Chapter 6 Cooper #2
I turn to see a bearded, bald lunatic running toward me, his eyes bloodshot, the brown irises fully crazed under the moonlight. A blade dripping crimson in his right hand.
He reeks of cigarettes and rotting intestines. His white long sleeve shirt is shredded in a million different places.
For one absurd second, I freeze, waiting for the usual thrill, that spark of dark excitement that comes with danger. But this? This isn’t the right kind of monster. This isn’t him.
This is the killer.
I would be okay with being strangled by a sexy serial killer—preferably after the dick down of a lifetime. The foreplay would be worth it all.
But this beast of a man? Hell no.
“Shit,” I say, the word barely escaping the panic in my voice.
My pulse spikes, shredding the last strands of my composure. I stumble back a step, my shoes scraping the pavement. The man’s face twists as he barrels closer. His mouth is nearly foaming, wild and hungry.
This isn’t the wolf I’ve been trying to summon. This isn’t the elegant predator who prowls with a purpose.
This is a rabid stray. The sort that bites for no inexplicable reason.
I pivot, legs responding before my brain can issue the orders and bolt into the woods. Branches whip at my arms, the cold air hitting my throat as I tear through the trees.
Behind me, the pounding of the ground continues.
“Run Boy, Run,” I hear him snarl.
The words slash through my gut and the evening air.
That voice.
Definitely not him.
This one doesn’t want to play.
He just wants to kill.
My legs keep sprinting through the underbrush. I have no idea where I am going or where the trail disappeared to, swallowed by the blur of the night and bad decisions. My feet keep stepping forward, over the roots of trees.
My lungs burn. My breath heaves out of me in ragged bursts. The night feels alive, every sound ringing in my ears.
The ground dips suddenly, my shoe catching on a root. I stumble but somehow manage to stay upright—pure dumb survival instinct. My heart is a jackhammer against my chest wall, a soundtrack of staying alive, staying alive, staying alive.
Somewhere at my six, the lunatic crashes through brush, snarling like he’s enjoying himself far too much. His boots strike the earth in chaotic cadence. Closer. Closer. Closer. Close enough that I can almost feel the heat of his sour frenzy on my nape.
I can’t think of where I am. My lungs are jabbing; my brain is pure static.
I’ve never run off the trails before. Every direction looks the same. The trees crowd my vision, mocking my decision to disobey their omen.
I focus ahead of me. I see a flicker of a streetlight breaking through the trees.
Salvation. Bless the fricking Lord!
I trudge uphill, pushing my quads past their snapping point. The incline burns from my pelvis down to my toes.
Then—a betrayal by mother nature herself.
A loose rock rolls under my shoe, my ankle twists, and I go face-first into the dirt. The impact snatches my breath. The world tilts in a blur of panic and crunches.
Before I can rise from the ground, the weight hits me, hot and heavy.
The lunatic slams into my back, driving the air out of me in one awful grunt.
His voice slides into my ear, reeking of decay and rot.
“I told you to run, pretty boy,” he snarls, spit flecking my cheek.
“Guess I get to have a little fun before you meet the river.”
“No please…” I beg, my heart sinking into my stomach, while my vision tunnels to the black dirt.
“Don’t move,” he growls, as he holds the knife against my neck.
I stay as still as a rock, complying with his order. Maybe there is a chance out of this.
He rips my shorts in half and my compressions, exposing my crease.
“What a fit fucking ass you have,” he says in the most disgusting manner.
I can’t believe my last fuck is going to be one with the stature of a hobbit. The universe really does have a sick sense of humor. Play with fire, and you get a gremlin with a knife and rotting teeth.
His lips smother my neck, while I try to hold back my grimace.
“Stay still,” he bellows. “Or I’ll end you right now.”
I nod my head, trying to hold back the urge to vomit from his pungent breath.
My fingers claw at the ground, scrabbling for anything—a rock, a prayer, another serial killer perhaps—but all I can find are dying leaves. In the distance I can hear the river roaring, calling for my corpse in between his feral growls.
“Shouldn’t have been out tonight, sweetheart,” he groans, pressing the blade to my throat.
All I can think is: Ava was right.
This is exactly what I get for romanticizing murder, for turning death into foreplay. I asked for my masked reaper with abs; not the hobbit from hell—five-foot nothing of pure BO and almost five Riverside lives under his belt.
So, this is it. My grand finale. And I’m about to be turned into his filet mignon.
Please Ava. Do my documentary justice. Please I beg you, as my last conscious thought. Make sure to add original violin music.
I release the last ounce of restraint holding my body together.
The fear, the pain, the disappointment spilling out at once, my breath shuddering into the cold air.
His grimy hands clamp down on my shoulders, shoving my face into the dirt until my teeth grind against the dirt and debris.
The world tastes like iron and humiliation.
And not in a good way.
Then a silhouette moves in my left periphery.
The hobbit freezes for a split-second, nostrils flaring.
