Chapter 15
The woods are darker than I remember, thick with a tension that makes it seem like the entire forest is holding its breath.
What am I doing out here?
A familiar force tugs me forward, desire and unease twisting together in a strange sort of magnetism, and I know he’s here. Ambrose is watching, waiting somewhere in the shadows.
This time, I don’t have to search for him before he speaks to me.
“Lost?”
His voice is a jolt of electricity straight to my heart, forcing it to pick up speed as I whirl around to face him.
Every one of his features—razor-sharp cheekbones, rigid jawline, a subtle smirk on his full lips—is streaked with slashes of silver moonlight.
“No,” I lie. “I’m just headed back to the house.”
He moves, circling me slowly, like a predator assessing its prey.
It’s unsettling in the worst kind of way.
I stand frozen, though my eyes stay locked on him when he’s in my line of sight.
I try not to think about the fractions of a second when he’s fully behind me and I’m completely vulnerable.
But I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing my fear.
“Ah, but where’s the fun in that?” His voice wraps around me like the vines snaking through the forest.
“I’m not trying to have any fun out here,” I bite back.
“Mmm, but what if I am?”
I wave a dismissive hand and hope he can’t hear my heart pounding against my ribcage. “Have whatever fun you want in this creepy ass forest, but I’m leaving.”
“That’s where we have a problem,” he murmurs, closing the two feet of distance between us to stand before me. I refuse to look at his face, not wanting to be forced to confront the smugness on his face from knowing he has me trapped.
But he clicks his tongue and places a finger under my chin to tilt my head up, forcing me to face him.
“Because you’re what I want to play with. My ‘fun’ involves you, whether you want it to or not.”
I swallow around the lump forming in my throat, my voice breathy when I ask, “W-what do you mean?”
“You’ll find out soon enough, pet,” he murmurs, using that infuriating nickname while tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear. My breath catches in my throat.
I don’t have time to question him before he leans down, his mouth only an inch from my ear, and his low voice turns to a growl. “Run.”
There’s such an urgency in that one word that my feet are carrying me over twigs and damp leaves before I even realize I’ve moved. I don’t know why I’m running, but I’m certain I don’t want to get caught.
The forest swallows me whole.
Branches claw at my arms like grasping fingers.
The shadows seem to slither between the trees, stretching unnaturally, as if the very night is alive and complicit in his fucked up game of cat and mouse.
I don’t dare look back. The beating of my feet against the ground and my blood pounding through my head is enough to drown out any sound behind me.
I have no idea how close he is, unable to tell whether the crunching leaves and cracking branches are from my own steps or his as I run deeper into the forest.
My lungs burn with every ragged inhale, but I can’t stop. Adrenaline courses through me, pushing me deeper into the darkness. Yet alongside the fear sparking inside me, there’s something else that I refuse to acknowledge—a dull ache between my legs that pulses in time with my pounding pulse.
He's hunting me.
And I can’t help but wonder what he’ll do to me if he catches me…
The trees blur together, the darkness broken only by moonlight slicing through the gaps between the leaves.
My ankle catches on a root, and I stumble, barely managing to stay upright. My lungs scream. My legs ache.
But I don’t stop, because I can feel him.
Not see him, not hear him, but feel his presence like electricity crackling in the air.
Low, amused laughter resonates behind me, and my muscles burn as I push my legs to run faster.
This is a game to him. He’s toying with me.
He’s going to catch me. It’s inevitable, but I’m not about to make it easy for him.
I veer off to the right, off the deer trail, hoping the undergrowth will slow him. Thorns tear at my jeans and scrape my skin, but I don’t care. I push harder, ducking beneath low branches, half-blind in the dark.
A hand latches onto my bicep, and I scream.
He yanks me back so quickly that my breath rushes out of my lungs just as my back slams against a tree trunk.
The bark is rough, even through the fabric of my shirt, and a hand clamps over my mouth before I can scream again.
I look up to face my captor, my predator. His expression is feral.
“Just not fast enough,” he says, drawing out the words in a low taunt.
My lungs burn with the need for more oxygen, and my chest heaves as I breathe through my nose.
“I’ve wanted to catch you for a long time, my pet,” he purrs, twisting me in one swift motion so that my back is against his chest rather than the tree. I have a feeling he isn’t just talking about this chase through the woods.
I whimper, unable to speak with his hand still clasped over my mouth. The few seconds of silence, of waiting to see what his next move is, feel like an eternity.
Finally, he moves, and my breath catches in my throat when Ambrose’s palm trails around my waist and across my stomach, sliding lower and lower.
Despite the terror burning through my veins, my stomach somersaults with his touch, and there’s a throbbing between my legs that I desperately wish would go away.
Ambrose’s hand is splayed across my lower abdomen, and he presses it firmly into me, forcing my torso against his body even more.
