by Skye Warren
“So you can kill me?”
“If I was going to kill you,” he says, warm and tickly beneath my earlobe, “don’t you think you’d be dead?” There’s something about the way he says this that makes my belly quiver, and I can’t stop focusing on his erection. His big, strong heart beats against my back, beating my heart like we’re conjoined in some primitive way.
His breath feels soft on the side of my neck, and heaven help me, I want to feel more of him. I imagine his skin on my skin. Dimly I’m aware that my breath is changing, speeding, shallowing.
I stiffen as he presses his lips to the warm spot; it’s a kind of kiss. Or is it? And then he whispers, “Penny for your thoughts, Ms. Winslow.”
Oh God, he knows. This man who’s going to kill me, this man I’ve been breathing with, he knows.
I close my eyes, panting now, pulse wild. He shifts his legs, forcing me to press my thighs together, and a wave of desire rolls through me.
He slides one hand up my arm and fumbles his other hand into my hair. I can tell by the way he moves that he doesn’t have his sight back, but that’s not what alarms me. The feeling between us has changed. He’s different.
We’re different.
It’s as if we’re connected, and I can feel him shift, like the terrible desire between us changed something in him. He fists my hair and pulls my head sideways, exposing my throat.
“Don’t,” I gasp.
“Don’t what?” he whispers, lowering his lips to my neck, pressing them to my tender skin. He scrapes his teeth across my pulse point. “Don’t what, Ms. Winslow?” He rubs his hands up and down my arms, soft through my sweater.
I let out a puff of air I didn’t know I was holding. Maybe it’s desperation. Maybe it’s desire. All I know is it’s fucked up. “Just don’t.”
He slides his hands up to cover mine, locking his fingers over mine, balling my hands into fists. It’s a little bit like he’s holding my hands and a little bit like he’s controlling me, and it feels like a metaphor for everything between us now.
He lifts himself off me, nudging me over.
“No,” I say, but in one rough, efficient movement, he makes me turn over. A lack of sight doesn’t seem to hinder him whatsoever. He clamps his legs over mine, and I’m trapped, staring up at his shut eyes. Tears dot his dark lashes like diamonds.
“Grayson,” I say. “Don’t.”
He grips my wrists in just one of his huge hands now, and he runs the other hand down the side of my chest.
I gasp.
“A class I recently took—because as you know, I’m the scholarly type—stressed the importance of using just the right word.” His hand is a heavy weight on my belly. “A precise word over a vague word. Don’t. That’s not very precise.”
“Don’t do this.” I’m scared now.
“This,” he whispers. “That’s vague too, don’t you think? Don’t do this.” He shifts off me a little more, sliding a hand over my breast now. “You’re better than that, Ms. Winslow. Dig deep and find that precise word. I know it’s in you.”
The electric feeling of his hand on me blazes through my sweater, my bra. It’s like I have nothing on, like I’m laid bare to him. Even my glasses are off. He simply helps himself to me, roaming a gentle hand over to my other breast.
I need it to stop feeling good.
“Don’t what? Don’t touch you?” His gentle fingers make me feel all lit up. He shifts a leg between mine.
“Grayson,” I whisper.
He moves his hand back down to my belly, and then I feel rough fingers under my sweater, trailing over my tender skin. I gasp when he hits the sensitive place below my belly button.
“Get off me,” I say, twisting, which just allows his leg to press farther between my legs. The press of his thigh to my sex sends a pulse of feeling up through my core.
“Is that really what you want, Ms. Winslow?”
“Fuck off,” I say. “Yes, it’s what I want. You off.”
He grips my wrists more tightly, anchoring them to the soft pine needles. I close my eyes as his fingers travel ever upward under my sweater, up my belly to my chest. He reaches my breast, slides his fingers lazily back and forth over my nipple. “You’ll lose this fight, you know,” he says matter-of-factly as he slides his calloused fingers over the thin fabric of my bra.
“Congratulations—you can dominate somebody half your size.”
