My friend was in terrible danger, and she probably didn’t even know it yet. I’m not one for tears, but I couldn’t hold back the ones silently rolling down my cheeks. Wanted or not, theyweren’t about to stop any time soon. The thought of poor Cat being in danger and not being able to warn her caused a pain so deep inside of me that I had to wrap my arms around my bent legs and draw them up tight to my chest to help soothe myself.
When the sound of a key in the lock outside my door interrupted my crying jag, my blood ran cold. Not knowing what I could do, as there wasn’t even a lamp I could use as a weapon in this vacant room, I inched myself to the farthest corner of the bed and prepared for the worst.
The dim light from the bathroom barely reached this far into the corner of my prison, so most of the space was still bathed in shadows. Despite that, I recognized him as soon as he opened the door and stood boldly upon the threshold.
“Hello, Mouse. I’ve returned, just like I promised I would.” The smaller man from last night spoke gruffly then.
I was too scared to speak. Though I referred to him as the smaller man, he was by no means small. In fact, he was rather large and far too strong for my liking. His face was grizzled and scarred, and the ugliness of his mind bled out into his twisted features making him appear more monster than man.
“Are you hiding from me, Mouse?” The man pressed, shutting the door behind him and tucking the key into his vest pocket.
As soon as that monster entered my space, the four walls of the room closed in all around me. I felt terrified and dizzy, the mixture a heady concoction that reminded me of being cruelly bitten all over again.
The man answered his own question when I was silent for too long. “You can’t hide from me, little one. I can see, hear, and smell you wherever you go.” To prove his disgusting point, hesniffed the air and smiled a devious grin. “Delicious. Just like I remembered.”
My voice was thin and reedy when I asked, “Why are you doing this? What the hell did I ever do to you or your club?”
The gnarly-faced man slithered closer. His movements were so smooth they actually appeared snake-like. Upon his chest I could see a patch that told me he was VP of his club, and his road name was, disturbingly, Graveyard.
“Do you know what you taste like to me, Mouse?” He asked, lost in his own thoughts and not giving a fuck about what I’d just asked him.
The bile in my stomach began to bubble anew and I worked hard to keep it down. “What is wrong with you? Why are you doing this to me?”
In a gesture which I could only assume was foreign to the hard man, Graveyard reached out and gently stroked my cheek. “You were the best. The best I’d ever tasted. So sweet. Like her. You kind of smell like her too. Jasmine at night.”
What the fuck was he rambling on about? I didn’t give a shit who this mystery woman was. I didn’t care about some long-lost love of his or the way she smelled or tasted. Why the fuck would I? I wasn’t this asshole’s therapist. I was his god damned captive!
“Please,” I pleaded, hoping that moment of tenderness could be further extended. “I need to get home. I take medicine. It’s very important that I have it or I could get sick.”
I was lying, of course. I was healthy as a horse. I only hoped he’d buy my ruse so that he’d feel sorry for me. I wasn’t sure what my made-up illness was yet, as I was kind of wingingit here, but I wanted the man to think I was weak and frail. When men thought you were weak, they treated you accordingly. Hell, he might slip up and leave my door unlocked or leave me unattended long enough that I could come up with a plan of escape. I was reaching for sure, but I needed to use every trick at my disposal if I wanted to get out of this cesspit alive and help Cat before they kidnapped her next.
Graveyard dropped his hand and gave me a dead stare. “You’re not sick. I would have tasted it in your blood. You’re lying to get my sympathy, but that’s a mistake. I don’t have any to give.”
I think that was the most honest thing a man had ever said to me. The biker was a psychopath. All the earmarks were there. The coldness behind the eyes, the lack of empathy, his cruelty and violence. Heck, his club name alone summed it up nicely. Graveyard? Yeah, that was clearly a nod toward his freaky pastime pursuits. This man was wholly incapable of feeling anything but his own desires. So, if I wanted to get out of here in one piece, I was going to have to tap into whatever those were.
Clearing my throat, I sat up a little straighter, “Who was she? This woman that I, um, … smell like?” I couldn’t bring myself to say the part about me tasting like her. It was just too icky a statement to repeat.
Graveyard continued to ignore me, like he was having a one-way conversation with his priest at confession. “I shouldn’t be here. He told me not to visit you,” he explained for some bizarre reason.
Damn. That wasn’t good. None of that sounded promising for my long-term survival. Playing along, I inquired, “Who told you that?”
“Kane. He said he has to be present when I visit you. But you’re not going to tell him about my visits, are you, Mouse?”
His tone was so calm and flat it actually unnerved me. “What would I tell him? We’re just talking, right?” Oh God, please tell me we were just talking and nothing more. I couldn’t handle another level of hell. I was barely holding my shit together as it was.
“I need to remember how you taste,” the broken man spoke, before sitting down on the side of my bed. “He can’t keep that from me. I’ve earned it. I need it. I can’t sleep without it.”
I could feel what he was going to do before he even moved a muscle. When he sprang into action, I screamed. As predicted, my voice was swallowed up by the noisy machines overhead.
The sting of the bite was even more painful than the first time he’d attacked me. My skin parted under his teeth like a hot knife through butter. Blood poured down my left shoulder and spilled onto the already stained mattress beneath me. Somehow, in the blink of an eye, Graveyard had shifted my body so that I was underneath him with my neck craned to the side for better access.
Like last night, I only managed to struggle for a few seconds before my limbs grew limp, and I fell unconscious.
When I awoke, he repeated the cycle all over again. I lost count of how many times he bit me, then revived me. At some point, I heard him slip out the door.
The words, “My mother. You smell like my human mother,” were quietly whispered before he locked the door behind him and I passed out from sheer exhaustion and blood loss.
CHAPTER 31
