Chapter 20 #2
“Fuck,” I breathe, fingers gripping the sleeves of my hoodie.
“Fuck!” I’m not willing to risk that he’s telling the truth, so I’m worried if he goes downstairs after me, he really will kill the first person he comes across, dooming me to a lifetime survivor’s guilt complex.
So instead of taking the option that feels like the better bet, I launch myself back up to the fifth floor just as he rounds the corner.
“I almost thought you were going to break the rules of our game,” he calls after me, not making a move to hurry. But he doesn’t have to. Not when we both know the only way down from the fifth floor is this staircase or jumping off the roof.
I like to think I’m not at the point where I’m willing to jump off the roof. At least not quite.
Standing in the open area of the fifth floor, I look around at my options, and realize they’re all bad.
I’m not going back on the roof, but the rec room isn’t that much better with all the glass missing from the frames.
The only other option is one of the cluttered storerooms with collapsing towers of old construction supplies, and the bathroom where two nurses hung themselves decades apart.
My stalker’s footsteps on the stairs finally reach my ears.
The wooden planks creak under his boots, and my fear builds with every step he takes.
Terror chills my veins like I’m standing in a freezer, and I finally move into the bathroom in front of me, whispering an apology to any spirits of unrest that linger here.
“I am so sorry,” I breathe as I flatten myself against what remains of the wall beside the doorway. It won’t help me for long, but maybe just long enough. If I can just hide here until he goes by, I can find my way back down the stairs and look for a better place to hide.
He won’t let you go again, a small voice whispers in my head. You know that. I try to ignore the words, and the shiver of fright that goes through me as his steps sound on the cement.
“Oh where, oh where has my Scaredy Cat gone?” He hums, letting his voice ring in the open area.
“Oh, where, oh where could she be?” I can hear him walking closer until his shadow appears on the floor of the doorway.
My whole body tenses, and I force myself to stay completely still with the flashlight in my hand as he takes another step.
Then another.
When he’s standing in the doorway of the bathroom, he’s so close that I could reach out and touch him. I force myself to hold my breath. To stay completely still to avoid provoking his attention.
“This room has such a sad history.” My stalker sighs.
“You know it too, right?” I nearly jump out of my skin when he asks me the question, but I quickly realize he’s just talking because no matter where I was hiding up here, I could hear him.
“I feel so bad for those girls. They must have been desperate to hang themselves like that.”
When he moves forward to study the sink, leaning over the cracked and rough porcelain with his gloves trailing along it, something comes over me. My shoulders fall, and as I stare at him, I realize the rules of this game will never change.
Even if he leaves after he takes his ‘prize’ tonight, he’ll be back, and we’ll do this all over again, playing by the rules he’s set.
Frustration is hot and sharp in my chest. My fingers curl against the wall, and before I can stop myself, I lunge forward, using his divided attention and the darkness to catch him off guard.
To my surprise, and his, I succeed. He jerks upright and manages to smack his hand on a corner of the broken sink, which makes him quickly look down with a yelp of pain. “What are—”
I don’t let him finish. I shove him against the wall, his back rattling the dusty, cracked mirror that somehow still hangs on the tile.
The knife clatters to the floor between us as he hisses his disapproval, and my flashlight is quick to follow so I have my hands free.
Which is okay because with the windows gone and gaping openings in their place, I don’t need my light to grab his mask and wrench it off his face until the strap holding it there breaks.
Then I let the mask clatter to the floor so I can finally, finally see my stalker’s face.
“I’ve seen you before.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, and I search the man’s almost-familiar face.
He doesn’t move, but leans panting against the mirror, his eyes wide with surprise and something else in the moonlight.
“I’ve seen you…” I tilt my head, my fear gone in my surprise.
A smile curls over his lips, and when he tilts his head, it’s almost endearing. I can’t quite see the color of his eyes, but the moon illuminates the auburn of his curls just enough for me to know their color.
“The mall,” I say finally. “I saw you at the mall the other day, when…” I trail off and my eyes narrow further. “You’re stalking me!” I accuse.
