My mask bumps against her nose as my mouth crashesagainst hers. I always wondered why it didn’t cover my lips and chin, and this must be why, because,fuck, the way she keens as my tongue licks into her mouth is even better than her singing or her cries.
She writhes against me, pressing closer, and my nails dig reflexively into her throat, needing to keep her still so I never have to stop tasting her mouth and consuming her gasping, shocked, sensual noises. She hisses, and a trickle of warm liquid dances across my fingertips.
The familiar feel of her blood on my hands snaps me back to my senses, and I pull back from her lips with a ragged gasp.
“No,” she whimpers, struggling to breathe. My nails sink deeper, making her cry out in pain.
Matching despair washes over me as she panics, thrashing in my hold, finally trying to fight even though it’s far too late. Why did she let me hope that tonight would be different? Why did she give me a taste of something new only to make me hurt her again?
The cruelty of the brief offering of her desire makes the flames of anger replace those of lust, fueling the violence she demands of me. She manages to get a hand free from where I’ve pinned her wrists together above her head, clawing down to scratch at the exposed skin of my throat.
The bite of her nails barely registers against my toughened skin, and I watch fear take root as she realizes my flesh isn’t normal, her eyes flaring even wider.
“Who are you?” she whispers with her fading breath, fingers catching on the edge of my mask in a futile effort to tear it away before going limp in my hold.
I release a shaky exhale, my actions yet another scar turning me into a creature I don’t recognize.
“Your nightmare.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
Your nightmare.
I jolt awake, his voice echoing through my mind, familiar but fleeting. He’s right; I am achingly familiar with the sound of his voice.
My psyche seems only capable of inventing one male voice. If I’ve met someone like my dad or one of my brothers, their voices are still theirs in my dreams.
But if I haven’t? If they’re a made-up person, it’s always the same voice.
Hell, now it’s even the same mask every time. It used to change. At first it was the hockey mask that the guy that attacked me wore, sometimes it was that screaming mask, but eventually, it settled to the multi-eyed and mouthless bloodied white mask.
At the thought, my hand flies to my lips and then my throat.Thatwas a turn of events. My mind is really doing a number on me, because there’s still a tingle and slickness between my legs that tells me I was intoit.
My lips still feel swollen from his kisses, and my throat even hurts a bit. The iron-y tang of blood alerts me to a spot where I’ve bitten my lip, though for a second I can’t help but thinkhebit me. My head spins, remembering the dream, andI purse my lips. I remember fear. I remember feeling adrenaline pulsing through my veins like a freight train. I remember the brush of his lips, the sharp tip of a fang as I ran my tongue along it. I remember wondering what those fangs would feel like sinking into me. I even remember the hot drip of my blood as it ran down my neck and the pressure of his fingers until it was tempered by the sharp prick of pain.
What I don’t remember… is wanting it tostop.
If it hadn’t been killing me, I wouldn’t have cared, I realize. I’d wantedhim to keep kissing me. I’d been annoyed that the dream had shifted… betrayed, but if anything, I’d just wanted him to go back to kissing me.
Which is totally fucked.
“Uuuuugh,” I groan and cover my face. I’m learning all sorts of fun new things about myself these days. I order things in my sleep, and apparently I’m strangely turned on by the masked nightmare guy…even when he threatens to rip out my throat mid-kiss.
Perhaps therapy is in order, but I’ve still got a bad taste in my mouth from when I went as a teen.
Sarahwas a specialist in “Recalled Memory Therapy,” which I’ve since learned is totally bogus. She’d ask me all of these leading questions, creepily specific around ritual abuse, and made me feel like there was stuff happening to me that I hadnomemory of. For a while, I started to wonder if someone in my life had been performing satanic ritual abuse on me. But as soon as she started asking if—suggesting—it was my parents, I knew there was just no way.
We might disagree on a lot of things, religion being number one, but my parents are good people and were amazing parents.
She was part of our church and thought my dark makeup and clothes were a “cry for help, clear indications of satanic ties.” As soon as she’dimplicated my parents, I knew my style wasn’t worth the fight. Overnight, I cut a deal with them that I’d stop dressing like that if I could stop going to therapy.
Maybe my looks were a cry for help, but only a cry for help getting to the mall, because I wasn’tactuallytrying to wear navy blue. I wanted black, but I owned virtually none. Also, maybe it was a cry for help for makeup tutorials. I crack a smile, remembering how horrible my makeup had been. I only had black eyeliner, so I put that shit all around my eyes and used it as lipstick. Was I a mess? Absolutely, just not in any of the ways they assumed.
Now, though… yeah, now I’m a mess. A mess who is terrified oftherapy.
“Computer!” I call, because today I need the motivation to even get out of bed. “Good morning!”
