Wendy
The second my legs stop shaking, I move.
Not smoothly, not gracefully—like prey trying to flee a trap it already chewed its own leg off to escape.
I shove out of the booth, the vinyl screeching against my skin like a dying animal.
My elbow nearly knocks the glass off the table, the half-inch of pink sugar rattling against the wood as I scramble for distance.
I nearly trip on the sticky, beer-soaked carpet, my heels catching on the grime of a thousand bad decisions.
I don’t care. My skin is burning, a feverish, localised heat that feels like a brand.
My thighs are wet, the cooling dampness a humiliating reminder of how easily I broke, and my chest is so tight I can’t get a full breath.
I can still feel him. I can feel the phantom weight of his thigh, the bruising grip of his hand, the smug fucking rasp of his voice telling me to cum like I had a choice. Like I was ever anything more than a toy he decided to wind up.
I stumble through the crowd, the air in the club tasting of recycled breath and cheap ambition. Heat crawls up my throat. Every laugh I hear sounds like a jagged edge, like they all know what I just did in the dark. Every eye feels like a spotlight on the damp patch on my dress.
I’m humiliated. I’m fucking ruined. I’m not stopping.
The front door looms ahead—the red EXIT sign glowing like a bloody promise I should’ve taken hours ago. I push past some drunk suit who smells like desperation, ignore his indignant shout, and shove the heavy metal door open. I taste the night air like salvation.
It cuts through the sweat on my skin, shocking my lungs back to life. It reminds me I’m still real, still human, still—
“Running already, Darling?”
The door slams shut behind me with a final, metallic thud that sounds like a cell door locking. His voice slides through the alley like oil on water, dark and iridescent and impossible to wash off.
I freeze. My heart hits my ribs so hard it hurts. Because of course he followed. Because a predator doesn’t let the rabbit go just because she finally found a hole to crawl into.
Peter Hale fills the doorway like a shadow carved from pure, unadulterated violence.
The neon sign overhead flickers, painting his sharp features in a strobing crimson—the colour of sin, of emergency, of every warning light I’ve ever ignored. He doesn’t look out of breath. He doesn’t even look ruffled. He looks like a man who just finished a light meal. Calm. Controlled. Lethal.
Like he planned this. Like he’s been orchestrating my collapse for years.
“Stay the fuck away from me,” I snap, backing up until the grit of the brick wall scrapes my bare shoulder blades.
He smiles, slow and predatory. “That’s not what your body said two minutes ago. Your body was screaming for me to stay.”
Heat scorches my cheeks, a deep, angry flush. “You’re disgusting. You’re a fucking animal.”
“Maybe.” He steps closer, his boots crunching on the gravel and broken glass of the alleyway, measured and rhythmic. “But I’m the only animal that makes you cum so hard you forget your own name. I’m the only one who knows the exact sound you make when you’ve lost your goddamn mind.”
“Fuck you,” I hiss, my voice cracking under the weight of my own pulse.
“You already did.” His smirk sharpens, his eyes glinting like a blade in the red light as he stalks forward, crowding my space until the air is nothing but him. “And you’ll do it again. Next time, you won’t even pretend to fight it.”
I shake my head, my throat tight enough to choke me. “This was a mistake. A momentary lapse in sanity.”
He laughs, a low, cruel sound that vibrates in the narrow space between the buildings. “Sweetheart, the mistake was thinking you could walk into my booth and walk out the same girl. You’re different now. You’re stained. And you love the way it feels.”
My knees nearly buckle. Because he’s right. I can still feel the lingering, electric tremor of my orgasm, the shame slicking my skin, the way my body obeyed him like it had been waiting for his command since the day I hit puberty.
I try to find words. Any words that don’t sound like a surrender. All I manage is a whisper: “You can’t keep doing this to me. You’re going to kill me.”
Peter steps so close the brick at my back feels like it disappears into the heat radiating off his chest. His hand comes up—not touching me, just hovering near my jaw, the calloused tip of his thumb almost grazing the swell of my lower lip.