The voice cuts through the hobbit’s snarls. “Step away from him, you filthy Baptiste.”
For the first time, the lunatic on top of me falters.
A sparkle of relief drowns out the taste of dirt in my mouth.
Because I know that voice.
And I’ve never been so thrilled to hear it.
“I have orders, Quinn,” the hobbit hisses.
“Yeah? And what are those?” The masked man asks.
My brain does a full stop.
Quinn?
Wait—like Dr. Quinn.
As in, the man who’s arm I stitched two nights ago while I tried to contain my bulge of attraction?
Oh, fantastic. My attending physician moonlights as my guardian psychopath—noted.
But I’m not going to complain about it. I’ll take potentially homicidal forearms over hobbit hands any day.
“To take you out,” the hobbit snarls, lurching toward him with the grace of a frenzied gorilla.
Dr. Quinn moves like he’s one with the forest. A step to the side, and the hobbit stumbles into a tree.
“Who gave you the orders?”
“I can’t say,” the hobbit laughs maniacally. “You should know the code.”
“I don’t give a fucking shit about the code. As if Baptistes have any shred of honor.”
“Honor is for the dressed-up hypocrites,” the hobbit spits back, wobbling to his feet. “We follow the sacred commandments when it’s convenient.”
“Well, I guess you won’t be needing this anymore,” Dr. Quinn says, as he steps forward and twists the neck of the burly man until it snaps, blood squirting on my shoulder as the corpse thuds to the ground.
For a second, I can’t breathe. Then the absurdity hits.
He just fucking snapped his neck off, with those forearms of steel. I can’t help myself but to appreciate the arms that saved my life and ended another within seconds.
My stomach lurches, but my cock twitches. I shouldn’t be horny in the middle of a homicide. I know. But he makes it excruciatingly difficult not to be.
He’s handsome. He’s protective. And he’s ruthless. The perfect trifecta alongside the guns to back it up.
The moonlight catches the edge of his mask as he turns toward me, eyes dark and unreadable. “You okay?”
I nod, even though my brain is like liquid jelly—attempting to process everything that just happened.
My not-so-secret crush happens to save me from the River Stalker?
I should be traumatized. Instead, I’m lightheaded, euphoric, and pitching a tent to rival Denali.
I’m on cloud fucking nine.
I could fucking float right now.
The only thing that could make this even better is if he hopped on me and made me scream into the dirt. Help relieve some of the stress of tonight. And of course, to keep that mask on. It would be my first time getting drilled by a face I can not fully see.
“Have you… done this before?” I stammer, my heart fluttering.
He glances down at the seeping corpse, then back at me. A faint smirk curls under the mask. “You could say a few times.”
Of course he has. This man has probably lived a thousand lives. Saved countless numbers of stupid boys running in the woods.
Yet all I can think, looking at the scene in front of me is—
God, that’s hot.
I wonder what his body count is...
He steps closer to me, his hands landing on my neck. I could explode right now and my life would be complete. This moment is everything I could ever wish for.
“You have bruises on your neck…” the words spill from his mouth like velvet de crème.
“Oh do I?” I sputter, trying to look down at them.
“Is it okay if I kiss them?” he asks, the question burning through me like a blazing wildfire, my cheeks blushing a heavy shade of scarlet.
“Yes!” I blurt, not believing it’s real until I feel the blissful sensation of his lips graze my bruised flesh.
My head spins in a dizzying euphoria, like a million dazzling x-rays radiating me with toxic, yet addictive venom.
I don’t care if he kills me.
Or ties me up to the tree.
Or dismembers me in my sleep and buries the pieces in his bedroom.
More, more, more. Please…
“Come on, my little mouse, we must go. Others could be here soon…”
“What do you mean, others?” I ask.
But I will go anywhere with this man. Antarctica, Timbuktu, Easter Island… wherever those forearms go, I’ll trot along like a happy idiot with a death wish.
“I can tell you more later, Cooper,” he says, glancing around in a circle, a heavy weight occupying his face behind the mask.
“Okay,” I sigh out as he picks me up from the ground, the air escaping from my lungs. My arms flail for a second before instinct takes over and cling to him—cause I guess survival mode and horny panic feel almost identical.
My cheeks blush an embarrassing shade of pink. “I can walk, you know,” I mumble, trying to have some dignity and failing spectacularly. Not that I’m complaining about being held like a damsel in distress with a mountain of student loan debt.
He chuckles, a deep, gravelly sound that penetrates my eardrums and fucks them silly. “I know you can Cooper,” he says, voice masked in glazed velvet. “But I’ve been dying to carry you.”
Oh my god. This man, Dr. Quinn, is flirting with me?
Is he fucking with me? Because this isn’t fair. The universe can’t hand me a masked savior with the forearms of Jupiter and then expect me to behave.
But I shut my lips for once, and cradle my head in the valley of his neck and shoulder and embrace his alluring musk as he ventures us out of the darkness.
I never knew flirting with death could be so sweet.