Page 26 of Hollow Forest

“Oh, shit. OH, SHIT!” I wheezed.

The masked fiend groaned. But it wasn’t the sound of pain. I recoiled, horror welling inside me. I only brought the stupid knife out here to throw at his feet! I hadn’t meant to hurt him.

“Well done. I knew you wanted to play.”

Liquid heat spread between my legs at the sinful praise.

This was so fucked up! “I stabbed you!”

“Don’t worry, beautiful,” he rasped. “You haven’t killed me yet.”

Angling his body so a shaft of moonlight pierced the scene, I watched in horror as he pulled the blade from his shoulder. Crimson leaked from the hole. I scrambled back, feeling the very human emotion of fear in the face of this living nightmare.

“If you want this to end, push the blade here.” As he spoke, he dragged the tip down his chest, tipping it to the right. It stopped between two ribs.

Then he held the blade to me, handle first, his fingers pinching the wet blade.

“Go on,” he purred. “Do it. I know you can.”

I snapped my head back and forth. Words failed me.

The monster hummed. “In that case—”

The click of metal punctuated his words.

It took my oxygen-deprived brain too many seconds to comprehend what was happening. I looked down, but before I could snatch my hand away, he jerked it off the ground. He wasn’t touching me. He didn’t have to. While I was focused on him, he’d managed to cinch a cuff around my wrist.

I didn’t move fast enough to stop it from being secured to the other side.

Tugging on the sturdy whisp of chain between the cuffs, the masked man pulled me forward. I fell onto my knees. My palms opened, and I nearly braced myself on the muscles of his torso.

He tsked in warning. “Touch me, and the rules change.”

I reversed my forward momentum and strained against his hold. “You’re not playing fair!”

“I never said I would.”

He still held the knife as he adjusted his squat to mirror my height. He swiped the blade through the rivulets of red trickling down his chest. I shrieked and leaned back hard as he slowly brought the weapon to my face at a diagonal.

“You’re a fighter, Sam,” he breathed, voice husky with a tone that had my insides coming alive.

“And you’re a psychopath!”

He chuckled and carefully wiped the flat edge of the knife under my left eye.

I was about to hyperventilate. My lungs seized tight. The desire to flee flared in my muscles. But I held still as he flipped the knife to mark the other side. Ghoulish wet stains lined my cheeks like some fucked up football player who used black paste to shield from the sunlight.

“My little angel of vengeance,” he whispered, awe packed into his words. “I’m going to give you exactly what you need.”

He flipped the knife between his fingers, caught the blade, and for a second, I thought he was going to offer it to me again. He drew the handle of the knife down my front. I felt it burn through the thick layer of my sweatshirt.

A whimper escaped my throat.

It was pathetic, even to my own ears. A normal person would have mistaken it for fear. But I knew the truth. Embarrassment heated my cheeks.

I was so bloody turned on right now.

I’d convinced myself I was dead inside. For three years, my only purpose for existing had been to make the men who’d stolen everything from me pay. But now, this deranged foreplay woke something feral inside me.