Chapter 15 #2
This is where things have gotten embarrassing. Because even if my theory puts him on the Knightsblood campus, I still have no idea who he is.
…So I’ve found myself looking.
Covertly, obviously. But when I walk across the quad, or sit in the dining hall, or file into a lecture hall, I find my eyes doing a slow sweep over the male students around me.
Do the tattoos on their forearms match what I saw rippling on his skin while his fingers wrapped my hair in a fist as my mouth slid down his cock?
Unfortunately, half the guys at Knightsblood are heavily tattooed. I'll be sitting alone in the library, two hours into a reading I've absorbed none of, and some rando will sit down and open a book a few tables away.
…And I'll look, and I'll wonder.
Is this him? Am I within ten feet of the man who threw me down across a bed and devoured my pussy, right before I pepper sprayed him in the face?
It's not healthy. I've told myself as much almost as many times as I've watched the Ghost Prince’s last video.
It doesn’t help.
The other day, I happened to pass the downright terrifying Adrik Volkov, and almost had a panic attack wondering if he was the one behind the Ghost Prince mask.
A day or so later, Arianna, Yelena, and I were leaving the gym and walked by the athletic fields while the Privateers were practicing shirtless…including a very heavily inked Drago Kyrolv, and my festering asshole of a TA, Lochlan.
Lochlan, the insufferable dick on a power trip who seems to derive pleasure from putting me on the spot.
Whose outrageous attractiveness is something I find myself consciously and actively trying to ignore.
Who I’m pretty sure I might actually hate, and I don’t hate anyone.
Like The Ghost Prince, he's tall and incredibly built, with broad shoulders and a trim waist, and sleeve tattoos snaking up both arms. He appears to be the poster boy for smug, cocky jock, until you get a glimpse of predatory venom in his eyes.
But his hands look they could hold a knife, or a fistful of your hair as he…
I roll my eyes.
Blond, pretty-boy jock Lochlan Kildare is not my masked stalker. For one thing, he doesn't have enough ink. Case closed.
Thank God.
Eventually, Ari finishes with her study group and stops by Wren’s room. We're all about to dive into a gloriously trashy marathon of Real Housewives of Nashville when Arianna puts on her mom hat and reminds me that I have a quiz in my developmental psych class in a few days.
Fuck. I left my course book and notes in Roche Lecture Hall earlier today.
With a groan, I say goodnight to my friends and the Nashville housewives and head out.
I know the Knightsblood campus is completely safe.
But the news has cycled back recently to the Jane Doe body that was found outside town earlier this summer, and the possibility of it being a murder, despite no real evidence yet.
They’ve even given the potential murderer a name: the Shoreline Killer.
It’s easy to say you don’t buy tabloid crap like that. But it gets a little harder when it’s eleven at night and you’re walking alone into a dark academic building.
I keep my eyes peeled as I quickly walk down the shadow-bathed hallways of the nineteenth century building. There are four different classrooms in Roche Lecture Hall, and I make my way to Lecture Hall B, where I had Developmental Psych earlier today.
A shiver scrapes down my spine when the old, heavy doors squeal on their hinges. I quickly cross the area with the lectern, professor's desk and slate chalkboard, and scamper up the aisle of the amphitheater-style seating.
I sigh in relief when I spot my textbook and notes exactly where I left them, halfway across the seventh row. I snag them both and clutch them to my chest as I turn and quickly jog down the stairs and back to the door.
My pulse jumps when I try to leave.
The hinges don’t squeak this time.
…Because the double doors are now zip-tied shut.
A cold feeling twists in my chest as dark venom coils around my middle.
I suddenly feel trapped. Hunted.
But most of all?
I feel watched.
“I enjoyed your most recent video.”
The scream strangles in my throat as I whirl, my heart lurching and jangling erratically when my eyes land right on him.
The Ghost Prince slowly descends one of the aisles of the amphitheater. He’s wearing black jeans and boots, and his usual tactical mask with the white crown spray painted on it.
He’s shirtless, and I gasp as my eyes slide over the tattoo ink twisting and snaking up both arms, across his chest, and down the chiseled v-lines of his hips into the waist of his jeans.
His grooved muscles coil and ripple with every step. It's like I’m watching a jaguar or some other nocturnal apex predator prowling through the shadows toward his prey.
A voice inside me screams to turn and run. Use my keys to sever the zip-ties, kick open the doors, and sprint like hell from this walking nightmare of a man, who for all I know is the very Shoreline Killer that I was worrying about barely ten minutes ago.
I retreat on shaking legs until I’m pressed against the doors behind me.
The Ghost Prince keeps descending the stairs. His eyes are covered by the black eyeholes of the mask, but I can still feel his gaze slicing into me as he slowly prowls toward me.
I suck in a sharp breath, trembling as he comes to a stop right in front of me. He smells woodsy and masculine, with spicy hints of spice and clean citrus. He towers over me, and the sheer presence of him looming so close turns my knees weak and makes my insides liquify.
“POV: the toxic, red flag parade MMC stalks you through the darkness and makes you take it like a good girl,” he murmurs quietly, quoting my last video. His modulated voice scrapes over my skin as heat pools in my core.
I gasp quietly, making a sound that might be a chuckle rumble from his chest.
“Well, we have the darkness, little villain,” he growls. “Would you say you feel stalked right now?”
I quickly nod, my eyes wide and unblinking as I stare up into his masked face.
“Am I still a toxic, walking red flag parade?”
A whimper escapes my lips when his fingers wrap around my throat.
The thing is, I want to be furious.
I want to look inside myself and find the anger and the fury that should be there: white-hot, righteous. Completely justified.
This man spied on me with a hidden fucking camera pointed at my goddamn bed. There isn’t a single part of that which is okay, and I want to scream it into his masked fucking face.
But his hand is still wrapped around my throat, his heat and scent are tearing down any defenses I have remaining, and my body has completely left the fight.
My traitorous, treacherous, unhinged body, which is flooding with heat and melting like wax against the doors behind me even as we speak, while my pulse hammers against his palm like it's trying to escape my body.
And he wants to know if I still think he’s a toxic, walking red flag parade???
"Yes," I breathe. His thumb drags slowly along my pulse point, and I feel his attention sharpen on me in the dark.
"Yes, what?"
"Yes, you're still a toxic, walking red flag parade," I manage, my voice pathetically thin.
He tilts his head slightly to the side, like he's considering something, and I feel his eyes pierce my very soul through his dark mask.
“Then I just have one last question, little villain."
I shiver as his body presses into mine, pinning me against the door. He reaches behind himself with his free hand and then slowly brings it back.
The floor drops out from under me as I stare speechless at the big, thick, veined, slightly translucent pink dildo in his grip.
…My dildo, that I used as a prop in my last video.
My mouth goes dry.
I don’t dwell on the details, like the implication that he’s been back in my room, or how he even knew I’d be here at this late hour. All I can do is stare at the sex toy between us and then drag my gaze up to those emotionless, blank black holes where his eyes should be.
“Are you going to take it like a good girl, Galina?”