“That’s not the fight I’m talking about. You’ll lose the fight you’re fighting with yourself.” He kisses my neck. “The fight to not feel this. The fight against desire.”
The fight against desire. It feels like a well-worn phrase. He kisses my cheek—a gentle kiss.
His gentleness contrasts wildly with his iron grip on my hands, preventing me from gouging his eyes out.
“It’s always how it goes.” He kisses me again. “Always. It’s okay to lose. Everybody loses. The toughest fuckers I know lose this fight.”
Dimly I wonder where this comes from—my memoirist’s radar tells me there’s something in there. But I can’t care about that now. “I want you the fuck off,” I say, panting as he pulls the fabric of my bra aside, as a rough finger circles my nipple.
“It’s okay to lose,” he whispers. “Be okay with it.”
I feel like I’m sinking into his touch, like he’s taking me over. Worst of all, I can feel the wetness between my legs; that’s what makes this evil. I am losing the fight. “Fuck,” I say, trying to jerk my hands. “Why don’t you just kill me?”
He laughs softly and kisses me. “You don’t mean that.”
Oh God, his hand is heading south now. Maybe it’s perverse, but I don’t want him to touch me there because I don’t want him to know I’m aroused. I try to kick out from under the press of his legs as he plunges his fingers under the waistband of my skirt.
He slides his finger into my panties. It comes to me that we’re breathing together again, but it’s not the calm, measured breaths from before; it’s something darker.
“Ms. Winslow,” he whispers as he strokes my core. Tears of shame burn through my closed-off eyelids as he finds my sensitive nub and begins to strum the feeling higher.
“I don’t want it,” I pant.
“I know,” he says in a strange tone. “I know, but sometimes it’s better if you tell yourself that you do.” He kisses my neck and keeps on touching me, stroking me higher. I feel like I might be losing my mind, like my brain is a plane that’s just taken off from the runway, soaring up into the air, out of touch, out of communication. Something turns in me as he touches me, pushing the desire further.
He hears a voice, and then I hear it too—a call in the distance.
I suck in a breath, about to scream Help! when his heavy hand clamps over my mouth, preventing me from calling out.
“Oh no, you don’t. We’re going to stay very still right here.”
I look around. The foliage is thick enough to hide us.
And all the while he hasn’t stopped touching me, stroking me, making me feel this terrible pleasure. Usually it’s good, but now it’s hateful.
His hand is tight on my mouth. I breathe through my nose, control fraying, and I go for his eyes with my newly freed hands.
Too slow. Before I can get at him, he has his face tucked, burrowed into my chest, making it so I can’t get at his eyes or even his neck. Like he knew that’s what I’d try. I tear at his ears, but he seems impervious to that.
I bite the finger of the hand over my mouth. He swears and shifts his hand, squeezing my jaw shut. I grab at his hair, pulling, but the feeling between my legs is building; my mind is melting.
He won’t stop stroking me, won’t take his hand off my mouth, and before I know it, I’m holding on to his hair instead of pulling it.
I don’t know what’s crazier—the recklessness of him staying on top of me, getting me off instead of running, or the fact that my fingers are tightening in his hair. Or the fact that he’s nuzzling my breast throug
h my soft sweater, like he knows I’m done going for his eyes and throat. I’m feeling dizzy from breathing fast through my nose, or maybe it’s from what he’s doing to me.
Maybe it’s just that he’s hit a place with the right pressure and I can’t believe how good it feels, and I never want him to stop.
Can he tell? He continues his circling motion as I writhe under him, pushing into his hand. He tightens his seal over my mouth, stroking slowly. I can’t stop arching into him, pulling his head into my breast by his hair, wanting, needing.
And suddenly I shatter with feeling. Sharp, bright, intense. It goes all through me in waves, this beauty, this wildness. I’m breathing hard and he is, too, and nothing matters except that feeling, pulsing on and on. His fingers stop as the intensity fades, leaving me boneless, because it was wonderful. Too wonderful. Too wild. An orgasm. I’m aware that I’m crying. I feel bewildered.
He shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have liked it.
He pulls away from me, grabbing hold of my arm with one hand so that he can wipe his eyes with his sleeve.
And I’m coming down from an orgasm. The best of my life. And coming to my senses.
That’s when I call out. “Help!”
“Hello?” A man’s voice. “Someone out here?”
“Fuck!” he whispers. And then he does something crazy—he lets me go. I scramble for my glasses and leap up, running toward the voice, putting them back on as I go, getting myself back.
I can see a figure up ahead through the trees. “Help me!” I scream, pressing my skirt back down as I dodge around trees and right into a pair of strong arms. A policeman. I’m sobbing hysterically, pointing at where Grayson was. “He’s…he’s…”
Suddenly the man stiffens.
“On the ground. Slow.” Grayson’s voice.
The cop lets me go, and I back off. Grayson’s behind him with a gun to his head.
“You’re not going to get out of this,” the cop says. But I can see that the cop’s holster is empty. Grayson took his gun.
“I think I’ll get out of this just fine,” Grayson says.
The cop spins, and suddenly they’re fighting.
Help the cop!
But I don’t know how to help. They’re a fury of fists and snarls, wolves fighting over a carcass—or deadly fighters grappling over a gun. Grayson catches him with an elbow, smashes a fist into his face, and the man’s down. I gasp. No.
“Run and I’ll kill him,” Grayson says, pulling the man’s arms around a tree and cuffing them, the cop is hugging a tree. “Fuck,” he says, ripping his black T-shirt down the middle, baring his chest like a wild animal. He pulls the shirt off and rips out a couple of strips with a glance at me. “I mean it.”
“You’re not a cop killer,” I hiss. I want to believe that. Partly because I believed in him for so long, reading his work and building him up. But also because, if he’d kill a cop, he’d kill anyone. Me.
He slaps the stunned man in the face. “I can tell you know who I am. Am I a cop killer?” he asks as he wads up one of the strips.
“Yeah,” the cop says.
“See?” Grayson stuffs the fabric into the man’s mouth. Then he ties a gag over his mouth. “This worked out, don’t you think?”
I’m frozen where I stand, hope draining out of me as I watch him blindfold the cop.
He turns and stalks toward me. I back up and hit a tree. His eyes look puffy, but apparently he can see just fine now. He grabs the front of my sweater. “You’re not getting away, you understand? You can’t get away from me.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
“Say it like you mean it.”
“Okay.”
He’s staring at me weirdly. This softness comes into his face.
“What?” I ask, afraid even to move.
He lifts a hand. I flinch, but he just touches my cheekbone. Even though he’s actually being gentle now, his touch stings. “You’re cut. Did I do that?”
“When you pushed my face into the ground, you mean?” I bite out. I actually don’t think he hurt my face at all. I think it was from when I crashed through the bramble, but he seems concerned for my welfare in that fucked-up way of his, so I let him think it.
I’ll take any morsel of sympathy I can get.
Sixteen
~Grayson~
Ms. Winslow is nothing but trouble. If Stone were here, he’d drop her without a thought. He’s always been more comfortable with killing than I have. I mean that with respect. He didn’t hesitate to slash throats and gouge eyes when he had the chance, and it’s because of his physical brilliance and love for violence that we got out of that hellhole alive.
Here I am with a cop bound, blindfolded, and gagged. And little Ms. Winslow looking at me with her big doe eyes. She looks…wounded. Betrayed. Shocked that I might be a bad guy after all.
Well, nice to meet you too.
“Let’s go.”
“But what about…” She glances back at the cop.
Doesn’t she know the cop would give her up in a second if it meant catching me? She’s nothing to him. A pawn.
“What?” I go over and press the gun lightly to the cop’s temple. “Should I do it?” The cop jerks his head, pointing his face upward the way blindfolded guys always seem to do. Like if they look upward, they might suddenly see through the blindfold. I never understood that.
