Page 20 of Haunted Spurs

7

Demons in Disguise

Selene

I light the third and final white candle. The match hisses, releasing that familiar sulfur smell that always helps me draw the line between the real world and the one in my head.

I sit at my desk in front of the window. Outside, the full moon is so bright it casts long skeletal shadows across my bedroom floor.

I reach for my laptop, pull up my Gothic & Doom playlist, and let the deep, haunting notes of a cello fill the silence. The plan is simple: force my fucking brain to completely forget what just happened in Ron’s room. I will not think about his chiseled abs. I will not think about the fact that I almost caved.

And, above all, I will not think about what he does to me.

I crack my knuckles and shake out my hands to release the tension. I take a deep breath and stare at the blinking cursor on the blank page.

One beat. Two.

Yeah. I might have something.

Lightning rips through the sky as he passes, and then the rain starts pouring down, turning the prairie dust into thick, slick mud.

He moves across the clearing with an unnatural slowness. His heavy boots don't even seem to sink into the muck. No matter how hard I try to run, my leg muscles screaming and my throat burning, he stays just steps behind me. A relentless shadow hunting me down.

I can't stop running, even though I know he's going to catch me. He always catches me. It's a ruthless game, a macabre dance I can't escape. And yet, every time, this desperate flight triggers a wild, irrational fear inside me. A visceral terror that inevitably bleeds into a wild, irrational arousal, leaving my core throbbing and obscenely wet.

Another flash of lightning tears through the darkness. For a second, his towering figure is illuminated in the heart of the storm.

His worn leather pants hang dangerously low on his narrow hips. He's wearing a loose shirt, now reduced to a torn, soaked rag, hanging open over a broad, brutal chest. Under the cold flash of the lightning bolt, I can see every single contracted muscle of his rain-slicked abs; a landscape of shadows and savage power that steals my breath.

His face is a dark, covered abyss. Is he wearing a mask? Or is there no face at all beneath that shadow? I don't even know if he's human. But the ruthless force he possesses me with, the things he does to me—there's nothing mortal about them.

Another flash. Another blinding glare.

The dark brim of his cowboy hat is closer. The sharp scent of burnt leather and thunderstorms saturates my nostrils. I'm running until I can't breathe, but it's not enough.

It's never enough.

An invisible force, as powerful as the snap of a lasso, wraps around my waist and violently yanks me backward. A scream dies in my throat as my back slams against his hot, bare chest. His fingers, surreal and yet so fiercely tangible, clamp down around my throat.

"You run so well, little sinner," his voice rasps. A dark sound that doesn't come from the air, but echoes directly inside my skull, thick with lust. He lifts me entirely off the ground with one arm, spinning me around to crush me against the rough trunk of a dead tree.

His free hand slides without preamble beneath the hem of my rain-soaked skirt. He finds me already drenched, trembling, and ready for him. Two long, calloused fingers sink deep inside me with a violence that rips a desperate moan from my lips.

The rough friction of his hips grinding against mine drives me crazy. He grinds his rock-hard erection against me, while the freezing, inhuman surface of his mask drags against the sensitive skin of my neck.

"But you already know how the hunt ends," the shadow whispers, increasing the lethal rhythm of his fingers inside me, making me arch my back in an involuntary spasm. "Now... beg your ghost to fill you.”

Well, at least I wrote five hundred words.

A massive leap, considering that for the past few months I've only done one thing: write a miserable line, stare at it in disgust, and delete it. Delete, write, delete, write. A torture of wasted keystrokes.

But... are these five hundred words actually any good?

I reread the passage. There's tension, sure. But isn't it too similar to The Shadow Hunter? Doesn't the setting feel a little too much like my second novel?

The questions start multiplying, crawling out from the dark corners of my mind. What about the plot? How the hell did this chick end up out on the prairie at night? There are massive plot holes already. Am I going to be able to carry the story from here, or am I just going to get stuck on the very next scene?

And then, inevitably, that nasty feeling starts creeping in. I start hating every single word I just typed. I start thinking that he is a caricature, that she is pathetic, that the whole scene is ridiculous. My brain is already projecting the negative reviews, the disappointed readers, the scathing comments from people who think I've lost my touch, that I'm just churning out scraps from my past hits.