His voice drops to something darker. Something ravenous. “I don’t have to keep doing anything, Darling. You’ll come back. You’ll seek me out in the dark because the light is too boring for a girl like you.”
The air between us goes razor sharp, filled with the scent of rain and his own intoxicating arrogance. His blue eyes catch mine and hold—no escape, no mercy, just a brutal, bottomless depth.
And then—he leans in, close enough that his breath brushes the sensitive skin of my ear, his words sinking straight into my bloodstream like a toxin.
“Next time, I’ll make you beg for it. I’ll make you scream my name until your throat is raw and you’re begging me to never stop.”
His breath ghosts over my ear, hot and smug, but I don’t flinch. I can’t. If I move, I’ll shatter into a thousand pieces of wanting and loathing.
“Step back,” I whisper, even though my voice shakes like a leaf in a gale.
Peter chuckles, a low, sandpaper rasp against my skin. “You really want me to? You want to go back to your lonely bed and pretend you don’t still feel my leg between yours?”
“Yes.” My answer comes too fast, a desperate lie that falls flat between us.
His eyes drag down my face, heavy and intentional, lingering on the curve of my mouth until I want to scream. His hand lifts—not touching—just hovering near my throat, a silent dare for me to lean into the heat of him.
“Then why the fuck are you trembling like you’ll fall apart if I don’t touch you right now?”
Heat pools low in my belly, an ugly, undeniable ache. I grit my teeth, spat the only weapon I have left at his feet. “Because you terrify me. Because you’re a fucking psychopath.”
“Good.” His grin flashes white in the red neon glow, feral and bright. “Fear looks hot on you, Wendy. It makes your skin flush and your eyes go wide. It makes you look like you’re ready to be broken.”
My nails bite into my palms, drawing blood. “You’re sick.”
He leans in even closer, until I can smell the smoke and the expensive whiskey on his breath, a cocktail of ruin.
“No, Darling. I’m honest. Every other guy wants to pretend he’s your saviour, that he’ll protect you from the world.
I’m the only one who’ll admit I’m the one you need protection from.
I’m the one who’s going to ruin you, and we both know you’re going to let me. ”
The words punch the air out of me. My knees knock, my chest heaves, and I hate—I fucking hate—that my body arcs forward, seeking the contact my mind is screaming to avoid.
“You can’t do this to me,” I whisper, my voice a broken thing.
His laugh is dark, cruel, and utterly satisfied. “Can’t? Sweetheart, I already did. Back there in the booth—your thighs shaking, your breath breaking, your little cunt soaking through your dress for me? You gave me everything I wanted without me even having to take it.”
Shame spikes hot and bitter in my throat.
I turn my face away, trying to find some scrap of dignity in the trash-strewn alley, but his hand snaps up.
His fingers catch my jaw, a sharp, bruising grip that forces me back to him.
It isn’t gentle. It’s a claim. It’s a master reminding a dog who’s in charge.
“Look at me,” he orders, his voice rough silk and iron.
I do.
The smirk fades for a heartbeat, his eyes sharpening to something hungrier, colder, more obsessive.
“You want to hate me. I get it. It’s easier than admitting the truth.
But you’ll lie awake tonight with your hand between your thighs, and you’ll hear my voice every time you touch yourself.
You’ll hear me telling you what a good girl you are, and you’ll hate yourself more for needing it more than you’ll ever hate me for giving it to you. ”
A strangled sound claws out of my chest—half sob, half growl. I shove against his chest, but he’s an oak tree. He doesn’t budge. The wall, his massive frame, his soul-stripping stare—everything cages me in.
“You think this is power?” I snap, my voice trembling with the effort not to cry. “Pressing me against a fucking wall in the dark?”
His grin returns, sharper than a razor. “No, Wendy. This is power—knowing you’ll still be thinking about the way I made you cum tomorrow when your best friend asks why you look like you’ve been thoroughly fucked.”
