The lined clicked and the cell fell silent. My gaze was still on Penny sleeping, but my dark thoughts were on what I’d need to cut from her and how much she’d hate me afterwards. I couldn’t deny that the thought of her screams turned me on. The idea of her blood soaking my sheets and my body made my cock so hard it hurt. But the hate she’d feel for me afterwards; there’d be no coming back from that.
Not that there’d be any coming back from any of this.
She wasn’t mine to keep.
To touch.
To want.
She wasn’t mine, and never could be.
So why did it matter what I took from her?
A finger? A toe? A thumb? Her prissy, too-fucking-good-for-me attitude?
She’d never know who I was anyway, and that was for the best. She was too fucking good for me anyway. I’d done my research on her, knew all about her life. From the woman behind the fucked-up family life. The shitty father, the nonexistent mother, the controlled life, the fake friends and even faker boyfriends. And then there was the other part of her, the part that helped out at the local animal shelter, the part that wanted to be a nurse. The part that was good and pure, or at least it was until I began to defile her.
She was good.
Too fucking good for me, and after tonight, I’d never need to see her again.
She’d never know the man behind the mask watched her sleep, tucked her hair back from her face and dreamt of a better life where he’d be worthy of a woman like her. She’d never know, and that was for the best.
So what the fuck did it matter what I took from her?
I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes.
This woman.
This motherfucking woman.
I stood up suddenly and threw the almost empty bottle of whiskey across the room. It hit the wall opposite and smashed, spraying the room with glass and whiskey.
“Fuck this shit.” I stood up and left the room before storming down the rickety stairs of the house and out the front door. I swayed on the porch as I stared into the distance.
Bats flitted through the trees on either side of the ramshackle house in the middle of nowhere, and the only light came from the lights that burned inside and the moon that burned down on me. Blackness filled my soul, swallowing me until I thought I might combust.
I felt angry. Irrationally angry. Like I needed to tear something or someone apart to soothe myself. Blood and pain were the only things that ever calmed me. Until her. Until Penny.
She calmed me without even trying.
Woman had no idea the kind of power she had. And she never fucking would.
Storming toward my bike, I climbed on before starting the engine. I was drunk, way too fucking drunk to be riding, but I needed the cool air in my face and the feel of the road beneath me so I could breathe again. I tore out of the grounds of the house and out onto the gravel road, hitting fifty before I’d even hit the main road. Stones flew up all around me, spraying up either side of me as I watched the speedometer hit sixty, then seventy, then eighty.
The world flew past me in a blur of colors and shapes, the rumbling between my thighs and heat burning from the bike keeping me grounded to it. I sped through a sharp bend, the front tire slipping and nearly sending me flying, but I caught it and straightened myself back up. The speed climbed again, sixty, seventy, seventy-five, eighty. My Harley roared like the ferocious bitch that she was as I pushed her even harder, coming into another bend too fast.
Only this time when she slid, I couldn’t correct her.
Or maybe I didn’t try.
Maybe I wanted to feel the pain of something else besides the knowledge that I was a piece of shit that would never deserve a woman as good as Penny.
My Harley threw me from her like a bull bucking off her rider and I flew through the air before I landed on my side in the grass on the side of the road. I rolled several times before coming to a stop. And from somewhere else I heard the crash of my bike.
I lay there as pain ripped down my arms and chest, the world swimming in and out of focus, and I stared up at the trees, watching the bats above me again, wondering if I was dying. I didn’t fear death. Hadn’t ever since I’d witnessed my first death at six years old.
But right then as the world blurred and ebbed in and out of focus, I felt something grow in my chest worse than the pain from the crash. It was fear.
