The Danger You Know

by Lily White

  Unwrapping his arm from around my waist, he grips my wrist as his teeth release my tongue. Ari drags my hand to my tit, captures my fingers and clamps them on the tip, his breath hot when his mouth presses to my ear and demands, “Pinch it hard, the way I know you like it.”

  And fuck. I do. My hips going wild over his lap, an electric tether between where I pinch myself and his hand that is still slowly driving me until I’m dripping on his fingers.

  I spasm at the feel of it, complain when he pulls his hand free and in one swift move, flips me off his lap to lay over the leather couch, his broad shoulders catching me behind the knees to lift my ass from the couch.

  Sliding his thumb into his mouth to wet it, he gives me no warning before reaching down to wrench my panties aside and jab it into my ass.

  The cotton pulls tight at my pussy, rubbing harshly against my clit as I continue molesting my breast, pinching and pulling because I can see how much he likes it.

  But then Ari dips his head, drags his nose along my clammy inner thigh and bites the soft flesh...hard.

  I squeal and try to pull away, tears stinging my eyes, but he traps my hips between his hands, holding me in place as his thumb works the tight ring of my ass and his teeth punish a spot so sensitive that I clench my eyes shut with the pain, wet heat dripping from between my legs even more.

  When his teeth let me go, he licks the mark and lifts his head, his deep voice reminding me of the night he fucked me senseless against a wall with my husband only feet away.

  “I told you the day would come when I’d have you all to myself for hours to play.”

  Yes, yes he did. And I’m ready for the worst of it.

  An arrogant smirk stretches his cruel lips, the words coming next sending me crashing back to Earth like a fucking boulder driven deep into the dirt.

  “It’s too fucking bad you’re not the girl I remember. That girl turned me on. That girl would have been interesting for the time it took to force her into submission. This one, this shell you became for your boring fuck of a husband?”

  He shakes his head.

  “She’s not enough to get me off. I’m not excited by well-behaved women who live their lives to schedule dinner parties, follow instructions and take a good beating when it’s dealt.”

  My heart slams still with a painful thud, my fingers falling from my breast, the tears now hot and thick as he shoves my legs away and pushes up from the couch.

  When he glances down at me, all I see is cruelty in his eyes. The humor gone. The lust.

  Cold anger ices my veins, denial weaving a lazy trail through my mind. “That’s not true. I’m who I’ve always been.”

  Even I don’t believe the words, but I say them anyway. It’s an empty argument, and he knows it.

  His stare is so condescending it hurts.

  “The fuck you are. The Adeline I used to know would have torn this place apart already. She would have tried to beat me down with anything she could find. She wouldn’t toss herself at fucking windows because she finds herself trapped somewhere. The person I watched for years was more alive than that. What you’ve become is pathetic.”

  He leans over me planting one hand on the backrest of the couch and the other next to my head.

  “You’ve given up everything that made you unique in this world.” Running a callous eye down my body and up again, he laughs and cocks his head, “but I guess you’re still a slut.”

  Shoving away, he storms across the room, opens a drawer and grabs a set of keys, glancing back at me with such a dismissive stare that it stabs me in the stomach.

  “Find who you really are, Adeline, and maybe I’ll want to play with you again.”

  I scream at his back as he disappears down the hall leading to the elevator.

  “Where the fuck are you going?”

  The only response I get is the ding of the doors opening. The soft hum of the motor when they close again, and he’s gone.

  Tears stream down my face, my body bristling with barely restrained rage.

  How fucking dare he?

  Even more than the anger is the shame I feel, the truth of it slithering inside me like venomous snakes.

  Ari isn’t wrong in what he said to me. And the evidence of that is in his penthouse, the parts of me on display.

  Adeline

  He isn’t kidding about there being no way out of his penthouse. After Ari leaves, I try the elevator again, realize there’s no getting out that way and then search the space for emergency stairs.

  Fortunately, I find some. Unfortunately, that door is locked up tight, just like Ari’s bedroom door as well. If a fire occurs, I’m as good as dead, but it doesn’t appear he cares much.

  Everything else is fair game though, but after he leaves, I can’t bring myself to look around. To run my fingers over the spines of all the books I’ve read, to pluck a string on the cello, to stare at photos I’d taken several years before I made my life the mess it is.

  And that’s how it goes for several days after.

  Every day, Ari leaves and I’m alone in his penthouse. Food is stocked in the fridge, clean clothes are left in my room, there’s a television to watch if I want, but that’s it.

  He’s essentially trapped me with the relics of who I once was from the time the sun comes up to the time it goes down, and I refuse to touch any of it.

  I spend my nights in bed sleeping soundly, waking up from a dark oblivion I’m not used to, but only because I also wake up each morning to find the sheets rumpled, my legs sticky and the telltale ache between my legs that someone had been there taking what they want.

  Apparently, I can get him off despite what he claimed. But he prefers the sleeping version of Adeline. The one that reminds him of who I used to be.

  Ari is right that I sleep better after a good fucking, what he doesn’t know is that I’m not completely unaware.

  What happens to me while I’m sleeping occurs the same in dreams. And it kills me to realize that the diaphanous shadow I’d never been able to reach has solidified into a demon who has wrecked my world and stole me away as if he owns me.

