Page 72 of Hunting Pretty

Before I could cry out, he was gone, merging with the shadows like he was made of them.

A cold sweat seized my body. My nakedness disgusted me, but I still couldn’t move to go clean up or even cover myself. I stared at my nipples which were still peaked atop my white breasts.

When I imagined them pinched between those black leather gloves, I gagged. But my nipples strained further still.

He was a monster.

But why didn’t he take me like he took Liath and the other girls?

Was he leaving me here alone just to torture me? To drag his twisted little game out? Did he want me to hate myself for giving in to him so easily like I had? For coming around his knife handle?

The next time I saw him, would I try to kill him for what he’d done?

Or throw myself at his feet and beg for more?

Needless to say, I couldn’t sleep after that.

After I’d pulled the frayed ropes from my wrists, I lay there staring at the red raw marks. Running my fingertips along the sensitive skin and feeling my body flush with need as I remembered how he brutalized me.

What was wrong with me?

How could I reconcile how my stalker—a man I didn’t even know the name of—had fucked me with a knife handle and edged me in order to torture me and had instead given me the most intense orgasm of my life?

How did I explain something like that?

I still wasn’t sure how to explain it to myself.

I hated him.

I hated my stalker with every burning cell of my body.

So then why did my body turn against me the way it did whenever he showed up?

Why did I, deep down in a seriously fucked-up way, enjoy being tied up and tortured by him?

How could he have given me the most mind-blowing orgasm of my life while trying to manipulate me into dropping my investigation into Liath’s disappearance?

And why did he care?

Was he involved in her disappearance? Or was he trying to protect me from whoever was?

In truth, I hated how he left me so confused and turned on, so angry and wanting more all at the same time.

I hated that he’d taken over my body, claimed it.

Like it was no longer mine.

Like it washis.

I was still staring at the ceiling when the first sliver of dawn crept through my open curtains.

I grabbed my phone to check the time but spotted two messages I’d missed sent late last night from Seamus, a friend of Lisa’s working as a teaching assistant in the science department. He was doing a PhD in chemistry. And he’d helped us before with any science-y questions we’d had for previous stories.

Earlier, I’d taken the damp rag and drug vial to him and asked him to figure out what it was.

I didn’t think he’d get back to me so quickly.

Seamus: Got the results back…

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