Free Bone: A Dark Billionaire Romance (With bonus book Exhibit!) by Stella Noir, Aria Frost Page B

like a maniac as I watch blood drip from the cut I’ve left in her body, my own still fuzzy and warm where Bone was moments ago.
    They were all right.
    There is no better feeling than killing, and perhaps I knew that all along.

Chapter 20
Christopher
    M aude is an absolute natural. Bone knew she would be and I have to defer to his expertize in these matters. She could have bolted like a frightened rabbit, but she didn’t. She took the knife, she placed it underneath the poor girls armpit, she listened to instruction in the fog of sexual ecstasy and she dragged that sharpened blade so hard across her skin she nearly cut her arm off completely.
    She’s still bouncing about the room while I remove the bone from the dead girl’s wrist, questions flying from her mouth like bubbles from a fresh spring.
    I wonder if the first was the same for me. I wonder if I was this excited. I envy her a little. The rawness of that emotion, the preciousness of the first time.
    When I have the bone I want, I clean the blade of the knife on the blanket and begin to get dressed.
    “When are we doing the next one?” Maude asks, before I’ve even had a chance to pull my trousers up.
    She’s watching the dead girl, her eyes thick with emotion, the corpse frigid and cold.
    I put my hand on her shoulder, squeeze her neck tightly enough that she places her hand on top of mine.
    “When we are both ready.”
    She’ll go through a range of emotions. It’s like a drug this business.  Now she’s experiencing a wave of excitement but later she’ll have the come down. She’ll cry, she’ll deny it, she’ll wonder if it happened at all and then she’ll need to do it again. It’s the cycle of addiction. You get your fix but it only lasts a while.
    She can’t take her eyes off the girl.
    “Fuck me before we leave”, she asks, her breath heavy and slow. “Fuck me while I look at her. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

Epilogue
    O ne year later...

Maude
    A fter that first time, after I met Bone and he showed me what he wanted from me, we couldn’t stop. I couldn’t pull myself away from it, even if deep down I knew I shouldn’t be doing what I was.
    The beauty of the art became the justification for the killing, and it still is. I can’t deny that. I can’t lie to you and tell you it’s not beautiful and it’s not necessary and people don’t have to die, because it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever been involved in and in order for it to continue, there have to be sacrifices.
    There is no-one that understands that more than Christopher. I have come to understand that Bone isn’t so much a completely different personality as an artistic creation devised by Christopher as a way to justify what it is he does. Bone and Christopher are the same person and I love both of them equally.
    We are working hard to complete the project that Bone has set for us. After tonight, if all goes to plan, we will have both entire arms finished and the police still have no fucking clue. They think these are copycat killings because they differ in style to the original twenty seven. Garimund, as a result, is still on death row.
    I can’t begin to tell you how incredible the sensation of being involved in something like this is. I feel like I’m creating history, that in years to come they’ll talk about the genius of the work we’ve done with the kind of reverence that’s usually reserved for absolute masters of their art. And to have someone to share that all with makes it even more worthwhile. It makes me understand why Bone brought me along in the first place. The police and the public only know so much of what goes on. The killer sees the real beauty in the work first hand, and now that I’ve seen what he does, I know that he really is a true genius.
    Tonight we are doing one of mine. Bone lets me pick from time to time, and this one I’ve been looking forward to for a while. It’s just a shame we only get to do them