Chapter 14
ABI
My killer, making the nightmare go away.
I erase the numbers and open up the string of messages from my group chat with Chloe and Penelope.
Penelope
U there?
Chloe
Call us. Everything okay?
Should we call the police?
Penelope
Don’t be fucking stupid. I’m not sending the cops to her house. Abi, call us back as soon as you get this.
There are a couple of missed calls from both of them. I open up the group chat, trying to ignore my killer thumping around downstairs.
Hey, I’m really sorry about that. It was someone from the sheriff’s department checking in on me. They had a report of a lurker nearby, so they wanted to check in. Everything’s fine.
I stare at the message. I hate lying to them. But I know I can’t tell them the truth.
I hit send and go into my bedroom and lock the door. I doubt the flimsy lock could actually keep my killer out, but it gives me the facade of safety.
I can still hear him downstairs, though.
My phone dings several times in quick succession—Chloe and Penelope sending their flurry of responses.
Chloe
Girl you had us so fucking worried
Penelope
Couldn’t have spared a text for your old friends? A meager, simple text?
A meme of a sad-eyed cat.
I text back more apologies, my throat getting tighter with each one. Especially since my killer’s presence is still wafting up from the first floor. And the fact that he’s down there with a dead body makes me feel—strange. Afraid, yes. But relieved, too. Because he saved my life.
And there’s something else, a darker undercurrent that pulses with my blood. I fall back on my bed and press my legs together, and it doesn’t go away. Chloe sends another meme. I heart it without looking at it, then tell them both I’m going to bed.
I’m wide awake, though. Wide awake and throbbing with something dangerously close to desire.
A loud, decisive thump echoes from downstairs. My body quakes, and I honestly don’t know if it’s fear or anxiety or something else. Something I don’t want to think about.
I squeeze my eyes shut, listening. The house is silent.
Don’t come down until morning.
His words echo around in my head, and the truth is, I don’t want to go down there. I feel safe up here, behind my door’s lock. Insulated.
Even if I’m vibrating with adrenaline.
I push off my bed, my body shaking, and stumble into my attached bathroom. I lock that door, too, then peer out the small oval window. Not that I can see anything outside.
I move by rote to turn on the water and strip out of my clothes as it warms up.
I stare at the spray, feeling numb and detached.
I don’t know if he’s still down there. I don’t know what he’s doing, or did, to get rid of the body.
I don’t know why I’m trusting him not to frame me for his actions. Or do something worse.
But I need to wash the death off my skin. I need the numbing effect of hot water and scented steam. That death down there, it’s not like what I deal with in my examination room. It wasn’t sterile or scientific. It was terrifying. It was—
A warmth creeps between my legs.
I climb under the spray, hot enough to scald my skin as it streams over my shoulders and down the furrow of my spine. I hope it’s hot enough to burn this terrible clenching away.
It’s not. And yet here I am, in a fucking shower. Who gets into a shower with a killer downstairs? I’ve watched hundreds of classic horror movies with Penelope and Chloe. I know what happens when you mix killers and showers.
But nothing happens. There’s no creak as the bathroom door slides open—and it always creaks. There’s no heavy thud of my killer’s boot steps on the tile flooring.
Just the water.
Just the heat.
Just my memories. Of the death. And of my killer snaking his hand around my waist, telling me he would take care of everything.
I shudder and run my own hand over the place where he touched me, marking it like a map. I tell myself I don’t want him coming upstairs, but that’s not entirely true. Because I imagine it.
Imagine him creaking the door open.
Imagine his heavy footsteps on the tile.
Imagine his gloved hand sliding the shower curtain aside so he can see me, naked and soaked.
I think of his chaste, soft kiss last night. May I touch you?
I think of him crouching beside my attacker’s body, tilting the dead face toward me like a gift. He did that for me. He killed for me.
He’s been killing for me.
The idea sparks like lightning. I suck in a deep, shuddery draft of air and drop my hand lower until I’m teasing my clit, shame coursing hotly out from between my legs. I can’t believe I’m giving into my darkness again.
But I am, and my body is wound tight with need. Not just from my killer’s soft, careful touches or his low, raspy voice, but from what he did.
I brace my free hand against the shower wall and hike my leg up on the ledge, opening up my pussy so I can slide two fingers inside myself. I’m drenched, my cunt hot and slippery. It’s been hot and slippery. Ever since I heard my attacker’s scream cut off and knew, with a shiver, that I was saved.
I rub against my G-spot with a quickening desperation, one image after another sliding through my head—memories braided together with dark, devious fantasies.
My thoughts settle on a terrible image of my killer bending me over the body of my attacker to fuck me from behind, the two of us desecrating the corpse of a monster.
I cry out, then bite it back, afraid he’s still downstairs, that he’ll hear me.
But that fear just sends another pulse of lust through my body, because the thought floods me with a new fantasy, of him dragging me out of the shower and bracing me against the wall in the hallway, me dripping water everywhere as he wraps his hand around my throat and fingerfucks me the way I’m currently fingerfucking myself.
My body quakes and jolts. My legs shake. I’m close, and I swirl my thumb about my clit to coax my orgasm along. But all I can do is skirt along the edge.
I moan in frustration, bucking my hips into my hand, and freeze my killer’s form in my mind’s eye. Tall, broad, imposing. Dressed all in black. His leering mask.
I imagine him rasping, “Suck my cock,” and then I imagine kneeling in front of him, taking him out, and swallowing him whole. He’s big, in my imagination. Porn star big. Impossibly big.
“I did this for you,” he says, thrusting his hips against my face, his impossibly huge cock sliding down the back of my throat. “I do all of this for you. I kill for you, Abilene. And you like it, don’t you?”
And it’s with that shameful, terrible truth that my pleasure finally erupts.
I shriek and slap my hand over my mouth, jamming my fingers in and out of my pussy as my orgasm pulses like a heartbeat, making my entire lower body contract.
I keep touching myself until it hurts, and I still don’t stop, because I don’t think he would. I think my killer would keep going.
I flip around, pressing my back against the damp shower wall.
Steam clouds around me, the water’s still scalding hot in punishment.
But I don’t stop. I slide my fingers out of my pussy and zero in on my clit, which flutters against my touch.
This time, I give in completely, and I think about my attacker’s death.
His short, aborted scream. The thump of his body. I didn’t see it, the moment of death. But I wish I had.
I squeeze my eyes shut, tears streaming down my cheeks and mixing with water from the shower. The shame is almost as intense as the lust. Almost.
I can picture how he did it, my killer. How he broke my attacker’s neck—simply, neatly, efficiently. From the angle of the head, he came at him from behind. Grabbed him. Twisted hard to the left.
My clit throbs, jolting me with pleasure. I play it over and over in my head. My killer calm and collected. The snap of my attacker’s cervical spine. His body collapsing like a marionette with its strings cut.
“Again,” I whisper. “Kill for me again.”
And my second orgasm tears through me until I’m sobbing.