Chapter 10
EVELINA
Run.
RUN, you idiot.
But I can’t. Half because of the pure fear exploding through my body, and half because of the sheer disbelief that any of this is happening.
This cannot be real.
I slowly back away from this man I’m just now realizing I truly do not know. I’m aware that I view pretty much the whole world through rose-colored glasses, looking for and assuming the best because that’s just how I am.
But it’s suddenly hitting me how dangerously misguided that is with Vaughn.
“And if I say no?” I croak, my voice cracking. “If…if I tell you to stop—”
“There’s only one word that will stop me,” he growls deeply. “Nothing else will do a fucking thing once we begin.”
“I—”
My mouth snaps shut before I can blurt that I’ve never done this before.
My first time can’t be this way—chased by a masked madman through a freaking graveyard, in the shadow of a haunted house.
“We both know you’re a virgin, Evelina.”
The color drains from my face.
“N-no, I—”
“And here I thought you were going to try to use that virginity as a shield, thinking it might stop me tonight. Spoiler: it won’t. But go ahead,” he murmurs, his eyes glinting. “Lie to me. It’ll just make me even harder when those lies bleed all over my cock. And you will bleed for me, princess.”
My eyes go wide in the gloom.
“Now would be a good time to use that word,” he rasps darkly. “And yet,” he continues, “you’re still not saying it. You’re also not running,” he snarls quietly. “On one. Three…”
“Vaughn,” I choke. “Wait—”
“Two…”
“WAIT!” I scream shrilly, holding my hands up, like that is going to stop him. “Hang on, I—”
“One.”
There’s no pause. Not one last second to think about the madness I’ve stumbled into. The word has barely left his mouth before his huge body lurches into action, bolting toward me.
I scream and turn to run. But before I can take a single step, pain explodes through my scalp as I’m yanked back by my hair.
A cry erupts from my mouth as I’m wrenched off my feet, landing hard on the ground.
The breath leaves my body in a whoosh, and stars blink in front of my eyes as a roaring fills my ears.
Vaughn's shadow looms over me, surrounded by the crumbling gravestones and mausoleums. I whimper as I look up into the menacing, masked face of a man I’m quickly realizing might be a fucking monster.
A predator.
Which makes me the prey.
With a cry, I roll away from him, scuffing my elbows on the ground and wincing in pain as I try to scramble to my feet and run away.
But I already know that this isn’t a chase at all. I’ve already been caught.
I was caught the second I set foot in this nightmarish house. No, before that. I was caught as soon as I got into Andrés’ car the other night.
This isn’t a chase.
It’s an inevitability.
I scream when his big hand grabs my ankle, yanking hard.
Another cry flies from my terrified lips as I go slamming back to the ground.
I kick out, scissoring my legs and thrashing my feet in a blind panic.
Before I can even land a single blow, he grabs both my ankles and violently drags me across the ground.
“STOP! Stop it!!”
I scream and choke into the dirt and leaves, clawing at them with torn fingernails. My pulse jangles as I kick back again, screaming into the crushed leaves beneath me, even as I realize how futile those screams are.
I expected to be out of my element when I came here tonight.
But I never in a thousand years expected this.
No one is coming to save me.
Nothing will stop him, except the one word I can’t bring myself to say.
And I don’t know why that is.
Without warning, I’m suddenly rolled violently onto my back. Before I can say a word, he grabs the front waist of my yoga pants and my panties in his fist. With a swift yank, he rips them roughly over my hipbones and down my thighs.
The sheer violence of it sucks the air from my lungs, my eyes wide with horror.
Then a basic survival instinct catches fire inside me.
The instinct to fight back.
I kick and thrash, screaming and clawing as he moves on top of me. His strong hand wraps around my throat, his emotionless mask leering down at me.
A savageness I’ve never once felt before explodes inside me. Every muscle screams and rebels, my legs kicking and my arms flailing, trying to hit or scratch or slap him any way I can.
An explosive heat thunders within me, roaring through my veins like a drug as I claw and scratch at him. My hand finally connects, and Vaughn grunts as the mask is knocked askew.
One glinting, venomously blue eye stabs into me before he reaches up and rips the mask away entirely. His dark hair falls messily across his forehead, his chiseled, sculpted jaw grinding dangerously as his eyes blaze into mine.
His face is so intensely blank. So devoid of humanity. It's like I’m looking into the swirling emptiness of malevolence itself.
Eye to eye.
Mortal to monster.
