by Devon Ashley
I didn’t care that she wasn’t finished, that she was currently rubbing in a second coat of conditioner. And by the way her eyes were teasing me while she did it, I had no choice but to give in and follow my feet forward. She giggled softly as my hands took over for her, stroking the conditioner through her hair. Her head tipped forward, soothing whimpers escaping her mouth as I gently massaged her scalp. Her hands slid up my chest, then down my abs. When she traced the V that led to my groin, I just about slammed her against the wall right there. But I bit back the urge as her hands slipped around my hips and settled down.
I nudged her backwards and her head fell back against the flow, where I continued to stroke my fingers through her roots and strands until the conditioner washed free. Then I diverted the water to the rectangular rainforest option above us. Tiny flecks of water trickled down on us, the smallest streams of water working their way around our joined mouths.
I didn’t dare ask her if she was sure, the head on my cock in command of my actions now. But I did take it slowly, gently, not wanting to push her too far too soon. Our arms and legs tangled, our mouths moving to explore the other’s skin. Throats. Chests. Stomachs. Her hips. Ears. I wanted to get to know them all over again, but it was the spot where her neck and jaw met and the tip of her breasts that really got her to melt into me.
She paused our movement to trace the line down my left peck, a circle of rough scar tissue right in the middle. I wished she wouldn’t – it always depressed her. But it was a part of me now, just as her marks were a part of her. I grabbed her chin and angled it upward, her brown eyes sadly gazing into mine. “Don’t. I would’ve stood before you and taken that shot even if I had known it was coming. No regrets.” Then I smothered her with kisses before she could sulk or wallow in despair, thinking it was her fault I got hurt.
Backing her into the wall, I lifted her up and pushed against her, refusing to let gravity have her back. Because she was my gravity, the very thing that kept me grounded. And I was hers, and I no longer wanted her to feel like she was falling. She was mine to catch. To steady. To hold.
I paused our kisses long enough to look into her eyes, giving her one last chance to back out, but all she did was smile and drape her arms above my shoulders for support, her arms bending up to run her fingernails across the sides of my scalp. She pulled my lips back to hers and I guided myself inside her slowly. She gasped just taking in the tip and threw her head over my neck. I paused, waiting. “More,” she whispered in my ear.
Yielding a wicked smile, I didn’t just give her more, but all of it, and I basked in the way her muscles trembled as she took me in, her audible approval reverberating inside my ear. After months of abstinence, I wanted nothing more than to rip into her and sate the intensified sexual urges that built up and topped out long ago. But I strained myself to go slow most of the way through, allowing her mouth to seek what it needed from mine between thrusts, only going faster or harder when she commanded it. Right now, I was willing to let it be all about her needs.
Later though…I thought, chuckling inside my head…I was going to need her to appease mine.
Something woke me in the middle of the night. I jumped to a start, throwing myself up in bed, snatching the sheet with a death grip. I gasped as I heard a thump! My chest suddenly felt like a jackhammer was pulverizing its way through bone, my heart beating so fast it was sure to break free. Overheating. Smoking. Heat suffocated my throat as I forced myself to release the breath I’d been holding. Was that a sneaker squeaking on the floor?! As my eyes fearfully fixated on the open door that led to that dark hallway, my hand crawled its way toward Nick.
Finally finding skin, I whispered, “Nick!” If he knew how often I didn’t sleep at night, then he couldn’t be as heavy of a sleeper as I thought he was. I shook his arm spastically, too afraid to move my eyes from the black abyss, too afraid a shadow would punch through and attack the moment I did. “Nick!” I cried with a little more ferocity. I went so far as to smack his cheek a few times, but nothing. He was dead to the world.
I gasped again. Dead.
My fingers fumbled around his neck, and I took in a sigh of relief as I found his pulse. He was alive, but I feared he was useless to me at this point. Drugged perhaps. And I couldn’t help but wonder why I wasn’t in the same state.