  But touching him, feeling the weight of him finally...it sets my heart at ease, and I’m not crying out anymore with the desperation to hold onto him.

  I should be fucking terrified of what he’s doing. Angry. I know that. Ari is a stranger, if that’s even his real name. He’s a ghost. One that shows up when I’m not looking and is gone when the sun dissolves the shadows of the night.

  In a way, this past week has been spent like all the years he’s followed me. I don’t know what he does for a living. Where he’s from. What his hobbies and interests are, even though, on that one, I can take a guess. I don’t know what he’s thinking or why he thinks what he does. I don’t know when he’s watching, and that’s the most fucked up part of all.

  All I know is he’s a beautiful man, one who can drive my body to places it’s never been, and he’s obsessed with the woman he thinks I am.

  The woman I used to be.

  A fucked up young girl who was spinning out of control without knowing which direction to turn next.

  Maybe I’m still that girl, because it shouldn’t be comforting to wake up every morning knowing he’d been there. It shouldn’t make me sleep better to know he’s standing over me.

  I should be terrified.

  But I’m not.

  At least until the morning comes when I wake up to clean sheets and my pillow on the floor. To clean thighs and my blankets wrapped around my legs. To dreams that had me crying again because the shadow never came.

  He never showed up. And that terrifies me more than anything.

  Jumping out of bed, I don’t bother going to the bathroom first before running down the hall barefoot and in nothing but a t-shirt.

  So many thoughts are colliding in my head.

  Maybe he got in a car accident and is hurt or dead. Maybe I’m stuck here, and nobody will know to look for me. Maybe he slept somewhere else, fo
und another woman to obsess over.

  That last thought hurts the worst.

  Turning the corner, I stop dead in my tracks when I’m pinned by a pair of brown eyes I don’t recognize. A short shriek tears from my throat to see a stranger, my body jumping back behind the wall as I peek out at him.

  The man cocks a brow and reclines lazily on the couch, his expression stern, but the faint smudge of bruising under his eyes proving how tired he is.

  “Morning,” he rumbles, his voice deeper than Ari’s, less smooth and cultured.

  “Who are you?”

  Reclining more, he tucks an arm under his head, stretches his long legs out in front of him over the floor and crosses an ankle over the other.

  “Your babysitter.”

  I’m not sure I believe him. “Where’s Ari?”

  Scrubbing a hand down his face, he speaks against his palm. “On a job. He’ll be back late tonight. But he didn’t want you to be alone last night.”

  His eyes meet mine again. “Now that you’re awake, I can get the fuck out of here and head home to get some sleep.”

  I blink at that, my cheeks heating. “Were you awake all night?”

  If he was, I know exactly what he would have heard. My crying. The tantrums I can’t control. I think it was worse last night. The desperation renewed now that I know what it feels like to sleep without it.

  One golden brown eyebrow lifts, the man’s eyes watching me carefully. I can tell by looking at him that he’s every bit the mystery that Ari is.

  “It’s not something I’m not used to with you.”

  Suspicion creeps up my spine, simmering anger right there beneath my skin. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Don’t fucking tell me I’ve had two strange men following me around. Don’t you fucking -

  “I’m the person who’s called in when Ari can’t keep an eye on you.”

  His shit-eating grin says it all. Unlike Ari, who’d appeared vulnerable for admitting the stalking, this man wears it like a fucking crown.

  His smile stretches wider, and he laughs.

  “You going to attack me, too? Or should I toss some pillows near the window so you don’t bust your ass too hard?”

  My eyes round, then narrow. Not giving a shit that I’m barely dressed, I step out from behind the wall.

  His gaze doesn’t dip to run down my naked legs like Ari’s always do. Instead, he keeps it locked to mine, no interest in anything more than slapping me in the face with his knowledge of me when, again, I have no idea who he is.

  “Who are you?” I ask the question a second time, not expecting an answer. It surprises me when he gives me one.

  “My name’s Lincoln. I’m a friend of Ari’s, and I’ve been keeping tabs on you just as long. So, trust me, kid, there’s nothing about you I don’t already know. Hell, who do you think pulled you out of that house when your husband almost fucking killed you?”

  My mouth drops open, closes again. “I thought Ari-“

  “If it wasn’t for Ari,” he interrupts me with a deep voice that easily overpowers mine, “you’d be dead. Several times in your life, in fact. You’re a serious pain in the ass. You should know that.”

  Although I hate the joy he’s taking in making a joke of what’s been done to me, I don’t begrudge his offer of information.

  “How long exactly have the two of you been following me and why?”

  His lips curl as he snatches a pair of shoes from the floor near the side of the couch and begins pulling on his socks. “Nice try.”

  Fine. He won’t answer that question. Maybe he’ll answer a different one.

  “What does Ari do for a living? What job is he on now?”

  “If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.”

  “Ha,” I say, not believing him. “Very funny.”

  His eyes drift up to me as he tightens the laces of a shoe. “I’m not kidding.”

  Taken aback by the honesty in his answer, a new stream of fear drips down my spine.

