His hand brushes over the skin just above my towel, low on my hips, feather-light. “You’re going to be rewarded for this. Good girls get to come, remember?”
He presses his lips to my shoulder, not so much kissing as rubbing his lips back and forth. “Not here,” he says. The words make my skin react before I can process them.
Then he’s backing away from me. I hear the rustle of a bag, and the door opening and swinging shut.
Meanwhile, I’m destroyed by the effort it took to so much as utter those words, dizzy from his praise, and hanging on the edge of something I don’t have a name for.
But he’s gone.
Confusion spikes through me, then anger. I lower myself to a bench and curl inward on myself, resting my elbows on my thighs and breathing deeply.
Part of me wants to scream or hit something. Or cry like a kid who lost his favorite new toy. But under all the frustration, beneath the humiliation and the ache and the need, something else sits warm and steady.
Trust?
Do I trust Brody Miller?
It doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand it, other than Brody has never lied to me. Some deep part of me knows he’ll take care of me like he says he will.
The only question is how hard I’ll have to work for it, what else I’ll have to prove, and how badly it’s going to hurt.
That’s if the anticipation doesn’t kill me first.
The Halloween party is loud enough to rattle my bones. I’m so on edge, I consider having a drink. Just one to numb the frayed edges of my nerves. I’ve thought about it several times tonight already, even contemplated taking a shot when Fish, Cade, and a few others were pre-gaming.
Instead, I’m stone cold sober and examining every masked guy who vaguely matches Brody’s height and build. It feels pathetic, as though I’m chasing after him like some kind of pathetic needy girlfriend.
Caty would call you out for thinking like that.
I don’t want to be chasing anyone. Maybe if I think of it as hunting him, it’ll give me the confidence to let him come to me instead of trudging through a sea of slutty zombies, fairies, vampires, and firefighters. There’s more leg, tit, ass, and man chest on display than a swimsuit catalogue.
My phone burns a hole in my pocket, but I refuse to take it out again. It’s bad enough that I’ve sent him so many desperate messages, only for them to go unseen and unanswered.
Becky: You going to the party tonight?
Becky: I’m on my way.
Becky: You here yet??
I check one more time. No reply. Nothing.
I resist the urge to change his contact name to Captain Douchebag and type out a fourth message demanding that he answer me for fuck’s sake. Keeping me on edge like this is cruel.
“Stop scowling,” Caty says, elbowing me as she adjusts her blonde wig. “You’re supposed to be a brooding southern vampire, not an annoyed frat boy.”
“I am a brooding southern vampire,” I mutter through my incredibly realistic retractable canines.
She rolls her eyes. “Brooding vampires don’t check their phones every eight seconds,Bill.”
I roll my eyes and shove my phone back in my pocket. “Fine,Sookie,” I say, over emphasizing the ridiculous way the character from her favorite showTrue Bloodpronounces the name. She giggles, and I let her drag me to the dance floor. She’s such a dork, doing the corniest possible dance moves in the middle of a crush of grinding, scantily clad bodies, that for a while I forget myself.
A few songs in, Caty stops trying to hook random people on an invisible fishing reel and pauses, looking over my shoulder. I start to turn towards whatever she’s looking at, but she puts a hand to my face and grins.
“Don’t look now, but we’ve got an audience.”
I look, because of course I do. I turn my head and glance over my shoulder. Sure enough, a dark figure stands just outside the dance floor, facing us. His face is hidden by a terrifying Purge-style mask, and he’s wearing a nondescript black hoodie and dark jeans. And he’s watching us.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t wave or gesture towards me. He just watches. Even without being able to see his eyes, I know he’s watching me, specifically. His head tilts slightly, studying me, expressionless and creepy, but the movement is familiar all the same.
