Page 1 of Creeping Lily
PROLOGUE
No. No. No.
Not again.
My lungs burn as I tear through the park, the weak flicker of a dying streetlamp painting the path in stuttering shadows. My breath comes in harsh bursts, like it’s fighting me. I don’t have time to curse myself, but I do it anyway — for staying late at the library, for walking alone, for pretending this city isn’t full of dark shadows and dangerous men.
Footsteps echo behind me. Heavy. Closing in. He’s not even trying to be quiet now.
I’m halfway across the park — minutes from campus — when pain slams around my waist. I’m yanked off my feet, my scream vanishing into the open dark. Too far for anyone to hear. Too alone for anyone to save me.
We hit the pavement hard. My side flares with pain, but I claw my way up, shoving, kicking. He catches me again, arms like steel bands, dragging me toward a tree. My nails rake empty air.
I know what’s coming. I’ve lived it before.
The bark bites through my shirt as he pins me to the trunk. Hisknee shoves between my thighs. A grunt escapes him — not from effort, but satisfaction.
I freeze long enough to see his eyes through the cutouts in the ski mask. Brown. Violent. I force my brain to focus — find something, anything, to get me out of this.
His hand presses to my chest, holding me still. His head tilts, the silent shake saying ‘don’t bother fighting’. His body is hard, unyielding against mine.
“I like a good fight, Lily,” he whispers in my ear.
My skin prickles, every nerve standing on edge like barbed wire.
He knows my name.
That single fact curdles my blood. Because if he knows my name, he knows me. He’s been there, hidden just out of sight, cataloguing the little pieces of my life I thought were mine alone.
All those months—the weight of invisible eyes pressing against my spine, the phantom footsteps I could never quite catch, the shadows that seemed to shift and breathe when I turned my head—I wasn’t imagining it.
I told myself I was paranoid. I told myself I was safe. But deep down, I knew better.
It’s him. The reason I’ve been so restless, the reason my chest tightens every time night falls.
My stalker.
My nightmare in the flesh.
And now there’s no more pretending.
The knife glints in the meager light. He lets me see it before lowering it to the waistband of my jeans. With a flick, my button snaps off, landing in the grass without a sound. The zipper follows, teeth parting slow, deliberate, his gaze locked to mine.
I’d rather he use the blade on my throat than for my body to be taken again. The first time almost broke me. The second will kill me.
“Don’t,” I whisper, tears cutting down my face.
“You’re so beautiful when you cry.”
He presses his face to my neck, breathing me in like I’m sacred.
“So lovely,” he murmurs, hand sliding down my side, fingers hooking into my jeans, knife biting into my skin as he starts to pull.
And then just as suddenly—he’s gone.
Ripped away so fast, I stumble.
A man in a dark hoodie has my attacker by the collar, hurling him across the grass like he weighs nothing. He turns toward me for a split second. Broad shoulders. Twitching fingers. The scent of leather and oud — warm, earthy, familiar.
