Page 89 of Beautiful Prey

As the light began to fade and Emery didn’t return, my tension started to ease.

He won’t come, he won’t hurt me now. Just a small nap. Wake up when it’s dark, when he’s most active.

I decided to trust this thought, though my instincts wanted me to stay awake.

Closing my eyes, I let myself drift away.

There was a light above me, a harsh yellow bulb, like a spotlight, casting down on me. I looked at it in confusion.

Where…?

Peering around, I could see nothing but a blurred darkness. A room I didn’t recognize. I felt disoriented, the room not focusing, making my head feel fuzzy.

I tried to speak but couldn’t seem to form words, my mouth covered by tape. I tried to lift my hands to my throat, but I couldn’t do that either.

I was tied down to a chair.

Panicked, I twisted and fought in the binds, my ankles tied to each leg so I couldn’t stand. I turned my head each way, looking around.

Then he came out of the dark. I hadn’t seen him standing there watching me. He stepped into the light, and I stared at him as he towered over me. A large knife in his hand.

I tried to speak, tried to reason with him, shaking my head, struggling in the rope. But he didn’t respond.

He kneeled beside me, the knife tipped up. But something in his manner told me he wasn’t going to be cutting my binds again. No, something was way off about him. His eyes were like twin flames again. The very air was electrified by his seething presence, his sinister grin inches from me.

Whimpering, I tried to keep my distance as he raised his knife to my face, letting the flat side of the blade brush along my cheek, then trail down my neck. He was breathing heavily, air hissing through the mask as if the thought of what he was doing excited him a little too much. I arched my neck away, as the knife went lower, the pointed end traveling down between my breasts, then slowly down to my navel. My thighs were spread open as the knife brushed down between them. When I yelped in surprise, his hand came down across my mouth as if to smother me, then he grabbed my jaw and jerked it around to look at him.

He rubbed the flat end of the knife against me, and I felt my body lightening up. Still, I squirmed away, feeling like this was wrong, so wrong. But he held me firmly and brought the knife back up. Then he grabbed hold of my shirt and, before I could even beg him to stop, he took the knife and swiped down across the fabric, tearing right through it. He ripped my shirt away andthen he set on to my bra, using the knife to cut it right through the middle. My body pulsed, tightening, aching as if it wanted this, but in my head was only fear, so much fear.

He teased me with the knife some more, letting it graze across my breasts, along my nipples until they hardened. Why? Why was this happening?

Suddenly, he sliced just below my breasts. Blood oozed out, drenching my stomach, staining my pants red. I screamed but not in pain, only in sheer terror. There was so much blood.

Emery lifted his mask and dropped it. And I saw the devil. He grinned, while I continued to scream, making my own ears ring. I saw my insides, I saw bone. He bent forward and let his tongue trail across the fresh wound, lapping up the blood.

I shut my eyes and wailed, tossing and turning.

Tossing…and turning…

No…no…not like this...please, not like this…

The screams echoed as if they weren’t my own.

Please…

Please…

Make it stop.

The light faded and there was only the dark and the terror.

It was only then that things fell silent, that I realized there was no pain. But I was still on the boundaries of a nightmare trying to escape. My body was still tight, ready to snap, to unravel. I felt so hot and so cold all at once.

Please someone help me.

I could feel my hands gripping the bed sheets.

Then I felt something against my cheek. Something warm. It swept along my jaw to my ear, brushing away tendrils of my damp hair. A hand. The gentlest touch I’d ever felt.

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