Till Death Do Us Part: A Paranormal Why Choose Romance (Vows Duet Book 1)

Prologue

3 Months Ago

My eyes are drawn to the sway of her ass, her steps purposeful as she leads me to the front door of a rundown little house.

I never do this—I never go home with a woman. Not here. Especially not thirty minutes after I met them in a coffee shop close to campus, at ten at night, grabbing fuel to help me stay awake long enough to finish grading spring semester final essays.

It’s too risky. I never want to walk into Intro to English Lit and find myself playing professor to my last one-night stand.

This was different. I felt a sort of pull the moment I laid eyes on her. It wasn’t love at first sight or anything ridiculous like that, but there had been something there that made me curious. Like a shadowed memory I can’t quite drag into the light.

She’s an attractive woman, to be sure. But that’s not what drew me to her, nor the reason I’m here. I’m not sure why I’m here. When she invited me back to her place, I instantly agreed without taking a moment to think.

Fuck, I don’t even remember her name and now it’s been too long to ask without looking like an asshole. I remember it started with an ‘R’. Or maybe an ‘A’?

I scan over the tiny front yard, her keys jangling as she works on unlocking the door. It’s as dry as this woman’s humor, the few tufts of grass dead and brown. Yet another juxtaposition to how I normally operate. I usually cannot stand a woman who won’t even crack a smile.

She swings the door open and steps inside, beckoning me forward. For a split second, some sort of innate mechanism deep within makes me hesitate, and I don’t know why. She stares at me blankly, waiting.

I step over the threshold.

“Do you want a drink?” she asks, flipping the deadbolt into a locked position.

My nerves are rattled for some reason. Against my better judgement, I give a slight nod and she nods back, moving past me. I follow her into a tiny kitchen, a two-seater table stacked with various papers and trinkets standing in the attached eating area that’s barely big enough to fit it.

There’s nowhere to sit, the chairs holding more documents and belongings, so I remain standing. My eyes track her every movement as she pulls out two small glasses, then reaches up high into the cupboard above the stove. Bottles clink as she digs around, finally producing a bottle of bourbon. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but I only need to take the edge off.

She pours two fingers into each glass. I take the one meant for me from her and shoot it back, setting the glass back down on the counter with a clink against the tile.

Her eyebrow lifts, her cup resting in her palm. “Another?”

“One more,” I answer, letting the heat of the alcohol burn away this unease inside me.

Without a word, she holds out her own glass, cocking her head at me when I down this one, too. As soon as her glass is next to mine on the counter, she moves toward me. Her gaze turns intense, almost predatory. Slowly, without breaking eye contact, she slides her hands down my body, starting at my shoulders and ending at the waistband of my slacks.

I harden. I may be wary, but I haven’t gotten laid in months and she is beautiful. Her long dark hair is a halo around her curvy body, her equally dark eyes holding mine while she undoes the button of my pants.

She stops. “Come on,” she murmurs, lacing our fingers together.

I let her lead me down a short hallway, to the furthest room. Her bedroom is absolutely clear of all clutter; of anything at all. There’s not a single picture on the wall. No furniture fills the space except for a queen-sized bed on a metal frame, and there’s no headboard or footboard. There’s not even a single piece of dirty clothing on the laminate floor. The overhead light blinks a couple of times, like the bulb might be trying to go out.

I’m so preoccupied studying the strange space that I don’t realize she’s stripped. My eyes skim her nude form as she walks toward me again, her hips swaying with exaggerated movements and her breasts bouncing slightly with each step. She is physically stunning, lined with lean muscle and smooth, even skin.

Just like I always have to, I push away that frustrating feeling of guilt away. Since the first time I saw a pair of perky breasts at sixteen, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that I’m betraying someone. A nameless, faceless no one that sometimes appears in my dreams when I’m past the point of exhaustion and have passed out from lack of rest.

The woman pulls my slacks open and my head swims. I stumble forward a step, blinking at the foggy feeling that has crashed over me. That same instinct that made me hesitate before I walked inside this house flares up again.

“I should leave,” I blurt.

“Shh,” she hushes. “Just lie down for a minute. Probably just drank too quickly on an empty stomach.”

Logically, I know I didn’t have that much to drink, even with shooting both glasses. I also had a pretty extensive dinner tonight—plenty enough to soak up a little bourbon. What she says seems to make perfect sense, though. I stagger toward the bed, but she stops me, holding me up.

“Take these off,” she instructs, tugging at my pants and then my shirt. “You’ll be more comfortable.”

That makes sense as well. I’d be much more comfortable without them suffocating me.

With her help, I shuck off my clothes. She even yanks off my underwear, leaving me totally nude. My dick is still hard, jutting toward her, but I can’t find it in myself to care that she’s stripped me.

Crashing onto the bed, I comply when she shoves and pushes until I flop onto my back. The room spins a little as I stare at the ceiling, my mind buzzing with confusion.

Something warm and wet covers my dick and my body jerks in surprise, my eyes darting to look down the length of my body. They land on hers—this woman I don’t know—her mouth latched onto me as she bobs up and down.

I throw my head back and groan loud at the sensation, but something feels wrong. This isn’t right. Is it?

Before I can conjure up the words to ask out loud, she moves, straddling my body.

Condom, my mind shrieks as she moves to lower herself on me, but my mouth won’t move.

Time doesn’t make sense. One second this woman is guiding my bare dick into her pussy, and the next she’s riding me vigorously, moaning obscenely as her fingers splay out on my chest.

This isn’t right.

