Page 54 of Dangerously Tempting

Blood.

It’s then that I see the smears across the floor, like someone hastily cleaned up a mess but didn’t do the greatest job of it. My stomach bottoms out. That can only mean that there was more blood here that was wiped up, but the droplets close to the stairs that caught my eye were missed.

Someone was in a hurry, and now, so am I.

29

Amelia

Playlist: "Breathe," Tommee Profitt, Fleurie

The first thing I notice is that my mouth is dry and all I can taste is blood. A moan of pain breaks past my lips as my entire head throbs, and for a moment I just sit there and take deep breaths through my mouth as my head swims and nausea almost makes me lose the contents of my stomach all over myself. My nose is clearly broken by the ache of it, and the blood that is caked across my face has me fighting another gag.

I can vaguely remember what happened in the stairwell, but I’m confused as fuck nonetheless, and when I try to move my arms to check my head, I find that they’re fastened behind me to the chair I’m sitting in. Fear makes its way down my spine and all the hairs along the back of my neck stand on end.

“Oh good, you’re finally awake.” The voice sends warning bells off in my head, memories tickling at the edge of my mind. The sound of something being dragged across the floor reaches my ears and I squeeze my eyes closed tighter, wishing I could cover my ears as pain assaults me at the noise. “Open your eyes, whore.”

I don’t have much to do other than what she’s requesting of me, so I do, slowly, widening them over several blinks even though the lights above are harsh, and every part of the agony of having them open makes me want to ignore the request. Pain or not, I need to know what I’m up against here.

When everything comes into focus, my stomach bottoms out. We’re in an unfinished office space, one that’s very familiar to me from being in this very room just a few days ago. It’s only fitting that after how happy I’ve been, this would be the space that might end it all.

I finally flick my eyes up to see Tori sitting before me in a chair that is turned backward as she straddles it with her arms resting across the back and a smirk on her lips. Her very familiar head of blonde hair comes into view and blue eyes full of anger regard me. I barely manage to withhold the string of curses that float through my head. Memories of what happened in the stairwell assault me and I stiffen.

I knew this bitch was a psycho and that we shouldn’t underestimate her. I was right on the money with that thought, but didn’t realize that it would actually come to this. She’d slunk away into the dark, giving us weeks of silence without her breathing down our necks before she struck. This is my own fault, for letting my guard down and thinking that she would just move on somewhere else and leave us alone.

I try to keep my eyes on her even though everything about my head hurts so badly I want to just let them fall closed again. I won’t allow my guard to fall again. I won’t just let her win. I know that she wants Jameson, but maybe I can talk my way out of this somehow.

“You thought you would just snatch him up for yourself, didn’t you?” She stands up from her seat, instead stalking around me like a predator circling their prey. My head continues to swim as I try to keep her in my sights, so I give up, staring straight ahead so I don’t lose consciousness again. “Well, you’re wrong. He’s mine, and you’re gonna have to go away so that he realizes it.”

This bitch has no intentions whatsoever of letting me go.

“I already told you, he will never be yours. Even if I’m gone, he wants nothing to do with you”

“Shut up!” She shrieks the words, and I jolt, not expecting the volume. The room tilts for a moment with a violent wave of pain. “You know nothing, you stupid bitch, so shut the fuck up and maybe I’ll make this painless.”

“Definitely not painless already, sweetheart, so I’m not too worried about it.” I might be tied to a chair, but I’m not going out without a fight. If my words are my only weapon, I’ll use the fuck out of them. “Maybe try dialing down the crazy about 100% and you might have some luck on getting yourself a man.”

“I already have one. You’re just in the way.”

“Your crazy is in your own way, bitch,” I growl, and she laughs.

“I’m crazy? You’re delusional. Do you seriously think that he wants more than just to fuck you?” she laughs, and I tense as I turn my head to watch her as she walks the length of the table a few feet away, dragging her fingers across the surface. “Do you really think that he would fuck you here if he didn’t just see you as a whore?”

I swallow hard around the lump in my throat, because I know that the only way she’d know that is if she’d witnessed it herself. A grin stretches across her lips at what she must see on my face.

“That’s right,” she confirms, “I saw the whole thing. I watched him rut into you like an animal. But that’s all it is. You see that now, don’t you? You’re just carnal desire for him. I’m his future. I will be his wife. I will bear his children. You are nothing.”

I sigh dramatically, rolling my eyes. “If you’re going to kill me, can you just do it already so I don’t have to sit here and listen to you prattle on to yourself about your delusions?”

She steps closer, narrowing her eyes at me. “You don’t have to believe me. I know the truth.”

I chuckle, so done with her crazy ass. “You don’t know shit. What you viewed as carnal desire, was actually passion. Love.“ She opens her mouth to speak but I just keep going. “You think that he’s yours? You haven’t even had the pleasure of knowing what his cock feels like. What he sounds like when he comes. And you never will.”

She comes at me like a wild animal. She slams into me, her hands around my throat, and the chair tips back, taking us both with it. When we hit the floor I curse loudly as my hands take the impact, my shoulder pulling at an unnatural angle, but she cuts off anything else I might say by tightening her grip.

“He’s mine, you whore! He was never yours and never will be!”

I squirm beneath her, trying to at least kick her off me, but with the weird angle I’m in with how the chair has fallen, I can’t get enough momentum behind my movements to do much of anything. I try to buck my hips against her so she’ll lose her balance, but all it does is shift her forward onto my chest, pushing what little air I have left in my lungs out.

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