Page 119 of Voracious

STACEY

“Stop fucking fighting me!”

I kick his shin as I try to get away from him, slapping his face and managing to headbutt him in the nose. Instead of pulling me by my wrist or arm, Chris gets a fistful of my hair and hauls me to my feet while backing us further into the forest – we can see more cars driving up to the house.

Possibly a second wave. They’ll hunt for me.

We get halfway through the forest next to Barry’s house before he chucks me onto the ground and pulls a bag from under a bush. He unzips it and grabs a rope, before ordering me to press my ankles and wrists together.

When he advances on me, I kick him in the face, hard enough to hear a crack, and try to run.

But it’s a lost cause. Chris is athletic and fast, so I only get a few steps before I’m tackled to the ground, his bloody nose dripping on my cheek as he backhands me, splitting the corner of my lip. I’m quickly bound and thrown over his shoulder for the rest of the walk.

His hands are still covered in blood. I have no idea what he did with it, but he was in Eva’s room while I packed.

I wriggle on his shoulder, elbowing the back of his head, but when he grabs my ass cheek, I go freeze. He chuckles and returns his hand to the back of my thighs. “So easily controlled. If you aren’t nice to me, I won’t be nice to you.”

“You don’t know the meaning of the word.”

“And you don’t know the meaning ofbehaving, so why don’t you start doing it and stop pissing me off?”

My head shakes. “I hate you.”

My form is sliding down his body, and Chris pushes hair from my face when we reach the car – I guess stolen, with fake registration plates. He smiles at me as if I’m going to smile back and tells me that we’ve got a long drive ahead of us.

“Where are we going?” I ask as he shoves me into the car.

He gets into the driver’s seat and slams the door. “I have a friend who stays upstate. We’ll change there and fly from the airport nearby. I picked up your fake passport. We’re going back to Scotland, to stay at the lodge. We can hide there until we know their next move – they’ll never expect us to go somewhere so obvious. Just now, they’re looking for us at—” He checks his phone. “Well, Bernadette and your ex are together in a hotel room screwing, but the rest are at the coast.”

My eyes snap to him. “What?”

“You didn’t know they were fucking?”

“They’re not,” I snap, tugging my hands, needing the ropes off my wrists. “He wouldn’t sleep with a monster like her.”

Chris chews his lip, clicks on something on his phone then, his eyes still on the road, shows me the screen.

My blood runs cold, and I quickly look away. My eyes burn as I try to rid the image of them from my head.

“See?” Chris says, adding to the building scream. “He fucks her. He also fucks the daughter, from what I’ve witnessed.”

“Shut up,” I reply, a tear sliding down my cheek. “Just… shut up.”

Kade can do what he wants – we aren’t together. But I can’t believe for a second he’s willingly doing that. Or do they pay him to sleep with them?

I feel sick. Cassie is beautiful. She might be the daughter of a monster, but she’s drop-dead gorgeous. Kade would need to be blind to think otherwise.

The idea of sleeping with someone who isn’t Kade makes my skin crawl. The most contact I’ve had with anyone else is when I fell asleep on Tobias’s shoulder. And even then, he nudged me with annoyance and told me to stop drooling on his shirt.

Half an hour into the dreaded journey, I try to pull at the ropes, but I hiss as they cut into my flesh again. Skin raw and burning from my struggles, I give up and allow my tense body to sag in the passenger seat of the car.

My side smacks into the door as he swerves a corner, giving the middle finger to someone who honked their horn at him.

Chris seems to have road rage along with that ugly, tormenting, morbid fucking personality of his. I could also say he’s more of a psychopath than Tobias, but having their names in the same sentence and comparing them feels like a crime.

Tobias would be offended, to say the least.

Plus, he hasn’t driven a car in over twenty years, so maybe he doesn’t even remember how to. Come to think of it, I’m missing movie night with him, so he’s probably pacing the room and calling me every name under the sun in his very deep American accent.

---