“Shhh,” he murmurs softly. The man’s face is millimeters away from mine, and I can feel his harsh heartbeat through the thin material of his shirt, the clean scent of soap invading my senses.
He releases his hold on me, but I’m still trapped between him and the wall with nowhere to go. No escape. Fear wraps around my throat like a shackle. Lifting a hand to my trembling face, he cups my cheek and gently swipes away the tears. I wasn’t even aware they’d started falling from my eyes.
“I would never ever hurt you. You are way too important to me, Dove. You have to trust me, I promise everything is going to be okay.” He tries to soothe me, but not a single part of me believes him. My mind is racing, and I have a thousand questions. Why else would he break into my house and attack me if he wasn’t going to hurt me? How does he know my name? And most importantly, why am I important to him? He must have the wrong person. This is all a big misunderstanding.
I’m shaking now, consumed with fear, and my vision is blurry with tears.
“Stop,” he orders, slamming a fist into the wall beside my head. His voice is harsh and only makes me cry harder. He seems to grow frustrated by my failure to listen and releases a hard sigh a moment later. “I didn’t want to have to do this to you… but you’ve left me no choice.”
He takes a step closer, and we’re so close now that we are chest to chest. Our faces are only inches apart. My eyes are in line with his full lips, and that’s when I realize just how much taller he is. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him reaching for something, and I know this has to be it. The end is near, after all I’ve been through in my life, this is how it’s going to end.
“I’m sorry,” I whimper, and even in the face of death, I’m unable to stop the tears from coming. I want to fight, but it’s as if there isn’t anything left in me.
I’m barely hanging on, barely breathing, barely here. I flinch when he leans into me and buries his face into my hair. The action is so intimate, and when I hear him inhale sharply like he’s smelling me, a shiver skids down my spine.
“No, it’s me who is sorry, Dove,” he whispers against my ear a moment before I feel a pricking sensation against my neck and something cold entering my skin.
“Don’t…please...” I try and get the words I want to say out, but my thoughts become hazy. Muddled. Up and down become the same.
Leaning away from me, his face once again comes into view, his full lips a breath away from my own. Strangely, I find he’s beautiful as he peers down at me. Beautiful and frightening, all at the same time.
“Shhh, everything is going to be okay now. You’ll always be safe in my arms.” He threads his fingers through my hair and brings our foreheads together. He holds my head in place, forcing me to stare into his dark, cold eyes.
I’m fading fast and find that most of my body sags against his now. My heartbeat slows, and my lips part, and I want to ask him how I’m going to be safe with him? The words never come though; my tongue is too heavy to talk.
“It’s okay, don’t be afraid…” His voice is the last thing I hear, and his haunting eyes the last thing I see as the world fades to complete darkness.
8
Part of me knows what I did to her is wrong and fucked up. But I couldn’t help myself. What other choice did I have anyway? If I don’t disappear with her, Christian will find her and have someone else kill her.
Having her in my arms, even with fear in her eyes was everything I thought it would be and more. Her soft body molded against mine perfectly, her sweet scent surrounded me, and feeling the rapid beat of her heart against mine was the best kind of high.
When she started crying, I snapped, her tears are a trigger to me. I hate seeing her cry, but even with her tears, I can’t seem to shut off my body’s reaction to her. My cock grew harder than steel, and I had to