That’s when I notice his erection pressing against me.
“This is what you do to me. You can try to run and scream, but that fear in your eyes only makes me want you more.”
He removes his hand from my mouth.
“I loathe you,” I seethe.
“Love and loathing are the same sensations, simply with different names.”
“That’s a lie. I hate you. Love is entirely out of the question.”
Slowly, Ambrose’s hand moves lower inch by inch, until he’s slipping his fingers past the waistband of my pants and into my panties.
“Keep telling yourself that, but I think we both know that’s not entirely true. Look how wet you are for me, and I’ve barely even touched you yet.”
I’m frozen, ashamed of the effect his words have on me. Why is this turning me on? And even worse, why am I imagining him forcing me to take him in the middle of these woods?
It’s despicable.
But even as I want to yell, fight, something, I can’t help but roll my hips against him as his finger presses against my throbbing clit. Fuck, that feels good.
His fingers move slowly, rhythmically, just enough to make me desperate for more.
With each shift of my hips, his cock rubs against my ass, and I reach up to steady myself against the tree trunk as the tension in my core winds tighter.
The bark is rough against my palms, but clutching the tree is still preferable to collapsing in Ambrose’s arms. It may be the only minuscule shred of dignity I have left.
He leans forward over my hunched form to slide his fingers farther down, and there’s a pressure at my entrance just before he pushes two inside. I cry out at the sudden intrusion, and he curls his fingers inside me while his palm keeps steady pressure against my clit.
Fuck.
“That’s right, baby. Let me hear how good I make you feel,” he growls.
I bite back my moans, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of getting everything he wants from me, though I don’t know how much I’ll be able to hold back. I’m dangerously close to coming, and his movements are relentless as he pushes me closer and closer toward my orgasm.
“Is that how it’s going to be?” he taunts, noticing my attempts to hold back. “I do love a challenge…”
He picks up his pace and intensity, until I’m a writhing, needy mess beneath his touch. My pleasure builds inside me like a wire ready to snap, until I take a shuddering breath and—
I wake from the dream with a start, my heart pounding in my chest and a throbbing ache between my thighs.
Holy. Shit.
The urge to slip my hand between my legs overwhelms me until I realize where I am and who’s in this house with me…
Ambrose probably did this on purpose. He admitted my dreams about him from before were all intentional on his part, and I’m sure this is another ploy to fuck with my head.
God, I hate him.
“Love and loathing are the same sensations with different names.” His words from my dream echo in my mind.
As if I’m not already going through enough stress, the last thing I need is to be thinking about fucking the immortal man—demon, Liminal, whatever—who forced me here against my will and is now making me carry out some ridiculous bargain that involves watching people die.
He doesn’t deserve my attraction, and I’m not about to give into his twisted mind games.
I hastily pull on my pajama pants and stomp downstairs, where Ambrose is sitting at the kitchen table writing in his leather journal and sipping a cup of coffee. When I stop in the doorway to cross my arms and glare at him, he slowly raises his gaze and lifts an eyebrow.
“Yes?”
“Stay the hell out of my dreams.”
He cocks his head. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
He’s silent for a moment until a pleased, knowing look overtakes his features. “Did you have a dream about me, pet?”
I furrow my brow. Is this a trick question, or was that really not his doing? A blush stains my cheeks as I desperately attempt to play it cool.
“No.” I rush past him into the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. There’s a warm pulse in my core at the sound of his nickname for me, a reminder of how he had said it to me in my dream. “And stop calling me that.”
His low chuckle carries through the silence. “Hmm… maybe I’ll consider another pet name for you if you tell me about this dream you had.” The sound of his fingers drumming against the cover of his notebook makes me want to throw this ceramic mug right at his damn head.
“Fuck off.”
He laughs again but thankfully doesn’t say anything else.
Once I’ve poured my coffee, I head back upstairs in an attempt to save whatever shred of dignity I might have left. God, that was humiliating.
My brain, as always, is working against me to fuck things up. Still, I can’t shake the lingering feelings from that dream.
So much danger, so much seduction, so much exhilaration. I know it’s just the leftover endorphins flooding my body, but that doesn’t make the physical effects any less real.
Damn it all.
After setting my coffee on the nightstand, I flop back onto my bed and pull out a notebook, doing some more math to consider the number of lives I’ll need to take to get the hell out of this mess.
Then, I turn to a blank page and title it “Future” with the intent of brainstorming where I might go after this, what I might do, or who I might become without the constraints I’ve come to know.
And just like that, my thoughts are a whirlwind again, too chaotic and overwhelming to even begin to make sense of.
The page stays blank until I close the notebook, finish my coffee, and consider my imminent next steps to get the hell out of this situation as quickly as possible.