Chapter 6
The Stranger
Fucking hell. I shouldn’t be here.
Instead, I should’ve stayed at home back in my quiet lodge on the outskirts of town, perfect for solitude and keeping my sanity.
I never should have let myself be persuaded by my friends to get here for an evening of fun, in this rotting haunted fair with the stinking burnt of corn and the sickly sweet smell of cotton candy.
They wanted to get away from their responsibilities at their offices, thought it was a good idea to bring me with ‘em.
“You’re not getting out of your house enough,” they’d said.
“I’m outside all the time,” I’d retort.
“You get what we mean.”
If it weren’t for the fact that we had known each other since high school, a bunch of guys doing everything they should not have done, I would have thrown them in a lake long ago.
Hide their bodies so the cops would never find them.
But oddly, and annoyingly enough, I enjoyed their company when they weren’t pain in the asses.
So, here I fucking am. But they weren’t the only reason: seeing my long-lost foster dad, who neglected and abused me years ago working here as a scare-actor… that was my chance to finally get retribution.
And there she fucking was, an angel dripped in sin, stained with the horrors of the world like a blanket surrounding her in its warmth.
Standing behind me in the queue to the circus, of all places.
‘Hellcus,’ in big, bold neon letters blazing at the front of the tent.
Surrounded by people but appearing to be somewhat of an outcast, she stood close enough for me to talk to, but not nearly enough for me to touch her.
Every nerve inside me hummed with the urging itch for contact, just a fraction of a touch that would satiate the smoldering lava lying dormant like a volcano in my rotten core.
I never claimed to be sane. How could I?
Growing up with the childhood I’d had, parents who abandoned me on the cold doorsteps of an orphanage when I was only five years old, a home that was never stable enough to truly feel like one—such things would allow anyone to spiral into the darkest depths I haven’t been able to crawl out of yet, even twenty-six years later.
A child needs stability and love; otherwise, they grow up like me and my friends, rotting on the inside while fighting to stay afloat on the outside.
At least they got themselves somewhere in life.
I prefer staying in my lodge, the only place I’ve ever called home, even when it feels like just another place to sleep at.
Now, here I am, prepared to take on this ridiculous night at the hands of my annoying friends.
But seeing here there…
Something inside me snapped. The threads keeping my sanity intact splintering apart, fracturing the mental image within me until it grew to nothing but a consistent, poisonous toxicity I could not for the life of me ignore.
Seeing her there, in the queue, was my final fucking doom wrapped in golden ribbons.
So fucking fragile and delicious, arms curling around herself and her shoulders hunched, as if trying to make herself as small as possible. Not even that would have kept my eyes away from her.
I couldn’t not talk to her. Was that flirting she resorted to, answering to my own?
“Oh, you’re trouble,” she’d said, her cheeks flushing in a deeper pink that tinged her skin into something delectable.
I wanted to touch her. Needed to.
The distance between me and her felt like a goddamn blade cutting me open—fucking absurd, if you ask me—but I leaned closer, feeling the distinct sweetness of her perfume.
I have known from an early age that there is something wrong with me. And fucking hell, I am the epitome of doomed.
Her tiny little black lace dress, with a neckline framing her plump breasts, almost gave her a corset-like look.
Fucking gorgeous, with long and bellowing sleeves.
Sexy with dark red details all over, ending right above her knees.
And those patterned see-through tights, making me wish I could grab her thighs.
Such a fucking pervert.
But best of all? Her makeup. Those small little fangs on her front teeth, adding to her vampire, goth look. Fragile, little beautiful thing, pretending to be a vampire when every part of her screamed prey.
Luckily for her, I was born a predator.
I never should have let my friends drag me here, because then, I wouldn’t have done what I did.
Committed the sins that I do not in the slightest regret, for they were justifiable.
But I wouldn’t have acted so irrationally, pretending to be a scare-actor just so I could come closer to her. But it was already too late.
I needed to get the woman I had set my eyes on and own her in the only way I knew how to.
She would be mine. Min dods?ngel, her fangs glinting like a vampire’s, posing as something dangerous.
Her fragility and preciousness echoed around her, as if her soul was calling to the beast roaring inside me. The way her eyes locked with mine as she spoke, her sweet voice filtering into my eardrums, made the emptiness inside me evaporate. It was like coming home to a place I never had.
I felt like some pussy-whipped motherfucker, but I knew I just had to have her.
After all, a lumberjack is nothing without his muse. And tonight, I’d found mine.