“Wait,” I croak out. “Wait.”

She slows her movements, still rocking her hips forward and back, then sighs as she stops. “You’re not supposed to be talking.”

“Wait,” I try again, but I can’t find any other words.

“We’ll just have to do this quicker,” she mumbles, leaning forward. Her breasts smash against my chest as she lays flat, keeping my cock inside her while she reaches for something off the side of the bed.

Relief hits me. She stopped. Good. This isn’t right.

She sits back up suddenly and starts moving again, grinding her pelvis against me hard. “Ready?”

My mouth is dry and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth when I try to answer. I thought she was stopping.

“You’re going to stay here with me forever,” she breathes, her right arm lifting above her head. “You’re mine.”

All I can hear is the wet and sinewy sounds of this lunatic cutting up my body in her bathtub.

I watch from across the bathroom as she huffs, her feminine body straining with effort against the hacksaw in her hand. She has already removed one arm, allowing it to fall from her grip and slap against the acrylic tub. Now she’s working on the other. Very little blood splatters as she works, and I’m guessing it’s because she drained my body for hours.

Hours.

I’ve been staring at my corpse for that long, but I find myself suddenly unable to watch her destroy my body any more than she already has. I turn away, my skin buzzing like I might find bolts of electricity dancing along it. Without really meaning to, I gravitate toward another room. Toward the other room; toward the room where all this started; toward the strange, empty bedroom.

Without taking a step, I find myself there. I rein in my panic as the core of my being reels from the sensation.

I stare at the blood-soaked pillow where my head was lying when she struck me as she rode my dick. I remember the pain, followed by even more confusion, followed by more pain. Other than that, a majority of the encounter is fuzzy.

It was approximately four strikes in when I felt this form of myself separate from my body. I had screamed; I had screamed so loudly when it happened. But the woman hadn’t paid me any heed, striking again and again with the claw side of the hammer, spattering blood and brains and chunks of skull across the room.

I still can’t remember her goddamn name.

The man who had gotten me to stop screaming earlier—albeit rudely, with his disdain and threats—eyes me from his position against the wall. He’s got perfectly coiffed salt and pepper hair; his beard and mustache are more pepper than salt. His eyes almost seem to glow unnaturally in the dim light of the room, his expression stuck between a glare and outright pity.

“What are you looking at?” I rasp, exhaustion seeping into every ounce of my being.

“Another sucker,” he mutters, tearing his gaze away from me.

Just as I’m about to ask what he means, I hear the loud thump of my body falling over in the bathroom. We both look at the door. I can feel my matter shifting the same way it did when I found myself back in this room, trying to carry me back to the bathroom.

A hand encloses around my wrist before the sensation finishes. “Don’t,” Salt-and-Pepper hisses. “You don’t want to know what she’s doing to you now.”

A throaty feminine moan reaches us before I can demand he explain. I stare at the doorway, but I don’t materialize back into the bathroom, held here by a touch. It sounds…sexual. But surely, she can’t be… Can she?

“Ignore it, new guy,” he commands, yanking at my arm.

The motion is enough to draw my attention to his hand on me, his skin pale against the deep henna color of mine. I stare at where we meet, but the touch feels muted, like he’s not even touching me at all.

“I’m dead,” I say, dazed.

“She killed you,” he agrees.

“Did she kill you too?”

He gives me a grim smile. “She’s killed us all.”

I blink, and the action seems to clear the veil over my vision. I find myself surrounded by other men—nine men, to be exact, including Salt-and-Pepper. They’re all various races, ages, and body types, but one thing they all have in common is that they’re clothed.

I glance down at my nakedness and one man—one with heavy tattoos decorating his neck and arms and wearing a band t-shirt for ‘Whispered Words’—snickers.

Salt-and-Pepper sighs. “Just…imagine you’re clothed.”

I scoff. “Really?”

“Just do it,” he snaps.

I hold up my hands in surrender, then close my eyes and think of the outfit I was wearing earlier tonight before that woman stripped me. When I open them again, I’m clothed too, in the outfit I imagined. But most of the men are gone. Only Salt-and-Pepper and the tattooed man remain. A glimmer of light catches my attention, the sun peeking through the curtains surprising me. Even more surprising is that the room is now clean of my blood and brain matter, the splatters all removed from the walls and wiped up off the floor.

How long did it take me to conjure clothing?

I’m about to ask when Rhea walks through the doorway. What catches my attention first is that she’s clean, body glistening with droplets of water. It drips from her hair too, the strands that aren’t plastered against her skin.

Anger like I’ve never experienced before consumes me. I launch myself at her, preparing to tackle her to the ground and beat her head against it until she’s as dead as I am. I will rip her apart. I will destroy her and make her feel every single thing I do to torture her.

But I don’t. Instead of colliding with her, my form moves right through her and I fall, landing on my knees.

Rhea doesn’t react to my attempt to murder her back. She continues moving, almost dancer-like in her tiptoed steps.

That’s when I notice the jar.

“She can’t hear us,” Salt-and-Pepper says. “She can’t feel us. She doesn’t even sense us.”

It registers what he’s saying, but I can’t take my eyes off the jar in her hands. She shifts it, balancing it on her hip while she opens the closet door.

“Is that—?” I whisper, feeling myself drifting like a gentle breeze is blowing me away. “Is that my—?”

“Yes,” the tattooed man interrupts, and his voice is forlorn. “It is.”

The last thing I see as I blink out of existence is Rhea kiss the jar containing a clear solution and my death-paralyzed heart.