I quietly crawled over him and leaned to open the drawer of his bedside table. When I didn’t find what I was looking for right away, I panicked and yanked the drawer harder, slapping my hand all around on the inside. The gun was gone!
I dropped to the floor as silently as I could, landing on bits of cloth. I grabbed at whatever was beneath me – it felt like my sleep shorts and Nick’s t-shirt – and pulled them on, not giving a crap if they were inside out so long as I wasn’t butt-naked any more.
I swallowed hard and crawled my way to the door. How I found the courage to peek out, I didn’t know, but my head slowly looked into the hallway. Nothing. All sounds had stopped. Even the normal ones. Like the hooting of the night owl that lived outside, and the chirping of grasshoppers. Silent, as if they held their breath in wait, too. Even the hum of the refrigerator seemed oddly silent.
Utter. Deafening. Silence.
Unless…
My eyes drifted back into the room. I couldn’t hear that gentle knocking the fan usually made as it spun indefinitely on its axis. Swallowing back the fear, I slid my hands up the wall as I wobbled to my feet. I closed my eyes and thumped my head against the wall – the switch was up. Flicking it up and down did nothing to change its frozen blades. Nick always slept with the fan on. And it was running as we made love that second time tonight.
The cool wall was soothing against my warm forehead, but it did nothing to ease the terror shaking my legs.
This isn’t happening. There’s a logical explanation, there is. The power went out. That’s all.
Even though it wasn’t raining. Or windy. Or a rolling blackout.
Fuck.
Refusing to believe it, possible scenarios ran through my mind. Maybe someone crashed into a power line pole somewhere. God, it was awful how much I wanted that to be true right now. That I would risk the life of a stranger if it meant that I was safe. That he hadn’t found me.
But I had a really bad feeling that wasn’t the case. Because Nick wouldn’t wake up. God help me, because Nick couldn’t. I had to find a weapon. I had to reach my cell phone. Goddamn it – both my gun and my phone were in my bag. In the kitchen. I thumped my head again, wishing I could punish myself harder and louder for my stupidity. The one night my phone wasn’t attached to my hip. The one fucking night I let my guard down, foolishly believing I could ever be safe.
And Nick usually…charged his on his table!
I rushed back to his bedside, my hands searching the table top. I had the urge to jump and scream for joy once I found it, but I managed to hold back. Activating his phone, I stilled. Who was I going to call? My parents, who were an hour away? Or the police, who would then have my new address in their system? That was how Zander found me last time.
But if he was the one in the house, he already knew. But what if he wasn’t, and didn’t already know?
My fingers swept through Nick’s contact list, coming to rest on my mother’s cell number. I hit the green button and waited. After ten seconds had passed, the call still hadn’t been connected. I cursed quietly and stared at the phone. No bars? Are you fucking kidding me? Since when?
I tucked the phone into the band of my pants and carefully made my way back to the door to the hallway. I was going to have to go out there for my gun and phone. And I didn’t like that idea. My body sure as hell didn’t like it either, as the trembles in my legs began shivering their way up the rest of my body. Anxiety attacked my heart, making it feel like needles were continuously stabbing at it from all sides.
I drew in a deep breath and slithered out the door, hugging the wall as I forced my unwilling legs to walk the length of the hallway. I hadn’t heard any sounds the last few minut
es, and it was the only comfort that I had – that maybe whatever, or whoever, was making that noise was gone now. I paused just outside the opening to the living room, listening with all my might.
Silence.
Still, I tiptoed my way through the living room and into the kitchen, digging around in my bag. I found my phone, but what I really wanted wasn’t there. “No,” I whispered, frantically digging through a second time even though it was pointless. Two guns missing wasn’t a fucking coincidence. The shaking began with my lower jaw, then spread downward to my legs, which now how the stability of Jell-O. No, no, no, no, no, no…
My hands fisted, and I realized I held my phone in my right. Activating the touch screen, I was enveloped by its bright glow. “That’s not going to work.” His voice was calm and somewhere lost in the darkness, but I screamed anyway, because I could feel the fear deep within my bones awaken. I accidentally dropped the slim object and heard it shatter into more than one piece at my feet, surrounding myself in darkness again. Frantic, I retreated farther into the kitchen and reached for the knife block, yanking out the first thing I could grab, the metal making a swishing noise as I pulled it free. I held it out before me with a shaking hand, but the room was so eerily dark that I could see nothing.
