Page 20 of Lawless

Wrapping my fingers around my shaft, I slowly stroke myself as I march toward the bathroom.

I’m so lost in my own head, my dirty fantasies, that it doesn’t register that the door is half open, or that it’s silent inside.

Pressing my free palm against the wood, I force it open with so much strength that it crashes back against the wall.

But I soon find that the only one it startles is me because the room is empty. There aren’t even any signs that she’s been here.

But she was. Last night, she was in my bed and wrapped in my arms. I know she was.

“Fuck,” I bark, spinning on my heels to go in search of her, kicking all the fallen paper aside as I go. Just like everything else strewn across the floor and furniture in this room, I’ll deal with it later.

Marching across the hallway, I twist the door handle and swing another door open; it doesn’t crash back against the wall this time, but that doesn’t stop my heart from sinking when I find a fully made-up bed.

If Alana wasn’t still with me, then I assumed she’d slinked back off to be with Mav in the middle of the night.

As much as that thought stings, it makes the most sense.

My hand falls away from my quickly deflating dick and I continue forward to check their bathroom. But I already know what I’ll find. The room is in total silence. It’s empty. And I don’t just mean literally, it’s like they’ve been completely wiped from it. As if they were never here.

“Shit,” I hiss when I find exactly what I was expecting.

My fingers twitch at my sides, the tips of each digit beginning to itch with a very familiar feeling as reality begins to dawn on me.

With my heart in my throat, I take off again, running down the stairs, letting the creaks fill the air around me, praying that their voices will drown them out when I find them.

But there is nothing.

No scent of coffee, no evidence that there have been people here at all.

I stand in the middle of the room, as naked as the day I was born, as the ants begin to take over.

They explode from my fingers, marching up my arms and across my torso.

Lifting my hand, I scratch at my chest, the patch of skin right above my heart.

“No,” I bark. “No, they have to be here. They just have to be,” I mutter to myself as I move toward the slider that will lead me outside.

The sun is high in the perfectly clear blue sky; it would make sense that they’re out—

Nothing.

Scrubbing my hand down my face, I stare at the table Alana and I were dancing on only the other night, then the swing seat where we had our heavy conversation and she showed a little too much insight into the issues I battle on a daily basis.

If she really knew, she wouldn’t just leave…

The pool is still, the jacuzzi empty, as is the rest of the yard.

Fear and desperation drip through my veins like poison as the ants finally make it down to my toes. The need to claw my skin off is real. I fight to keep my head, to focus on the issue at hand.

Sure, they might have found a way to run, but Reid will find them.

He’ll find them and he’ll bring her back for me. I know he will.

Retracing my steps, I take the stairs three at a time in the hope I can leave the ants behind.

But they follow.

They always fucking follow once they get started.

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