The fucker was going to kidnap and do God knows what else with me.
My heart raced like it was trying to jump out of my ribcage.
Luna caterwauled, running after us, frantic to save me.
“Help!” Uselessly, I fought against his grasp, but I was no match for his strength, overpowered and hauled around like a weightless toy. I never stopped screaming, making noise in hopes that someone would hear and come to my aid. I never stopped digging my fingers in the back of his hands either, attempting to dislodge his hold, knowing at the very least I was breaking skin and his DNA would be under my fingernails. “Help, help, help!”
“Keep screaming, bitch,” he threatened, appearing like a fucking monster. “No one’s going to hear you.”
When he smacked me so hard across the face, my shouts died and my cheek split from the knuckle rings he was wearing.
Pain like I’d never experienced expanded inside of me.
It felt like a whip flayed open the skin of my back, my face, and my scalp. I wished I were numb. Yet I felt every ounce of hurt ringing in my bones. To the point where I was seconds from passing out.
Luna managed to climb Tom’s body and swipe at his cheek in retaliation, cutting open his skin and leaving three long lines that were akin to the hellhound mark.
He cursed and loosened his hold on my hair. I managed to scramble free for less than a blink of an eye before he caught my ends and dragged me back.
At that moment, Luna scratched his eyelid.
The burst of pride in my chest at Luna’s ability to disengage my attacker was swiftly squashed by fear when Tom howled, “Fucking cat! Should have killed you the first time I saw you!”
He grabbed her body and flung her away. She landed painfully on the ground with a feeble meow that broke me.
“No!” A renewed sense of fight funneled through me. I screeched until I thought my lungs would collapse, struggling in his hold as angry tears blurred my vision. “Don’t touch her, you fucking asshole! I’ll kill you!”
“I’d like to see you try.” He hauled my injured body in the back of his trunk. He was twice my size and strength, and yet I still tried, and tried, andtriedin vain to escape through sobs and sheer perseverance. But Tom kept shoving me back every time I managed to lift my bloody, bruised self up. The sadistic piece of shit was enjoying watching my futile attempts. “After today, you’ll never be able to leave me ever again.”
The last thing I remembered was a piece of cloth being shoved against my nose and mouth and Tom’s gleaming eyes staring me down as he suffocated me.
Then my body went limp and I fell into a dark abyss.
CHAPTER 49
Taken From Him
Hunter
In the half an hour since Gabriela left, a sense of dread bloomed within me.
At first, I tried to ignore it and chalk it up to my attachment issues with her. I was obsessed and so damn in love with the red-haired beauty that I hated being away from her. We spent the entire weekend glued together, laughing, talking, making love, and simply existing next to each other like we were always meant to be.
And yet all the kisses, all the strokes, all the conversations weren’t enough.
I feared even an entire lifetime with her wouldn’t be.
I wanted eternity and beyond. I wanted to possess every smile, every laugh, every touch. I wanted to possess every facet that composed this beautiful, brilliant, star-powered woman. Even the ones she’d yet to discover about herself.
Gabriela Regina Bellafiore was my drug and I was a fiend for her.
It wasn’t a healthy mindset, but I didn’t care.
I was all about this little goddess of mine.
And because her well-being would always be my top priority, I could no longer ignore the foreboding prickling the atmosphere of my home in her absence. It perforated the air and wrapped around my throat like a noose.
As I emerged from my en suite, a fresh gauze applied over my wound, a towel around my waist, and another to dry my hair, my eyes drifted over to the digital clock on my nightstand.
