Chapter Eight
Rheda
I’m awake.
I know I’m awake because I can feel the weight of my body but I just can’t move it.
My bedroom lies around me in perfect stillness. The small crease in the curtain where the fabric never hangs properly no matter how often I straighten it, the outline of my slippers by the door. Even the faint silver shine of the handle where the streetlight catches.
Everything is where it should be.
But the air is wrong. It presses cold against my face even though the rest of the room feels muffled and warm. My body lies heavy beneath the duvet as if sleep has packed me down into the mattress and left me there.
For a while, nothing happens.
I stare at the ceiling and listen to the flat hum softly around me, pipes ticking, fridge murmuring. I let my breath leave slowly.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Ex—
Fuck.
Something is looking at me.
It lands on me all at once like a hand closing over my throat from the inside.
It drags over me with deliberate patience, starting at my face and moving downward in a slow, impossible sweep, along the line of my throat, over the shape of my mouth, the rise and fall of my chest beneath the duvet.
My body knows it before my mind can catch up.
Someone is standing at the foot of my bed watching me.
Studying me.
My heart slams so hard it knocks the breath out of rhythm.
No.
I drag my head up. It moves, but wrong—slow, heavy, like I’m forcing it through something thick, but something in the corner holds my attention. It stands there, narrow and upright. Too long to be furniture, too dark to be a shadow. It doesn’t step forward. It lets my eyes adjust.
I keep staring, waiting for it to correct itself but the longer I look, the more shape commits. The suggestion of large shoulders. The black cut of a stretched silhouette.
A man.
My body goes cold.
Fuck!
My fingers twitch against the sheet in a desperate attempt to move but it doesn’t move the way I tell it to. The wrong fingers curl slowly like something is trying me on.
The cold spurts of adrenaline suddenly feel hot. Too hot. It unfurls beneath my skin.
My thighs shift beneath the covers, but I don’t remember willing them to move. I freeze. Because for a moment, just a moment, it feels like I’ve just followed instructions I was never given.
The figure tilts its head. A fraction. Not much. But something about the movement sends a blade of dread down my spine.
Dreams don’t move like that. They don’t wait.
I finally force sound through my throat. “Who—”
The word breaks apart.
The figure is there, and then it isn’t, and suddenly, my mattress dips. A slow, gradual shift beside my legs. The shadow leers over me.
My stomach tightens so hard it aches.
No!
Panic rises fast. I force my hand toward the bedside lamp. It twitches uselessly against the sheet.
The bed dips again.
Higher this time.
Closer.
Every nerve in me flares.
The scent reaches me next, honey and something darker beneath it. Wood warmed by heat. Resin. Smoke. A sweetness made strange, almost medicinal in its thickness. It threads through the room until breathing feels like swallowing it.
My pulse hammers painfully at the base of my throat.
I try to roll onto my front for an escape. My body refuses, just enough to humiliate me. I manage a weak shift of my shoulder and nothing more.
His attention continues to hold me hostage, and it burns with a heat. I hate that my sleep shirt suddenly feels more decorative than useful, that my duvet feels more like a weight holding me down.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
If I don’t see him, he’s not real.
It’s ridiculous, a sharp childish response and—
Something brushes the ends of my hair.
My breath changes. I don’t do it. It stutters, then slows. Drawn out, forced deeper, like something is testing how much air I’ll take before panic takes over.
I bite down hard, trying to ground myself in pain, but the hand moves again. It traces the ends of my hair where it spills across the pillow.
I force the word out, rough and barely audible. “Stop.”
The touch stills. For one bright second, relief rushes through me so fast it makes me dizzy.
Then the mattress shifts once more. He leans in.
I feel it before any part of him makes contact: the slow, awful certainty that his face is near level with mine, close enough that if I were to turn my head even slightly, I might find him there.
“Rheda.” He doesn’t speak, the word just...appears fully formed in the back of my mind, low and velvety.
I still so completely that for a moment I cease to feel like a body at all.
Wake up. I beg. Wake the fuck up.
But it doesn’t work.
My heart is pounding so violently now it has become difficult to tell what I’m hearing, my own pulse or the subtle shifting of the bed, but I still feel him—feel the exact point where he’s focused, where his attention sits like weight against my skin.
The hand returns. It hovers just above my wrist where it lies on the mattress.
I keep perfectly still, like that might make him lose interest but it doesn’t work.
A finger traces the inside of it with impossible care.
The moment he touches me, something misfires. My thighs tense like I’m bracing for impact.
I don’t understand the reaction, and it makes it worse.
The finger moves higher, following the line of my forearm.
“Stop.” My voice cracks.
The hand finally withdraws. My skin burns where he was.
The air near my neck shifts.
He’s closer.
My throat tightens.
His finger traces just above my skin instead. It follows the line of my throat without quite landing. I press my tongue hard to the roof of my mouth, grounding myself.
“Stop,” I manage again. “Stop!”
His thumb presses beneath my jaw and the rest of his hand follows, curling around my throat.
My chin lifts before I can stop it. It lands like a blow to the chest.
No.
No, I didn’t do that.
I didn’t just give him more space.
I try to pull back but my muscles lag behind the thought. He keeps me exactly where he wants me, holding me like his fingers are mapping the structure of my throat.
I make a sound. I don’t mean to. It tears out of me, small and strained, and the humiliation burns hotter than fear.
“Stop!” It barely forms.
His grip tightens.
Air cuts.
My lungs seize instantly, dragging for something that isn’t there, chest jerking in sharp, useless pulls.
Panic detonates.
My body reacts before I can think—spine arching hard enough to hurt, heels digging into the mattress, hands finally moving but wrong, clawing at nothing, at him, at the air that won’t reach me.
A sound tears out of me. It doesn’t even make it past my mouth.
His fingers hold like he’s waiting to see what my body does when it realises it’s about to suffocate.
My vision fractures at the edges, sharp and white. My pulse slams against his hand in violent, desperate bursts, stuttering, skipping. My throat spasms against his grip, and the realisation hits, cold and absolute—
He could kill me.
Right here.
Easily.
My body bucks again, frantic in a way that already feels doomed, and still he doesn’t loosen his grip. He just keeps me there, balanced on the edge of blackness while panic tears uselessly through my chest.
Then suddenly—air slams back into me.
My lungs seize around it too fast. I choke violently, throat burning, body folding in on itself as oxygen rushes somewhere it hasn’t been allowed to reach.
The mattress beside me stays warm like the shape of him is still pressed into the dark beside me even after he’s gone.
A sharp crack snaps through the room.
My body jerks violently.
Suddenly I can move again.
I wrench my hand upward and fumble blindly for the lamp. My fingers hit the base. Slip. Catch. Light floods the room.
I gasp and twist around so fast my shoulder protests, shoving myself backwards until my spine hits the headboard, eyes tearing around for danger.
Nothing.
And yet the scent lingers. Honey and wood. Something faintly scorched but sweet.
I stare at the empty space beside me until my eyes sting.
Then my gaze drops to my wrist. The skin there is bare, pale, untouched. But I can still feel the path of that finger as though the nerve beneath it has been singled out and taught a lesson.
I press my thumb hard against the place. The sensation does not leave. It burns, aches like he’s pressed a break into the bone.
“A nightmare,” the sound snags. “You’re fine.”
But my bottom lip trembles. Because when I press my thumb to my neck—it aches too, like a bruise left implanted under the skin.
And the time dawn begins to thin, I am sitting upright on the edge of my bed, every lamp in the flat burning, with the humiliating knowledge that I am afraid to go back to sleep.