Page 25 of Meeting Melody
He runs his finger along the back of my neck. “I want all your secrets, songbird. And someday, you will sing them all for me.”
I shudder. My secrets have to do with my past. The people who linger in the shadows, who threaten to hunt me down. They’re worse than Jacob Rhodes.
Maybe that’s why I don’t feel particularly bad about being in his company. Because he’s already shown me his cards. He’s snuck into my house, he’s drugged me. But it was for our pleasure… wasn’t it?
I grip the counter and close my eyes.
“I’ll take you home,” Jacob says at my back.
He’ll get no objection from me. I turn and wordlessly follow him to the front door, where I pull on my coat and boots. He hands me my bag, which had been left forgotten on the kitchen table.
The drive home is silent, too. I don’t really know what to say to him. I told him I’d fail him—and it seemed, with that, the game was over.Isover. Until he said he wanted… more.
But I’m just a fixation for him. An obsession that he needs to get over.
And yet… I feel like a teenager again. It’s been so fucking long since I’ve felt this need to be so close to someone, it hurts.
He stops in front of my dark house, and he turns to face me. “Want me to come inside?”
I bite my lower lip. “No. You have a final exam to prepare for.”
He grimaces. “Because you’re not going to pass me—”
“If orgasms counted, you’d pass.” I smile and look away. “But no, I need to know you can think critically. Okay? Just… try it. For me, or whatever.”
Fuck, I need to get out of this car before he decides to drive away. I unbuckle and hop out, quickly shutting the door to separate us. I hurry up the front porch steps and unlock my door, closing and locking it behind me.
I lean against it and breathe out a sigh of relief, but the action only reminds me of when Jacob first came to my door. When I slid down and rubbed myself into an orgasm, my body and mind unable to handle his intensity.
But now I know what he feels like, I’m craving more. It’s that twisted, dark part inside me that’s ruining everything.
I flip the switch and head back toward my kitchen, turning on lights as I go. My house is colder than usual.
One of the bulbs in the overhead lights bursts. The glass shatters, hitting the floor, and I jump a foot. But then I notice something strange on my dining table. Everything that was on it has been swept away, papers and mail scattered across the floor.
Someone moves out of the shadows.
My nightmare come to life. He crunches over the glass and stops in front of me, his once-handsome face darkening into a scowl. He touches my arm.
“Hello, princess,” my ex-husband says. “Did you know you have a stalker?”
Besides you?I don’t dare say that and instead step back. “What?”
His hand falls—but only to take mine. He curls our fingers together, and I can’t seem to resist it. Or him. He pulls me across the room to the table. There’s equipment I don’t recognize, tiny little black things laid out in neat rows across it. He watches my reaction to all of this, then pulls up a video on his phone.
My blood runs cold. “What is this?”
“Thisis a video of your stalker violating you,” he says in my ear. His nose is pressed into my hair, and he inhales. “And he put you in his fucking shirt when he was done. Such a gentleman.”
He points, and I only now see the ball of fabric at the edge of the table. The letters of Jacob’s last name are barely visible.
I fight the shudder. Fight to remain still, to not be afraid.
My body is turning to ice.
On the screen, Jacob moves around the room as a hulking shadow. He lifts me up and undoes my bra, then goes down on me. I force myself to watch as he climbs over me and thrusts into me.
But it’s my ex-husband who I should be paying attention to. His grip on the phone is getting steadily harder, and his jaw is tense.
