Page 13 of Hunted By Them

“Scream if you want us to take you,” another breathed with a laugh. The voice was laced with hunger, and it was the same one that had been at the side of the house.

There was a tap at the door.

Tap, tap, tap.

And then a whisper filtered in like it snuck through the cracks. “Open…if you want us. We know you do…we can smell it.”

My cheeks burned hot, and I bit my lip as my whole body shook. Fear and lust braided so tight I couldn’t tell them apart. My thighs squeezed tighter without permission. My heart stuttered, frantic, not just from terror but from the raw ache of wanting what waited outside.

I took a tentative step toward the door.

You are crazy.

I scolded myself, but took another step.

“Yes…come to us…come and become ours,” the leader’s gruff voice beckoned.

Don’t do this.

Part of me yelled and waved a red flag in the air. But as I took the final step, I heard the scrap of something dragging against the wood right in front of me.

This is how people die in horror movies.

Reaching out, I touched the latch, the old metal cool between my fingers. My breath rattled in little gasps.

I didn’t have to do this. I could hide in the corner and drown their voices with denial. I would leave at dawn and pretend this night had never happened.

But that wasn’t why I came back.

Another knock rattled the door.

Thump, thump, thump.

“We’re patient, Sweet Daisy, but…even we have our limits,” he warned, and I swallowed the lump in my throat, my hand shaking harder.

He was standing on the other side of the door, a sweet sin to my senses.

“Let us hear you scream. Let us taste your sweet pussy,” the second begged, closer to the door now. “You want this. That’s why you returned to us.”

I moaned, then covered my mouth. I was torn in two. Fear and shame on one side, dark desire on the other. My fingers tightened on the latch, and I watched myself lift the flimsy lock as if my fingers belonged to someone else entirely.

With a hard yank, I opened the door.

The storm crashed and lit up the sky. Gone off the porch, the three stood where I’d seen them last night. Unmoving in the rain, their skin wet, jeans drenched, and masks firmly in place.

The Buck, the Elk, and the Caribou. Their antlers rose into the air, and the lightning sparking in the distance looked like it was connected to the sharp points of bone. They were predators…maybe men, but either way, they were my undoing.

I should’ve slammed the door shut. But I didn’t.

I stood there shaking, my pulse in my mouth, with my lips parted.

“That’s a good girl, Sweet Daisy…now run.”

SAGE

The command gripped me, and my feet moved before my brain registered that this was the stupidest of all my decisions so far. I stumbled into motion with no real direction. I hit the treeline and crashed into the forest, my boots squelching in the mud, making it harder to move.

Covering my face with my arms to keep from getting hit by branches, the first inkling of real fear began to seep in. The sound of things moving in the woods behind me shook me to my core. But the yipping noises, like I was being tracked by a pack of coyotes, were what drove me into a panic.