The pull.
The compulsion that is Billy Blackwell.
It’s as my clammy palm just grazes the highly polished banister of a curved staircase we used earlier, one of my feet lifting to step down that first stair, that a hand fists in the back of my hair, wrenching me backwards so hard that it knocks the air out of me.
My back slams into a hard figure, the crown of my head knocking against bone, heat immediately radiating through my clothes, sweaty breath clinging to the skin along the side of my neck.
“Don’t make a sound,” a male voice breathes, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. “You’ll regret it if you do.”
Teeth clenched, my words hissing, “You’llbe the one to regret it if you don’t release me.” I suck in a breath, “Rightnow.”
The male’s hand slaps across my mouth, short nails gouging hard into my cheek. He drags me backwards, my bare feet scrabbling against the shined floor. My eyes flare as the light of the hall fades, the man tearing me further and further away from the stairs I planned to descend.
Then it’s dark.
The pounding in my head is harder than the drumming of my heart, my chest cavity ready to explode the organ right out of my chest. My bare heels bang uselessly against the floor, myhands curled tight around the man’s forearm, my nails cutting crescents into his skin.
I’ve been here before.
Struggling never helps, but no matter how many times I’ve had to do it, falling limp is so much harder than your brain tells you it’s going to be. Still, I do it. I fall limp, a dead weight in his arms, which, with arms the size of his, it’s really no struggle for him to drag me back regardless, farther and farther into the darkness.
My eyes blink rapidly, over and over, trying to see in the endless pitch. I don’t know this house. I don’t know its inhabitants. I don’t know about all of the things that go bump in the night in this strange, gothic castle.
But, what I do know is, I’m not a victim.
All of the times I was flash to the forefront of my mind, and my hands curl tighter over his forearm barred across my chest, nails cutting deeper, a hiss escaping his teeth, and then I rear my head back. Skull colliding hard into the base of his throat. I'm too short to get his face, but he's hunched over me, where he drags me back, and his chin is smacked too.
“You little bitch,” he spits, not slowing down, but he falters as I crane forward, readying to try again, when he stops still, wrapping a leg around the front of both of mine, taking me to the floor.
His weight hits into me like a bulldozer, my front plastered to the hard floor, he smothers me with his whole being, and with the breath knocked from my lungs, I can't breathe in more ways than one.
“It would be so easy,” the man breathes into my ear, his clammy fingers sliding upwards on my outer thigh, his own straddling me, trapping me beneath him, his knees bent beside my own. “To ruin you.” His hand flattens, gripping my flesh,fingers digging in until it feels like he's squeezing bone. “But I don’t need to,” he whispers, “he'll do that all himself.”
“Get the fuck off of me,” I grit out, teeth gnashed against the floor, one of his hands pressed hard against the side of my face, fingers spreading across one entire side of my skull. “Get the fuck off of me.”
“No, I’m not ready to yet,” he chuckles, this low raspy mocking that stands the little hairs up along my arms. “I said I don’tneedto ruin you, not that I wouldn’t.” The tip of his nose brushes my temple as he dips even lower, closing the scant distance between us, his knees digging into my sides, groin flush with my arse, his cock hard and thick against me. Mouth to my ear, his breath hot and heavy making my gut tighten, “Don’t go silent now, little girl, I like ‘em to scream.”
Instinct wars against logic making my legs kick, my arms flail, curled fists hammering the floor, but I can’t move my face, turn my head, let alone use my mouth to try to scream as he applies more pressure. I taste blood, my teeth cutting into my cheeks, my molars aching under the weight of his body all crushing down the length of his arm, his hand spread across my face. I see nothing. Pure blackness filling my vision and the room. My larynx feels strangled when I try to scream, to shout, like there’s a hand gripping around my throat.
Eyes watering, I start to relax, feeling his pelvis lift, his entire body weight now against my face as he lifts his other hand from the floor, feel the back of his hand graze my silk covered buttocks as he undoes his trousers, the zip like a death knell as my eyes water. The thunk of a belt hits the floor, my body melting into the wood beneath me, wishing the hardwood would just open up and swallow me whole, but then I hear a thud.
Metal.
He curses, the man, seeming to struggle with his trousers, more of his weight crushing my face, but my hands aren’tpinned, my fingers are free, and wriggling them, I can feel the belt, the leather like silk. It’s as though the breath punches out of me, an exhale of stuttered air as my fingertips find cool metal. Hooking inside the trigger guard, I start to ease the gun towards me. The pitch black of the room cloaking me as I slowly pull the weapon higher, bringing it up towards my face, my elbow bending, inching my only chance to escape closer and closer.
But before I can do anything else with it, a fist comes down on the back of my hand, knocking the gun from my fingers, the metal sliding across the floor, far too far away from me to have any chance of getting it back as I listen to it come to a skidding stop, the sound of it distant.
“Do you think I’m fucking stupid?” the man laughs.
Then his weight is lifted from me, my lungs heaving in the deepest breath, burning as I suck it down. I’m flipped over, the oxygen knocked straight back out of me as my spine crashes into the floor, the back of my skull cracking into the wood making me see stars. It momentarily stills me, shock rattling my bones.
His hands spread my knees, hiking my nightdress up to my navel, and I lie beneath him as he gets between my thighs, the coarse hair of his bare legs rough against my smooth ones. My tongue feels heavy, my head pounding, mouth dry. He comes over me, his weight on his knees as he lowers himself closer, the hot, heavy weight of his cock flopping onto my lower belly. And I’m staring into his eyes, dark in the pitch of the room despite whatever colour they might be, but the whites of them seem to glow.
He touches his nose to my cheek, breathing me in, then laughs, this low, raspy cocktail of madness and evil. “It feels so good to know that what I’m about to do to you will fuck him up much more than it will you.”
Then he’s rearing up onto his knees, dropping his gaze down onto my bared body. I hear him lick his lips, dramatic and overthe top in order to make sure I know what he’s doing as he stares down at me. His hand comes back to his dick, stroking his length, his knuckles rough against my flesh. But that’s when I see it, as though someone decided to throw me a bone, I catch sight of his belt again, my eyes adjusting in the darkness, a small knife loose beside it, like it fell when he shoved his trousers violently down.
Without a second thought, I fight the fogginess inside my head and lurch forwards, grabbing the blade and slamming it into him. Blindly, I aim for the side of his throat, missing, and instead, stabbing it straight into his cheek.
