“Doesn’t he?” he murmurs. “You always did miss what was right in front of you.”
Something about the words hooks under my skin, wrong in a way I can’t name. Cain’s jaw tightens, and when his eyes meet mine for the briefest second before dropping to the floor, my stomach sinks with a dread I can’t explain.
I turn back to the stranger, hating the way my body remembers fear before my mind can catch up.
He takes one slow step forward.
Then another.
Every instinct in me screams to run, but my legs feel nailed to the floor.
“Easy, kitten,” he murmurs. “You’re breathing like I came here to hurt you.”
“Then why are you here?” I throw back at him, the edge in my voice sharper than I intended. “Why won’t you leave me alone?”
Tears sting my eyes before I can stop them, dread climbing so fast it makes the room tilt around me.
He moves before I even register it. One second he’s across the room; the next, a gloved hand is around my throat. My back crashes into the wall, the framed picture beside my head rattling sharply from the impact. A gasp tears from me as he lifts me high enough for my toes to barely brush the floor. My legs kick uselessly beneath me, trembling and unsteady as they search for ground that isn’t there.
Air.
I need air.
My fingers claw at his wrist, but he only watches me through the visor, head tilted with a sick kind of satisfaction.
The pressure on my throat tightens, my lungs burning as every passing second leaves me with less air than the last.
“Time for payback, kitten,” he says smoothly, cruelty woven through every word.
Shock crashes through me harder than fear. The memory of the forest, of dirt beneath my back and helplessness in my veins, tears wide open inside me. What stands in front of me isn’t a man. It’s something colder. Something vicious.
A strangled sound escapes me as black spots begin to gather at the edge of my vision. The room starts to sway, walls bending in and out like they’re breathing with me. His fingers feel distant now, more pressure than touch, while the pounding of my own pulse drowns out everything else.
I try to lift my hands again, but they barely move. Somewhere to my left, Cain says something I can’t hear, his voice muffled by the ringing in my ears. The stranger doesn’t even look at him.
The last thing I see is my own body reflected in the mirrored visor as it finally goes limp. Then he speaks from somewhereinside the darkness, the sound of him lingering long after the moment passes.
“Kitten, kitten… hear that sound?
That’s your pulse when I’m around.
Call me monster, call me sin…
Still you let the devil in.”
And then everything goes black.
Chapter 16
Sierra
I wake slowly, still clinging to that soft space between sleep and consciousness where none of this has to be real.
Before I even open my eyes, I pray it was only a nightmare. I pray I’m in my own bed, tangled in clean sheets, sunlight slipping through my curtains while some ordinary, beautiful morning waits for me on the other side of sleep. I pray the forest was just a bad dream. The two bikers. The gun. The hand around my neck. All of it. But the sharp pain biting into my wrists tells me otherwise. Something rough digs into my skin every time I move. My shoulders ache like they’ve been pulled too far back, and cold air brushes over my body in a way that makes dread rise fast and ugly through my chest.
No…
I force my eyes open.