My stomach drops, a sickening cocktail of fury and heat tangling until I can’t tell which is which. The thought of his sister, of the lies I’ll have to tell, makes me want to vomit and scream all at once.
“Fuck you,” I spit.
His hand slides lower, fingers trailing down the column of my throat, not choking—just a terrifying, lingering threat of what he could do if he wanted to. “You already thought about it. You’re thinking about it right now.”
And then he steps back. Just like that.
No warning. No slow withdrawal. Just a sudden, cold vacuum as he removes his presence. He leaves me pinned against the wall by my own frantic heartbeat, while he smirks like he’s already collected his trophy.
“See you soon, Darling,” he murmurs, his voice low enough to bruise my skin.
And then he’s gone, slipping into the night like the devil never needed to stay to win the soul.
I stand frozen, lungs dragging in the smog and the city air, my hands shaking too hard to hide. My thighs are still trembling, my lips still tingling with the ghost of words he didn’t even kiss into me.
I hate him. I crave him. And God help me, I know I’m coming back for more.
I think he’s gone—slipped back into the shadows where monsters and nightmares belong. But then his hand snaps around my wrist again, iron and heat, yanking me half a step forward before I can even draw a breath.
“Wait—” The word rips out of me, raw and useless.
He tilts his head, the smirk curved like a sickle. “You don’t get to tell me when it’s over. I decide when I’m done with you.”
The pressure on my wrist is sharp enough to throb in time with the frantic rhythm of my heart. He doesn’t squeeze harder, but the threat is there, coiled in his fingers. I’m already trapped, suspended in that dangerous, electric place between the urge to fight and the desperate need to submit.
“Let me go,” I whisper, the words a dying ember.
“Let you go?” His thumb drags slow and heavy across the vein in my arm, a touch that feels more like a brand of ownership than anything else.
“Darling, you don’t get it. You’ve never been free a day in your fucking life.
Least of all from me. I’ve owned a piece of you since the first time you looked at me and blushed. ”
My throat closes around the cold air.
He steps closer again, crowding me back against the unyielding brick, his chest almost brushing my breasts, his breath fanning across my lips until I’m lightheaded.
“You keep coming to that club like you’re waiting for something to happen to you.
And now it has. You found me.” His smile twists, wolfish and dark.
“So don’t pretend you don’t like the cage when you’re the one who keeps crawling inside and locking the door. ”
“God, you’re so fucking arrogant,” I hiss, though my voice is a traitor, trembling like it’s begging for a hit instead of defying a dealer.
“And you’re wet. Again.” His voice drops, a dark, merciless vibration that goes straight to my core. “Don’t bother denying it, Wendy. I can smell it on you.”
Heat scalds my cheeks, a deep, agonising flush of shame. The coil in my stomach tightens until I think I’ll break in half.
He leans down, his lips brushing the shell of my ear—not a kiss, but a branding.
“Next time,” he murmurs, his voice filthy velvet that promises nothing but ruin, “I won’t stop at words.
I’m going to put my mouth on you until you’re screaming for me to stop, and then I’m going to keep going until you can’t even remember your own name. ”
My knees nearly buckle. My lungs seize.
And then—just like that—he releases me.
The loss of his grip is a physical blow, almost worse than the hold itself. My wrist burns where his hand had been, a phantom heat searing through my veins like permanent ink.
Peter steps back, slow and deliberate, his eyes still locked on mine like a promise and a threat. “Go home, Wendy. Dream about me. Hate yourself in the morning when you wake up with my name on your lips.”
He turns away, slipping into the crowd outside the alley with that lethal, predatory ease that makes people part for him without even realising they’re afraid.
I sag against the wall, every nerve ending still buzzing with electricity, every thought fractured into a million jagged pieces. I should hate him. I do. Every fibre of my being screams that he’s a monster but my thighs press together anyway, seeking the friction he just took away.
And I know he’s right—when I close my eyes tonight in the silence of my room, it won’t be freedom I’m thinking about. It’ll be the way his voice sounded when he promised to break me.