Page 73 of Incipient

My own heart had once danced at the sight of him prowling toward me, reveled in absolute delight, but that felt like a lifetime ago now. In that moment, I felt nothing but unfathomable fear.

He crouched down in front of me and picked up a strand of my hair, his eyes thoughtfully fixed on it as he twirled it around his finger. He was cloaked in darkness save for the sliver of moonlight creeping in between the birch trees to illuminate the edges of his once angelic face. But there was nothing seraphic about his face anymore. Not in this light, and not with that baleful glint in his eye.

“What do you want from me, Dominic?” I rasped, my lungs finally regaining semi-normal function.

“I want only that which ismine,” he said to my hair, his fingers still twisting the lock pensively.

I had no idea what the hell he had meant by that, but it didn’t sound good in the least.

“Does the notion make you afraid, angel?” he asked, his eyes finally lifting to mine. Letting my hair fall, he pushed forward into my personal space and sniffed. “You smell very,veryafraid.”

A muffled sob sounded at the back of my throat as I scooted myself further into the tree and pulled my knees up to my chest. “People are going to come looking for me, Dominic. They’re expecting me any minute now.”

He smiled kindly and for a moment he looked like the old Dominic—likemyDominic.

“You always were a terrible liar.” He drew closer, his forearms resting on the top of his knees. “It’s just me and you, love, and we have all the time in the world. Can you imagine all the things we could do?”

I swallowed against the knot in my throat.

“All the ways I can hurt you.” His eyes flared with hunger, and my vision blurred at the corners.

“I’ll scream,” I warned him, my eyes fixated on the elongated fangs peeking out from his cruel smile. Fangs that intended to cause me pain, not pleasure. Fangs that wanted to rip my flesh apart, piece by piece, not ravish me.

“Oh, you’ll scream, will you?” he asked and then threw his head back and howled like a feral wolf, the sound ricocheting all around me. He was proving a point—that nobody could hear us, and nobody was coming to save me. “Go right ahead. I’m counting on it.”

Seeing no other openings, I rammed my hands into his chest and knocked him backward. I didn’t bother sticking around for the fallout. Jumping up onto shaky feet, I made another run for it, though this time, making sure to head in the opposite direction in order to get as close to the main road as I could.

Unfortunately, I made it all but seven steps before Dominic grabbed me by my hair and jerked me backward. In one swift move he had whirled me around and then tackled me to the ground, knocking the air out of my lungs yet again. Laughter bubbled out of him as he sat on my waist and straddled my hips, his eyes flaring with vicious excitement.

My stomach churned as I realized that this wasfunfor him.

I was making it goddamn fun for him. “Get the hell off me, Dominic!” I yelled, anger pushing itself to the forefront of my emotions as I tried to shove him away.

“Aw. Don’t play hard to getnow,” he cooed as he caught my wrist and slammed them onto the ground above my head. “We both remember how easy it was to get you the first time around,” he said and then dropped his voice to a deriding snarl. “If memory serves me, Romeo was barely in the ground before I wasinsideyou, wasn’t he?”

Another strangled cry escaped me as I tried to buck against him. His concrete body barely budged.

“You’re hurting me,” I growled as I continued to fight against his hold.

Lowering his face to mine, he smiled. “Isn’t that the way you like it, angel?”

My cheeks burned hot with shame and resentment.

Bringing my wrists together, he clamped his long fingers around both my hands, mashing them together in a vice-grip, and then brought his other hand to my face. I winced as he ran the back of his knuckles against my cheek.

“Don’t touch me!” I gritted out, thrusting my hips upward in a pathetic attempt to throw him off me.

“What’s the matter, angel lips?” He slipped his hand under my shirt, his thumb grazing against my abdomen as he climbed up to my bra. “Don’t you like it rough anymore?” he asked and then painfully squeezed my breast.

Seething, I ripped one of my hands free and slapped him across the face. A rush of vindication surged into me as a small plume of blood blossomed on his bottom lip.

Blinking at me, he swiped his thumb across his bloodied lip and then licked the blood off his finger. “Well, that wasn’t very nice, was it?” Winding his arm back, he cracked me across the cheek so hard I thought my jaw had dislocated.

My hand rushed up to my stinging cheek and my vision bled red. With my one free hand, I balled a fist and started wailing on him, hammering down hit after hit like a possessed machine gun that had zero aim. I wasn’t even sure if I was landing any of the hits, but that didn’t stop me from pounding my fist against his body.

“Fuck you!” I bellowed, my anger and disgust for this empty monster in front of me broiling to the surface. This wasn’t the Dominic I knew. I didn’t know who this person was anymore, but I hated him with everything inside me.

He grabbed my wrist again and slammed it back onto the ground beside my ear. “Fuckme?” he asked, his eyes darkening into coal as he loomed over me. “I bet that’s precisely what you want to do, isn’t it?”

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