Page 142 of Pareidolia

“Or?” I finally relent, and the tendril around my throat squeezes like it approves.

“Or you can try to run.”

My body tenses at the offer.

“I don’t run.”

Nox’s head tilts. “But you could.”

“If it’s fight or flight, I’m going to fight.” Sometimes being honest is a pain in the ass. I could run, sure… but even as I think it, I’m trying to figure out if I can throw my knife hard enough to take out one of those ridiculously bright red eyes.

“What if…” He uses the tendril around my throat to draw me forward, holding me up until my boots drag against the dead twigs beneath them and my vision starts to go blurry from a lack of oxygen. By the time I’m in front of him, my entire body is tingling and my cock is twitching again. “What if I could show you?”

Show me.

Fuck that. Him offering to show me is what got me into trouble in the first place. Absolutely not.

There’s no way.

“Show me what?”

His wings pulse faster, that hum digging somewhere deep in my skull. Beneath my skin, I can feel his shadows start to squirm, like they’re dancing in tandem with the sound.

“What it feels like to be prey.” Nox leans close, running his nose along the length of my jaw. “What it feels like to be hunted instead of the hunter.”

My cock isn’t just twitching now. I’m so fucking hard it hurts.

“Why would I want that?” The fingers holding my knife feel numb as I fumble with it, trying to raise it to shove straight into the center of his chest. He catches my arm easily in one of his hands and pins it behind my back.

“Don’t you want to know what it feels like when you kill someone?” Sharp teeth nip at my ear, drawing a sting of pain as the shadow around my throat tightens. When another lifts and slides beneath my shirt to trace along the tattoo and those squirming things in my chest, I can feel it.

The soft tingling of that sensation he let me taste before… only this time it’s trying to burrow deeper.

It’s trying to find its way into my mind.

“No. I… fuck…” My body arches as he takes my knife from my numb fingers and drags it down my cheek. Slowly, lightly, just enough to cut the skin, but not enough to leave a scar.

“You could taste that fear on your tongue as I chase you… and if you make it out of the trees, I’ll let you go.”

He says it like I can just leave, like I didn’t already try and the shit he put inside me didn’t make me crawl right back to him. Nox’s eyes widen, and his wings hum faster.

It’s an empty promise. He knows it.

I know it.

Nox still places my knife back in my numb fingers and waits.

Silence.

The thrum of wings… and…

“Okay.”

We both know the game we’re playing as he lowers me to the ground—it was the one that started the day I came into the fucking forest, the one I’m tethered to because the squirming things beneath my chest pulse in time with his wings.

It’s the game I’ve been craving my entire life manifest, with wings that have eyes and a beast with four arms who looks at me like he wants to eat me alive.

It’s the only game I’ve ever wanted to play.