A broken whimper splinters in my chest when Vaughn’s long fingers tighten around my throat, his icy blue eyes glinting dangerously in the darkness as the crow screams in the night.
“Use your word, princess,” he rasps, his eyes dark as a twitch pulses in his jaw.
I shudder as he grinds his hips against me, pushing his thigh against my bare core. I tremble as the roughness of his denim scrapes against my thighs, edging closer to my sex.
“Use your safe word,” Vaughn growls, “or so help me God, I will fuck this cunt until you can’t walk for a week.”
My hand lashes out at his face before I even consider the consequences. My palm slaps his face sharply, and my nails rake down his cheek, leaving bright red claw marks on his skin.
My eyes widen in horror.
“Vaughn—!”
A cry tears from my throat as he grabs my wrists and slams them above my head.
He keeps them pinned there with one hand as he reaches for the neckline of my shirt with the other.
I shriek when he grabs hold and yanks violently, ripping the fabric down to my navel before his hand grabs the front of my bra.
My body arches off the ground as he viciously tugs, ripping the pink lace and tossing it aside before his eyes drop to my small breasts. I squirm and shudder under his gaze, my pale nipples tightening to points as my upper back writhes.
He moves so quickly, I don’t even have time to scream. But suddenly, his mouth is on my breasts, and a choked squeal erupts from my throat when his lips wrap around a throbbing nipple.
Then he bites down.
HARD.
I scream as a dark, dangerous zap bursts deep in my core. He bites down again, viciously, like he’s trying to take my freaking nipple right off.
My arms strain against his grip on my wrists. Vaughn savagely mauls and chews first one nipple and then the other, alternating between punishing bites and roughly running his tongue over the throbbing, aching points of my nipples.
A liquefying feeling surges between my legs, melting through my core as he savages my breasts and pins me to the ground like his prey.
No.
No no no, to all of it.
No to the heat between my thighs. No to the achy, needy sensation slithering through my core as this psychopath brutalizes me.
No to the rush of adrenaline humming through my veins, as if I’m hungry for more.
Just no.
Vaughn growls as he sucks and bites on one of my tender nipples, making me thrash and choke out a broken, needy cry.
“Please!” I sob. “Please stop! STOP!”
“Beg me, princess,” he groans into my breasts, biting down hard and making me squeal sharply. “You know it only gets me fucking harder.”
He roughly shoves my legs apart and pushes himself between them. He drops one hand to his belt, yanking it open as my pulse jangles in my ribcage.
This can’t be happening.
This isn’t how I'm supposed to lose my virginity.
“Say the word, Evelina,” he snarls in an almost human tone, pushing down his darkness just enough to give me one last warning. “Say the fucking word.”
Inside, I’m screaming it.
Midnight.
MIDNIGHT MIDNIGHT MIDNIGHT.
And yet my vocal cords won't obey, whether from stupidity, terror, or some deranged act of defiance.
I flinch when Vaughn grabs my panties and yoga pants tangled around my thighs, and a sharp gasp chokes from my throat as he viciously yanks them down past my knees. That survival instinct snaps to life inside me again, my feet kicking and thrashing, even though it’s pointless against his strength.
Vaughn is utterly heedless of my clawing and screaming as he pulls my sneakers off. He rips my pants all the way off, tossing them aside before he roughly slaps my legs apart and inserts himself between them.
I scream and claw and slap at his chest as he looms over me. My fingers catch in the neck hole of his T-shirt, which rips away from his body.
I jerk my hand back, and a gasp lodges in my throat at the leering faces of terror and death that suddenly snarl and grin at me.
Jesus.
He’s covered in tattoos: skulls, reapers, snakes, daggers. Ghastly, ghoulish scenes dripping in darkness and blood are inked all across his grooved, chiseled, torso.
Monstrosities leer down at me as the monster himself shoves his hand between my legs.
My eyes bulge.
“No, wait! Please—!”
I squeal as Vaughn sinks two thick fingers deep inside me. My back arches off the ground at the sudden intrusion, my legs flailing as I claw at his rippling forearm with both hands.
But…God help me…
I’m wet.
Slickly, embarrassingly wet.
My squeals, and the writhing and squirming aren’t because I'm in pain. They’re because those two thick fingers slide so easily into me.
Pure mortification explodes across my throbbing face.
“My my my,” Vaughn rasps in the darkness, stabbing through the gauze of madness fogging my mind. “This greedy little princess cunt is leaking all over me, making a fucking mess of my fingers.”