Her lower lip trembles. Is she going to cry? It’s going to sting her cheek. Why should I care? I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t, but my stomach clenches when the tear falls over the smooth skin and splashes into the bloody streak. Like an idiot I go to her and brush my thumb over the cut, knowing the salt and grime will hurt her too. She flinches but doesn’t move away.
Pain is a funny thing. We fight so hard to avoid it, almost more than death. But it’s the only thing that binds us. Going through pain together and coming out on the other side is the only form of friendship I’ve ever known.
And strangely, I want to have that with her. In a way I feel like we do. The class. The pepper-spray episode. A little hate, a little hell.
“Should I shoot him?” My voice has dropped to a whisper. “Should we get rid of him?”
She shakes her head, hard, dislodging more tears. “Don’t. Don’t.”
It makes me want to do it more. Maybe we’d be more connected if we went through a little more hell together. Sometimes when you’re made of ice, fire is all you feel. My finger tightens on the trigger. At least then I’d have done what they locked me up for.
Ms. Winslow wraps her arms around herself. “They’ll kill you!” The words sound torn from her. “They won’t just put you back in jail. They’ll put you on death row.”
Her words get me. It’s sympathy. Maybe even some kind of warped affection.
I know what to do with the fist and the knife. I know what to do with pain and hate. I know what to do with a woman, how to run the tender, caring act just long enough to get my rocks off.
I don’t know what to do with Ms. Winslow.
“Let’s go,” I repeat, gruff this time. Aren’t we a pair? Both of us determined to save the other, even though it might kill us in the end.
A grunt comes from the cop.
I spare him a glance. His mouth is stuffed full of fabric; his hands are cuffed. Stone would probably taunt him.
“Save your energy,” I say softly. “Don’t fight it. That makes it worse. Wait for your chance.”
Of course he doesn’t listen. He strains his muscles, fighting so hard the leaves shiver above him. A vein pulses in his forehead.
“Don’t struggle,” I snap, but he isn’t listening. They never listen.
“Let’s go!” I say again, and she obeys, turning in the direction I nod.
There’s enough light coming through the tall branches to tell me there’s an opening in this direction. I can’t risk going back to her car with the cop car there. I doubt there’s a partner sitting inside, waiting to hear back; state troopers work alone. But h
e would have called in his position before leaving the car. Backup is on the way. Probably not for at least thirty minutes, though.
Knowing police procedure has saved my ass more times than I can count.
We move through the forest at a swift pace despite the rocky landscape. Fallen trees and deadwood block our way. She stumbles sometimes, but I always catch her before she slips. She’s warm and soft in my grip. I force myself to let her go.
Why isn’t she running?
Obviously I’ll just catch her, but she has to know I won’t kill her now. I sure as hell know it. She’s mine to do what I want with, but that also means she’s mine to care for, to protect.
Lying on the ground with her, calming her, helping her breathe, that was one of the most powerful experiences of my life—powerful in a good way. The feeling is so huge inside me that it scares me. And then the way she broke apart underneath me, under my touch.
I catch a flash of red on her pale cheek at one point and I grab her wrist. Her brown eyes look up at me, dark pools in the dappled light.
“Did you get hurt?” I demand to know, even though she obviously did.
She shakes her head. “I’m fine.”
The blood dripping down her cheek calls her a liar and twists me in a knot. I want to say something comforting, but all I do is tighten my hold on her wrist. “You won’t get away if you run.”
Her smile is small. “I know.”
But I know she heard everything I told the cop. Save your energy, I told him, and she was listening. The same way she lectured about memoirs, I taught her how to escape. How to fight back. Wait for your chance, I said. And she soaked the knowledge right up.
The best thing I can do for her is leave her here, but I can’t. I won’t.
Seventeen
~Abigail~
He forces me into the stream. Freezing-cold water swirls around my ankles and fills the insides of my boots, numbing my feet clear to the bone. I try to pull away, but he holds my wrist tight. I’m shivering. I can’t believe he’s not cold without a shirt on. Not that I should feel sorry for him considering he used his shirt to gag and blindfold a cop.