  Lincoln ignores me to continue tying his shoe, the skin of his fingers turning white around the string for how hard he tugs.

  Once finished, he sits up and locks his stare with mine.

  “Here’s the deal. You have a fuck ton of questions. I won’t answer them, and neither will Ari. But you also have a fuck ton of answers displayed around you in this place. Some will piss you off. Some will make you think that maybe Ari is a good guy. He’s not. I’m not. Don’t fool yourself. But the answers are there. It’s up to you to find them, and it’s also up to you to accept them and learn to live with them. Ari won’t let you go. I don’t think you understand that yet. And it’s not my job to make you understand. I, personally, have been against this all along, and if I had my way, you would have been left in that house with Grant so that he could take care of the fucking problem.”

  I take a step back as Lincoln pushes to his feet, all six foot five of him. He’s a big guy, broad like Ari, his gaze intelligent and assessing.

  But there’s no warmth in his expression. No weakness in his posture.

  “You should fear the man that has you. He’s not right in the head. And for as much of a bastard that I am, Ari has me beat. He can be a cold son of a bitch when he needs to be, and my only advice to you is to stop testing him.”

  He turns to leave, and I want to call out to him. To demand he explain. But it will be as useless as all the demands I’d made of Ari. I’ll be left angry and in the same place I’ve always been.

  Stuck in this place. Surrounded by answers I don’t want and a life I wish to forget.

  When the elevator dings and the soft whir of the motor lets me know Lincoln is gone, I brace a shoulder against the wall and glance around the penthouse.

  My eyes flick over a photograph from my first show, the backdrop my old bedroom with the chaos of color and style, all the crap I’d collected over the years that I threw away or donated when I married Grant.

  I miss that room. Miss my old home. Miss a life that wasn’t scheduled into neat blocks of time and didn’t carry the demands of becoming a person I’m not.

  Focusing on the shadow standing over me where I lay in bed, I imagine Ari’s face looking down. I wonder how many times that cold son of a bitch, as Lincoln said, was in my house, touching my stuff, reading my journals while stealing my private thoughts.

  Obviously, he was everywhere. He knew the train of boys and men I went through in a blur. He knew my habits, my embarrassments, my fears.

  He liked them. Wanted them. Wanted me.

  But I’m still afraid to go through his place and see the truth of it. Especially now after what Lincoln said.

  I’m fooling myself by not digging deeper. I’m letting myself believe this is all just some random thing that isn’t far more dangerous than an abusive, controlling husband.

  This is a man who has been stalking me for years. Learning about me. Studying me. And I’m defenseless against him.

  He’s a man taking advantage of me in sleep without apology.

  And I still have no fucking idea who he is or how he knows me.

  It’s enough to freeze any person in place.

  So, rather than investigating and freaking myself out even more with the truth, I spend most of my day doing nothing.

  Eventually, I find my way to the wall of windows and watch a city move beneath me with no idea I’m staring down at it. I know Grant’s looking for me. I heard his lies on the news. I know many of the people marching around like ants on the sidewalks have heard of the abducted wife, the one who most probably believe is already dead.

  Day turns to night as I stare out, lights blinking on all over, my stare locked to a large church front and center to the window where I sit.

  What was Ari thinking when he watched me get married? Why didn’t he try to stop me on the day I told him I was getting engaged? Why obsess over a woman only to come rushing in after she’s promised her life to another man?

  I don’t understand any
of this. I don’t understand him.

  And I’m not sure I want to.

  He wants me to fight, but all I can do is feel sorry for myself. Feel scared. Yet, also hide.

  Alone.

  I must have fallen asleep while staring outside because I wake up to strong arms lifting me from the floor and carrying me to my bedroom.

  Despite all the warnings, I wrap my arms around his neck to cling to the constant shadow that hovers over me.

  But when he lays me in bed, he grabs my wrists with firm hands and tugs them from his body.

  The bed is cold when the nightmares begin.

  The sheets are clean when I wake up the next morning.

  Ari

  “I take it you didn’t get that asshole on your little excursion.”

  My jaw ticks as Lincoln comes strolling into his living room, his eyes locking to mine as I sit hunched over a computer, my fingers tapping over the keys.

  “No. I didn’t. He must know his number has been pulled, and it’s only a matter of time before he’s six feet under.”

  A grunt of laughter. “If there’s enough of him left to be buried.”

  He’s not wrong about that. The hatred I’m carrying for Grant Cabot is enough that after I’m done dismembering his body, I might torch him and roast marshmallows over the open flames.

  Even in the midst of his missing wife drama, the man is focused on business, using the tragedy to foster more relationships and secure better investments. He’s a snake in the fucking grass. One that slithered away when I thought I could catch him off guard during his recent business trip.

  “He kept people around him at all times, and his fucking suite at the hotel was locked down like Fort Knox. I’m sure it cost the asshole a pretty penny.”

  Leaning back in my seat, I watch Lincoln drop his weight in a chair opposite me.

  “You need to get some sleep, Ari. You look like shit, and if Grant is suspicious that someone’s after him, you need to be at the top of your game.”

  My stare drops to the computer screen, at the different rooms of my penthouse that remain untouched and exactly as I left them.