“Oh, come now, Natalie. You act like I’m here to kill you.”
His voice was a little closer this time, but not fully in the kitchen yet.
Kill me? No, what he wanted to do to me was far worse. He wanted to keep me. To use me. To keep me away from everyone who loved me, who I needed myself.
“Get. Out.” I managed to say it forcefully, but my voice shook terribly. God, I was pathetic. My limbs were trembling. Even my jaw was quivering so fiercely the tendons holding it together ached. I couldn’t even hold the knife still. All those self-defense classes and I was still a feeble little girl shaking in her boots. Except right now I didn’t even have the luxury of thick rubber soles to keep me grounded.
He lightly chuckled, the sound getting closer and closer. Suddenly remembering Nick’s phone, I pulled it free of the band circling my hips and hit the power button to activate the touch screen.
“I told you,” he said calmly, his voice way too close now, somewhere in this very kitchen. “That won’t work. Neither will your computer. I’ve jammed the signal and cut the power to the house, so don’t bother with the landline either.”
He was right. I still had no bars. I was alone in my house with a fucking sex trafficker and the only person who could possibly help me was passed out in bed. And even in this powerless house, I was lit up like a fucking Christmas tree. Fearfully, I shined the brightness of the screen opposite of me. I gasped and accidentally lost Nick’s phone to the floor as well, the light instantly cutting out. Zander was right there. Though he was now shrouded in darkness once again, I knew he was still leaning comfortably over the island on the opposite side, amused by my every movement.
Think, think, think! I had to keep him talking. Had to keep him here. Maybe Nick’s drugs would expire and he could help me.
“How did you find me?” I asked fearfully. I thought I had been so careful. Shit, my entire family had uprooted their lives and it did nothing to keep this guy from coming.
What he said chilled me to the bone. “What makes you think I ever lost you?”
I silently gasped as my heart skipped several beats. “What?”
“I. Never. Lost. You. I’ve known your every movement since the moment you were extracted from my house.” His voice began to carry as he walked around the island, and I found myself walking in the opposite direction, keeping the same distance between us at all times as we circled. “I’ve had cameras inside and outside this house since right after you moved in. I’ve been listening to everything you say. You can never hide from me, love.”
The weirdest noise was coming from my throat. It was like it wanted to answer, but there were no words for what he just said.
“And why do you constantly bring a knife when you know I have a gun?”
“Because you fucking took mine!” I blurted. Both of them. Because with all the fucking cameras he knew exactly where we kept them.
“Put it down, love.”
I wasn’t his fucking love!
For some reason I thought shaking my head no in the darkness would suffice. It took me a long moment to realize it wouldn’t. “No,” I answered. Damn my shaky breath. “Get the fuck out of my house!”
He sighed heavily. It wasn’t lost on me that pissing him off would end badly for me. Unfortunately, nothing I said or did would ever be enough to get him to get up and walk out of my life forever. I held my breath and listened for him to continue to move toward me, but he never did. He was tormenting me for the hell of it. “Why the hell can’t you just leave me alone? Why do you have to keep coming back?”
“Because you’re mine.”
No, I was Nick’s, but I felt saying that would only remind him Nick was lying helpless in the bedroom.
“I’m happy here.”
He chuckled again, and it chilled me. “No you’re not. You’ve been miserable.”
Suddenly, I felt a little bolder. How dare he tell me how I felt! “If I have been, it’s only because I’ve been stressed over you!”
“Or, you’ve been miserable because deep down, it pains you to be separated from me.”
I about dropped my knife, too. My eyes seriously bulged. Too bad he couldn’t see how I was reacting to that ludicrous delusion. “What in the hell makes you think I want to be a prisoner in your home for the rest of my life?”
