There’s a half-broken table, and I dive behind it, hitting my knees hard.
The door doesn’t creek, but light from outside casts a wider stream and then a shadow eats up the middle.
It moves.
I don’t.
I don’t even breathe.
What if it’s not him? What if the danger isn’t studded with excitement because Reaper’s hunting me, and it’s real danger in the form of someone who means me harm?
Reaper can be deadly. I don’t have to know him, see him more than once, to understand.
It’s in his eyes, stillness, his stance. He’s a master, and I’m nothing but a thing to be played with. Stalked.
Hunter. Prey.
Those words turn bright and brand me.
I don’t even know why I didn’t stop and call out to him. Just like I don’t know why he didn’t make himself known. Announce his presence.
Because, I think, Reaper likes this. He gets off on it.
Between my thighs, heat rises and turns into a throb of desire. Wetness starts to slick me, wet my panties. I don’t think it’s actual slick but something like it.
Oh…if I can smell him, he can smell me. And I’m aroused.
Things scrape.
Now footsteps start. Slow. Deliberate.
Getting closer.
Then he stops and nothing, not a sound, until that shadow reappears in the light, and recedes.
I lean back, breathing in gulps, trying to be quiet as I stare up at the high ceiling.
Hell. How do I even know he’s hunting? And I’m to run? But I do and I can’t explain it. His scent is in the air, beguiling, not enough. Everything inside me flutters into life.
It feels like foreplay, and I want more. I want him to chase me, to hunt me down. I need the rush of adrenaline.
There’s a part of me that wants to take off, hard and fast and absolutely mean it, like it’s life or death. To experience that kind of chase from him would be…
I swallow.
Insane.
Addictive.
Slowly, I rise, unsure who this new Lizette is. I’m like a whole being, a primal animal, both willing to taunt my predator and needing to run.
I don’t recognize myself. Just like I didn’t recognize the snarling woman who tried to goad the sinfully hot and hardcore demon, Dante. Or the little submissive who wanted Knight, to please him, to have him punish me for being bad.
Dante would be like winning a prize. The kiss is something that just might be a work of art if he gave it to me. But he doesn’t like the weak, the clingy. He hates the girl who walked in and got drugged and felt up out the back of his bar.
I want that kiss.
I want to earn it, win it, do whatever it takes. Be that slinky, sexy woman who could be with him and reap all his rewards.