Page 38 of Petrify

I can’t convince my limbs to move.

His hand slowly glides up my leg in rapt fascination. He touches me with a possessiveness, as though it is his right. Fingers trailing up to my knee, maybe he can feel my thighs already beginning to quake. A thrill begins to tingle low in my belly. This spirit sent to haunt me, peering at me, gauging my reaction. Touching me just to see what happens.

My heart is racing, my fists curling into the blanket. “Bastien.”

He pauses, eyes glinting in the darkness.

And then he inches closer, until he’s right before me, the black mass of his body in the dark blocking out the few slivers of light coming from beyond the curtains. His hand palms my thigh and it’s so startlingly intimate, my breath hitches in my throat. Frozen in shock, in terror, my voice escaping me, my mind going haywire. He grabs the blanket and gently pulls.

In my terror, I let him.

Last night, he was so close, and yet so far, and I thought it was going to drive me crazy. Now?—

The blanket falls from my fingers, and I let him slowly pull it from my body, uncovering me like he needs to see what I look like underneath, and suddenly there’s only air between us. This black mass of ghost, though still very much alive, looming over me.

I can hear the soft cadence of his breath. He’s close, so close, but he hasn’t touched me, skin to skin, hovering over me like a child peering down at an ant on the pavement.

Through the dark, I can feel him moving, but I don’t know what he’s doing until his fingertips are brushing against my cheek. His voice comes out a breathy whisper but it’s all male, all want. “Can I…?”

I gasp at his touch, and he falters for just a moment, before he’s trailing them over my cheek, down my jaw. Brushing hair behind my ear. Tracing the ridge of my nose. Softly grazing my lip.

I should have left this house the moment the haunting becamereal. I should have left long ago.

His thumb trails along my bottom lip with a little more pressure, and I am all electricity, my terror mixing into something dark and wanting and just as curious as the predator above me.

I can’t see him and inexplicably, foolishly, it has my toes curling, my body ignoring the screaming alarm going off in my head. I’m frozen still, unsure what to do, afraid to move, because I don’t know what he wants.

How many times has he watched me sleeping? How many times has he stood at the foot of my bed, exactly like tonight? What if I hadn’t woken up?

The image of him, moving in the dark only a few nights ago?—

“Can I do this?” he whispers again, and suddenly I’m full of the need to hear his voice, his full voice, and not just this whisper. He trails his fingers down my face, along the column of my throat, and I’m nodding, giving him permission, unable to say no.

I want to see him. I want to reach over and switch on the light, but I know it’ll only chase him away.

He’s straddling my legs now, the sturdy weight of him pressing me to the bed, hands wandering across my shoulders, down to my chest, before he places his palm over my breast. My back arches just the slightest bit. All I can think isoh no oh no oh no.

He touches me like he’s never done this before, never used his hands for gentle things.

And with each touch he’s claiming me for his own, grasping with a self assuredness, like he knows I’d let him.

At night, you are mine.

And I agreed to it.

“Is this good?” he asks.

I bite my lip, afraid to speak, nodding instead. And he can see me in the dark, his eyes so used to living in the shadows, that maybe to him I’m clear as day.

Maybe he’s not human after all, and I’m letting some terrifying spirit grope a human woman—an incubus, sitting in my lap, damning my soul, takingeverythingfrom me.

He hums, the sound so soft in the silent dark. His fingers massage my breast, and it’s everything I can do to stay quiet, biting my lip so hard I think I taste blood. And then his fingertips are at my nipple, brushing against the stiff peak, and he pinches—lightly—drawing another gasp from me. He does it again, more roughly this time, and I hear him gasp too.

The red hot feeling of lust, overwhelming and terrifyingly intense, rushes all throughout my body.

He plays with me for only a second more, and then the white shape of his mask moves, and he’s leaning down, his breath hot on my face, as though he needs to see every bit of my reaction to the way he’s touching me.

I want to see him. I want to see him so badly I think I’ll go mad. It’s too dark to make anything out. His face is only inchesfrom mine, the mask discarded next to my hip. My lips tingle, an electric anticipation, knowing he’s so close.