How I long to push the door shut with all my weight and break those fingers. Hear the bones crunch and see the blood spurt. Watch a Rotter scream and cry.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
The hand withdraws.
But it doesn’t leave.
I feel the shift in the air again, thicker, warmer, likesomeone exhaled just on the other side of the door. My skin prickles everywhere at once. My nipples tighten against the damp fabric of my shirt. My thighs clench so hard, I almost whimper. I pisses me the fuck off.
I force my legs apart an inch, just an inch, trying to shake off the heat pooling low. It doesn’t help. If anything, it makes it worse. The movement drags my jeans against the sensitive skin inside my thighs, and I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood. Focus. Focus on the discomfort. The fear. Focus on the concrete biting into my back. Focus on the way the boxes smell like mildew and old cardboard and something faintly sweet, like spilled perfume from years ago. Anything but the way my body is screaming for contact it has no right to want.
Another scuff. Closer this time. Deliberate. Like he shifted his weight just to let me hear it.
My pulse slams in my ears so loud, I’m sure he can hear it through the door. My breathing is too fast, too loud. I clamp my lips shut, force it through my nose, short and silent. The air back here is thick with dust and decay and my own sweat. It sticks to the back of my throat. I swallow and taste something awful again.
The shadow in the crack doesn’t move.
I picture him standing there, tall, broad, calm. Probably smirking under whatever mask he wears, enjoying the hell out of terrorizing me. He’s probably hard already, excited by his power. The thought makes me want to vomit. It also makes the heat between my legs flare brighter. I press my thighs together again, hard, trying to crush the feeling, the goddamn excitement, out of existence. It only makes it worse. A small, involuntary soundslips out, barely a breath, but it feels like a scream in the silence.
I’m furious at my body. More furious than I am at him. More than at this place. More than at the fact that some part of me is already imagining what his hand would feel like if it closed around my throat instead of the doorframe.
Another scuff. Then silence. Long. Heavy. Intentional.
He’s waiting. Waiting for me to break. Waiting for me to make a sound. Waiting for me to run. I don’t. I stay perfectly still.
Let him wait. Let him wonder. Let him think I’m scared. Because I’m not scared. I’m fucking furious. And fury is a better fuel than fear.
I see an old wire hanger just outside my reach. If I could grab it and straighten the wire…
Jesus, girl.
I count again. One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred.
The shadow finally moves. Slow. Reluctant. Like he’s disappointed I didn’t freak out, cry, or beg.
Fuck that.
Footsteps retreat. Not far. Just enough.
The pressure eases but doesn’t disappear. It lingers, stretched thin, an imaginary line pulled tight between us. The message lands clear and cold.
I’m being followed.
Fine. Whatever. No surprise there. That’s what this is all about, for Christ’s sake.
I stay wedged between the boxes for another ten counts. Twenty. My muscles cramps, coiled tight. Sweattrickles down one temple. My heartbeat refuses to slow, thudding hard, scolding me for getting into this situation.
I ease out from between the boxes and straighten, joints stiff, muscles tight. I press my ear to the door. The presence that crowded me moments ago has shifted, pulled back, redistributed. Not gone, at least not permanently. He’s toying with me.They’retoying with me.
It’s what I signed up for.
I crack the door and slip out of the stockroom, back onto the ruined sales floor. The lingerie store still sits empty, wrecked and quiet and frozen in time, a sad reminder that no one in the town of Rothwell can buy sexy undies anymore.
But the guy is done. No boots. No shadows in the doorway. No one waiting to grab me the second I step out. Just the checkout counter where I left it and the mannequins staring straight ahead, blank and patient. Ignoring me.
This Rotter wants me moving.
I roll my shoulders once, work the tension loose. My body wants motion. I give it purpose.
