt and love is a blind whore—it’s him and me.

I sit on the floor and give Marianne a push, sending her spinning. “Well, my Harry was a butcher and a hunter. He always said an animal has enough brains to tan its own hide, and he showed me a few times how to skin a deer or a pig.”

“We usually took the hides to the tannery to be worked, but I sort of know how to do it. Harry was the kind who liked to be able to do a job for himself, even if he could hire the help.”

“A man after my own heart,” Sweeney says. His voice is silky, like a lover’s, and I stare at him, astonished. “What a clever girl you are, treacle. Resourceful in a way that surprises me. What then?”

I blink, confused. “What? Oh! We use her hide to fix your new chair, of course.”

The air in the room, which was dank and cold, grows heated. For a few beats, neither of us speak. Then Sweeney is on his knees at my side, pulling me into his lap, his cock hardening as he grinds against me.

“Let’s give the poor bitch a show, shall we?” he snarls.

9

Nellie

He can’t be serious, surely.

I unbalance and lean on the cold stone, slipping in Marianne’s slimy cerebral fluid. A quick glance at her upside down face confirms her eyes are not rolled back; they’re a little crossed instead. I suppress an absurd belch of laughter, and Sweeney clutches a handful of my hair.

“Now, now,” he scolds playfully, giving my head a wobble. “No need to be that way. You’d look fucking stupid too if you were dead.”

He slides his hands up my thighs, feeling his way. “Tell me the truth, Nellie. Did she come here and threaten you with the law, or did you contrive a means to get her to come by? Because I saw how she looked at me in the market, and I could have done with a chat.”

His thumb finds my slit through my underwear. “Did Marianne know anything?”

The pressure on my sensitive spot makes me shudder, but there’s a frisson of fear beneath.

Marianne told me things I didn’t want to know. Sweeney is right; there was more she came to say. I just didn’t want to hear it.

“She was flapping her lips, that’s all,” I say with a sigh. “Fucking with me.”

“That’smyjob, treacle.”

He slips a hand to my behind and clutches a handful of flesh, his nails pinching the skin, and I bite my lip. The dangling corpse continues to drip, and Sweeney swipes his fingers through the liquid as it patters onto the floor beside me.

“Oh my God.” I squirm in his grip, but he can hold me in place with one hand all too easily. “Don’t put her gunge on me! That’s disgusting.”

“You’re the one who raised the stakes, love.” Sweeney shifts his hips, his cock hot against my core. “You killed in hot blood, and why? To make me proud. And Iamproud of you. You’re my good little heathen.”

Ohhh. My heart swells at his words. To think Marianne had the gall to suggest my Mr. T wouldn’t love me?

No hoighty-toighty barber’s wife nor perfumed slattern could turn his head.

Iam the one who waited, who saw him for what he was and accepts him now, bleak soul and all.

I tug at his crotch, freeing his thick erection. He chuckles at my eagerness and props himself on his elbows to watch as I wriggle out of my undergarments and position myself over him.

“Nah.” He palms his shiny tip and pulls it away from me, and I freeze in a half-squat, staring at him. “Stay there.”

He wipes his wet hand along his shaft. The clear fluid coating his girth could be anything, but the blood mixed in gives it away. Sweeney is lubricating himself with products that were, until recently, the contents of Marianne’s brain and backbone, and now he’s applying it to me.

It’s warm on my pussy, as though still alive in its own right, and despite the depravity, there’s no denying how good it feels.

“Now you can ride me, treacle.” Sweeney puts his hands behind his head. “But don’t neglect our guest. Show me how much you hated her.”