More consuming.
Moreeverything.
My head falls back against the wall, and my fists tighten so hard on his hoodie that my fingers hurt. A sound I don’t even recognize rattles from my throat as my hips buck and my orgasmfloodshis hand.
He groans and slams me harder against the wall, fingering me faster and deeper, dragging the orgasm into a second, even more powerful one that steals the strength from my legs. I go limp against him, shuddering and shaking as his fingers keep plunging into me, until my vision literally darkens at the edges.
It’s only then that he lets me catch my breath. I’m still shaking as he slowly slips his fingers from inside me and slides his hand out of my panties. He keeps his knife against my throat and uses the flat side to lift my chin.
I watch in dazed silence as his glistening hand slips under the mask.
…And the wet sound of a mouth licking fingers clean cuts through the silence, turning my already heated face crimson.
“Little prey,” he growls quietly, “I think you just became my new favorite fucking meal.”
The knife leaves my chin as he steps back. My legs arestillshaking, and it takes everything I have not to slump to the ground like a marionette whose strings have been cut.
Silence and an eerie stillness after the mad lust and violence settles over the bedroom. The man reaches out, and my breath catches as he cups my jaw and runs his thumb over my bottom lip as he slowly draws me close again and leans down to whisper in my ear.
“Good girl.”
My mind goes blank and my mouth falls open as his hand drops from my jaw. Without another word, he slips the knife into the belt of his jeans, turns, and walks out of the room, casually closing the door behind him.
My legs finally give out, and I slide to the floor with my heart racing, my insides melting, and reality as I know it completely shattered.
3
YELENA
I dreamthe same confusing mix of fantasies and nightmares as usual.
The fantasies involve masked men with knives.
The nightmares involve an unmasked monster whose weapons were alcohol, trust, and naïveté.
When I wake up, the second I shake those swirling dreams aside, I reach for my phone and navigate to the home page of theHawthorne Herald. Instantly, I sit up in bed as my breath comes faster.
After I left the party last night—dodging questions from my friends why I was leaving so early—I stopped off at Ravencroft Library, which is open twenty-four hours a day, and used their landline to call in an anonymous tip to the Hawthorne Hollow Police.
Surelythey’ve been to campus by now, and that motherfucker is sitting in jail after they found my planted incriminating evidence.
The fucked-up thing is, I’mnottalking about the man in the mask who forced me against a wall, cut off my fucking bra, and made me come all over his fingers with a knife to my throat.
I’m talking about the other one.
But when I click onto the website for the local newspaper, the only headlines are about some upcoming 10k charity race and the new office building going up near the docks.
No “Jane Doe Murder Investigation Identifies Suspect at Knightsblood” or “Former Para Bellum President Arrested on Murder Charges”.
What the fuck.
I open Instagram and swallow back bile as I click on the fucker’s profile.
Instantly, my heart drops.
There’s a post fromtwenty minutes ago—a selfie of him, on campus, smiling that smug, practiced smile that masks the predator underneath, standing in front of St. Aldric’s Chapel with a bullshit caption about how good it is to be “back at the old alma mater” and three nauseating hashtags.
#KnightsbloodForever