That makes him roll his eyes. “Well, duh,” the man tells me. “I wouldn’t be a very good stalker if I wasn’t stalking you, Persephone.”
“Why—”
Suddenly he reverses our positions, so I’m the one pressed to the mirror with him holding me there a lot more effectively than I’d been doing to him.
He wrenches my wrists into one of his hands before shoving them to the wall over my head, and tugs his hood back with the other as he shoves a knee between my thighs.
It’s a surprisingly effective way to cage me in place, though I writhe to see if there’s anything at all I can do to get away from him.
“You lost,” he informs me with a dark little grin on his lips. “You don’t get to play twenty questions with me. I told you that if I found you, and if I caught you, I'd take my prize.” His voice drops, becoming that almost-purr that has my stomach twisting in ways that aren’t from fear.
“Are you wet for me, babe?” Leaning forward, my stalker nips at my throat. “Was this as fun for you as it was for me? I could’ve caught you three or four times. Just in case you didn’t know, you’re really bad at running for your life. But I wanted to drag it out a little.”
“Why would I be wet from you chasing me around an abandoned sanitarium?” I force myself to hiss, twisting my wrists in his grip.
The man pulls back and eyes me flatly, one brow rising. I have to look away from him, and my own lips twitch in a frown.
Well, he doesn’t have to be so upfront about it.
“You don’t have to play normal with me, Scaredy Cat.
” He nips at my jaw, where he cut me earlier.
When I try to pull away, he nips at my skin more aggressively with a growl on his lips.
“Let me clean it up for you.” His steely voice is soft, and I find myself frozen in place while he laps at the tiny wound like a cat with cream.
His hips shift against mine, and I suddenly feel his arousal on my thigh, proving that he’s definitely not bluffing about being excited from chasing me.
“What do you want?” I hiss. “I don’t get it—you’ve proven you can scare me.” The words feel sour on my tongue and I immediately want to cram them back down my throat. “So what do you want?”
“You really don’t know?” He bites down again, just hard enough to make me wince a little, though the pain shoots straight between my thighs where his knee grinds absently against me.
In lieu of a real reply, I find myself shaking my head. I can’t really see what the endgame here is if scaring me isn’t enough for him. What could he—
“I want you, Scaredy Cat. I want Persephone Gallows, who craves being afraid and will do anything to chase the high I can give you.” He doesn’t give me a chance to reply. My stalker crushes his lips to mine, his free hand grabbing my hair and holding me in place.
I wouldn’t know what to say, even if he was letting me speak. I’m paralyzed, frozen in place, but he doesn’t seem to mind at all. “What’s wrong?” my stalker murmurs against my lips, nipping at them. “Cat got your tongue?” God, that wasn’t even funny, but I can’t help my gasp as he licks up my jaw.
“I’m not your prize,” I breathe, tilting my head back against the wall. “There’s nothing to win, you can’t—”
“I can do anything I want with you. And if we’re being honest with ourselves…
I think you’d let me. Wouldn’t you, gorgeous?
My perfect, scared little thing. I could take you home and tie you to my bed.
I could play with you however I want, and you’d beg me for more as long as I give you the fear you crave.
Do you think I could make you come with a knife at your throat and my mask on? Hmm?”
I definitely shouldn’t shudder at that, but my breath hitches with arousal that shoots hot and sharp up my spine.
“Or should we take it one step further? Should I fuck you with the hilt of my blade while you beg for me to let you finish? Would your greedy pussy clench around it? Hmm?” He laves his tongue up the side of my face, licking a line up to my cheekbone before doing it again.
“Or should I just take pity on both of us and claim your pretty pussy with my cock?” He studies me with dark eyes before his smirk widens on his full lips.
“Nah, I don’t think you deserve for me to be that nice.
And I don’t think you want me to be, do you, pretty girl?
” He presses my hands more tightly to the wall and shifts his grip, while his other hand drags my hoodie up over my body.
“You have no idea what I could possibly want.” The words come out as a challenge, my shoulder blades shifting against the tile-covered concrete as I say it.