“What makes you think you have a choice in the matter?”
God I wanted to run. To take off, burst through the back door and take my chances in the woods even though I was hardly dressed and barefoot. But I couldn’t. Because Nick would be at the mercy of a man who would have none if I did that.
“The sad part,” he continued, “is that you’re the reason I’m here right now. I was willing to wait a little longer as I prepared to take you back in, but after what you said last night… Well, I couldn’t risk the chance that you’d find a way to be tracked.”
“Because you’d never get to keep me for more than a day?” I spat, angry that I’d never have the chance to fulfill the plan I was sure would save me.
“No. It’s easily taken care of if you know where it’s implanted. It’s because the moment people started messing around with your body, they’d most likely notice that I already had a tracking device buried inside you somewhere.”
I could feel the smile I couldn’t see, curling his lips in an evil manner, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end as the realization sank in. My breaths became heavy, my insides doing a horrible job at hiding the panic coursing through my veins now. He was tracking me. He knew where I was every second of every day. He could’ve taken me at any moment. There was no hiding from him, not even blanketed by a forest with zero neighbors within screaming range. My family uprooted themselves for nothing. Nick worked a job he hated for nothing. I lived in fear, afraid for weeks to even drive to my therapy appointments, because it risked me being seen in public. And none of it ever mattered.
Did it ever matter? He had claimed he used the police report to find me the last time. What if it was just a lie to keep this hidden from me?
“For how long?” my angry, shaky voice spat.
“Since I first acquired you. Did you really think I’d spend all that money perfecting your damaged body and not have a way of keeping you permanently in my possession? Granted I had to let you go for a while, but I’m confident we’ll never be parted again. You see, I’ve decided to step back in the industry for a while. Allow myself to fall off the radar as one of their men of interest. It’ll just be you and me in a little house no one will ever know about.”
After a silent moment, his steps decreased the distance between us again. I was so stunned that it took a moment for my body to react and retreat against his advance. “Natalie, we both know you’re le
aving with me tonight, so put the knife down and stop walking away from me. I’d hate to have to kill the man sleeping in your bed. I feel indebted to him slightly, since he took care of you when I couldn’t.”
My jaw tightened with anger. “That man has been my boyfriend since I was sixteen! He’s the one who truly loves me, and he’s the one I love!”
“Love is fickle. Once removed and back in my care, you’ll learn I’m all you’ll need.”
Fuck! Did he hear the words spewing out of his own goddamn mouth? Or did he truly not realize how fucked up his logic with life was?
Lost in my own thoughts, it took me a moment to realize his steps weren’t coming around the island again. They were passing through the dining room, away from me.
“You have whatever few seconds it’ll take me to reach that man you so dearly care for, to lay the knife on the counter and catch up to me, ready to go. Otherwise, I’ll be shooting at him in the dark. Whether or not the bullets hit anything critical enough to kill him, I’ll guess we’ll have to wait and see.”
Zander did something very loud with his gun as he disappeared into the hallway. I didn’t even take the time to think. The blade automatically fell free of my grip and bounced loudly on the ceramic beneath me. “No! Stop!” I shouted, my feet taking off. I ran blindly through the darkness, slamming my knee into the door jamb when I cut the hallway too soon.
An oomph expelled from chest upon impact, but I kept moving, using my hands to push me off the wall with momentum. The hallway was pitch black and I slammed into Zander unexpectedly about half way to the master bedroom. He must’ve been expecting the impact, because he absorbed it without me knocking him over. His hands gripped my shoulders so tightly I almost winced in pain. “You see? Deep down you are eager to come away with me.”
Neither of his hands held the gun anymore. I was sure it was tucked into the back of his pants, and if I thought for one second I could grab it and fire off the perfect shot before he could stop me, I would’ve done it. But there was no way this killer wouldn’t beat me to the draw. And though I was quite certain he wouldn’t kill me for attempting it, he would surely take it out on Nick. Damn this asshole for using him against me.