Page 125 of Hunting Pretty

“Too tired for the famous journalist with the infamous ‘bulge’?” Pierre’s tone was playful, joking. But he was holding on to me so hard it was starting to hurt.

“I’d like to go back,” I said as the shadows swallowed us.

I was no longer sure whether it was the low-hanging tree branches which grabbed at my dress or whether it was Pierre.

Claustrophobia brought a cold sweat to my skin and I shivered in the slight breeze which carried with it a damp, rotting odor. I no longer wanted to be touched.

But Pierre slung his arm over me and laughed. “What kind of journalism major doesn’t go two seconds out of her way to see the grave of Victor Noir?”

A chill crept up my spine. Had I told Pierre that I was studying journalism?

I couldn’t remember bringing it up.

I tried to think rationally, but panic was taking over. I shook my head as if this was just a bad dream I could force myself out of.

My vision was playing tricks on me. Tree, tombstone, man, shadow—I couldn’t tell them apart. They were all coming for me.

Pierre shoved me forward, his fingers pinching painfully on my shoulder. “Come on, come on.”

His eyes, so dark and sunken into his face in the shadows, were fixed somewhere ahead in the mire of roots and stone.

He noticed me staring and seeing what was surely fear in my own wide eyes, he smiled, his teeth flashing bone white in the dark.

“It’ll be fun,” Pierre said with that horrific smile.

When I didn’t move, paralyzed in place with fear, he yanked at me. I resisted, heels digging into the pebbles along the path.

“No,” I said. “I don’t want to go with you.”

I wanted to be far away from here. I didn’t want this man’s hands on me; I’d never really wanted his hands on me.

I’d only wanted to makehimjealous, to draw my shadow back to me.

It was his arms I sought, his breath on my neck I went out into the night to have. It was him.

But Pierre wasn’t going to let me go.

“Stubborn bitch,” he hissed under his breath.

He was dragging me against my will away from where anyone would hear me cry out for help and my stalker was nowhere to be seen.

My body was going to be used by another man, a plaything soiled by filthy hands, andhewas not going to stop it.

He was gone. He’d called my bluff.

I was alone.

ThisI understood.

Pierre twisted a handful of my hair at the nape of my neck until pain flared and I gasped.

He hissed in my ear before he shoved me forward, “Stop fighting me, Ava.”

His accent dropped. Pierre wasn’t Pierre. He wasn’t even French.

And he knew my name.

Myrealname.

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