Page 127 of Hunting Pretty

But it was locked.

I was trapped.

The sound of Pierre’s footsteps on the path behind me made me spin around, my heart jammed against my voice box so I couldn’t scream.

I held the taser out in front of me. The faint crackle of electricity buzzed in the air between us, a weak barrier, but all I had.

“Stay back!” I shouted, my voice trembling despite my best efforts.

I could see the cold intent in his eyes as he stepped closer, each movement slow, calculated, his smile a sick yellow beneath the old-fashioned gas lamps.

Before I could react, his hand shot out like a viper.

In a blur of motion, his fingers wrapped around my wrist, twisting with brutal efficiency. Pain shot up my arm as he forced my hand open, the taser slipping from my grip and clattering to the ground.

I gasped, stunned, as he kicked it away, the small weaponskidding across the pavement into the shadows.

Helplessness rushed in, and my heart pounded violently in my chest.

He stood inches from me now, his breath hot against my skin, and I was unarmed.

Pierre fell on me like a wolf onto a lamb, his body so much larger than mine.

Finally, my lungs worked again and I sucked in air, opening my mouth to scream.

He clamped his hand over it with such force that the nerves of my teeth jangled up into my skull.

I struggled, but it was no use.

He lugged me, kicking and thrashing, back into the shadows of a small side path with nothing more than a grunt or two of effort.

He shoved me face down over a crumbling tomb. The stone sliced my cheek as his palm held my head down, pushing harder every time I tried to lift it.

There was only a line of gnarled shrubbery and the bars of the cemetery’s fence line that separated me from the city, but it might as well have been a whole forest.

Pierre’s knife returned to my throat as I heard the sound of him unbuckling his belt behind me.

He pressed the tip of the blade beneath my chin as he leaned over me, his sour breath smelling of stale beer as he hissed, “How about you finish me off before I finish you off?”

His erection against my upper thigh burned through the fabric of my dress like a blowtorch. I imagined him ripping me apart with it and an animalistic terror took over.

Despite the threat of the knife, I threw my elbows back.

But I couldn’t get any leverage. I couldn’t hit him from my helpless position.

Pierre laughed as he cut through the back of my dress with his knife.

I screamed, tasting bile on my tongue.

But he was too strong.

I anticipated the sickening noise of Pierre’s violent thrust, but instead I heard a bloodcurdling roar of anger.

A second later the weight of him on top of me was gone and there was a crash of bone against bone behind me.

My knees gave out. I slid against the stone to collapse in a fetal position against the tomb.

Through tear-stained eyes I saw a figure in all black savagely hurtling bloodied fists at Pierre, his pretty face now a mess of swollen eyes and broken teeth.

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