God,I wish he wasn’t so attractive and charming.
I wish he were dirty and gross. I wish he didn’t exude confidence and control so I could more easily sneer at him and plan his murder. My entire body itches with the desire to get away from him, sure, but at the same time, I want more.
Once we’re finished and outside of Cider House Grill, I move to head back to my apartment, only for Larkin to catch me by the arm. “And where do you think you’re going, silly girl?” he purrs, dragging me close. “Did I tell you we were done?”
My heart lurches in my chest and I turn to glare at him, the embers of my anger seething to life in my chest. “Fuck you,” I snarl quietly, trying to jerk free. “We’re done. You’ve ruined my night?—”
He whirls me around, slamming me into the side of the building in the shadow between streetlights. His hand grips my hair hard enough that I can’t help but gasp at the sweet-sharp pain, and he pulls so my back is arched, my head tipped back.
A low sound like a sneering growl leaves him, but I'm too busy fighting his hand in my hair to get a look at his face. “We’re not done,” he states again, slowly, like I need him to spell it out for me. “Not until I say so.”
“Oh, yeah?” I pant. “What are you going to do? Drag me back to your place like this? Someone will notice. Someone will—” My words end in a yelp when he jerks me off the wall and leads me through the parking lot by my hair, fully willing to drag me if I slow down. I hear a car being unlocked, and the quiet click followed by an unfamiliar noise.
“I don’t need to drag you anywhere,” Larkin tells me sweetly, transferring his grip to my throat. “Not anymore, at least. Modern technology makes up for that. Now…” He walks me backward until my legs bump into something, and when I twist around, I see the gaping maw of atrunk.
A fuckingtrunk.
“You can scream, cry, or try to McGuiver your way out of this,” Larkin invites cruelly.
“Don’t you dare?—”
“But you’ll just tire yourself out before the main event, Tova.”
“No, I don’t?—”
But he doesn’t care about my words. With a strength that surprises me, Larkin lifts me up and sweeps my legs out from under me. I barely get the chance to cry out, and my hands uselessly jerk toward him before he’s slammed the trunk, plunging me into absolute darkness.
Chapter
Eleven
Beingkidnappedcertainly isn’t on my bucket list. I scream and slam my hands into the surface above me, just as I hear the engine rev to life. “Fuck!” I snarl, my heart racing with a mix of anger and fear. “What thefuck?!”Fury radiates through me, causing my blood to freeze like ice in my veins.
This is ridiculous.
This isterrifying.
But I clamp down on that thought, refusing to cater to it. No. I’ve been through worse than this, and I’m not going to let some asshole with a pretty face and a knack for murder be the end of me.
Is that what he wants?
To kill me?
Fear twists in my gut for the first time in years. I haven’t been truly afraid since the night I killed my mother. Something inside me had just turned off back then, but now it resurrects inside of me, picking a terrible time to make my hands shake and my heart try to find a new home in my throat.
“Let me out!” I know he probably can’t hear me. Not over the engine and the thump of the bass in the loud music he’s got on.Is that to prevent anyone else from hearing me? Or is it just his normal thing?
I grope around in my pockets for my phone, pulling it out and hitting the button for the flashlight to peer around the trunk. It’s…a trunk. There’s nothing special about it, and the space isn’t big enough for me to stretch my legs out. Instead, I have to keep them curled up and to the side, slightly uncomfortable, to fit in here at all. Petulantly I kick the roof of the trunk, though I can’t even hear it over the noise from the engine.
Larkin turns a corner, and my uncontrolled tumbling in the trunk is disconcerting enough that I drop my phone with a curse. My hand slaps against the carpet and I grab for it, hands shaking.
I don’t want to die.
Fuck,I really don’t want to die here in a trunk or wherever the hell he’s taking me.
The woods?
The bay?
