Page 22

I wanted to say something—anything—to break the terrible stillness that followed, to throw my own voice into the space between us and prove to myself that I was still more than this trembling, cornered version of me. But when I tried, nothing came out. Instead, I could feel Max’s cock growing inside me inch by inch the more possessive he got with me, the more his hands gripped my skin—I knew I was going to have marks on me when I wake up tomorrow—if I wake up tomorrow. Everything inside me wants to scream, moans scatter out but I can’t scream. He told me I wasn’t allowed, but what if I just did one simple trick—I dart my tongue out, moving it right to left and creating any sort of friction but he’s fucking me too hard—too fucking good for me to concentrate. My pussy is swollen around him and one more thrust and I will go over the edge. That’s exactly what he does, driving into me once more, long and angry. My body craves it. I don’t want him to be gentle with my body; I want him to use me like I’m the dirtiest thing he’s ever seen. One last thrust is all it takes for me to explode.

My orgasm ripped across his cock, my body slummed, but he didn’t come, and I’d be far too mean for me not to let Max finish, so I relaxed, letting my body become human again just for a few more minutes, but Max had a different idea when he retrieved his cock. He spins my body around, throwing me onto my knees. The rope suddenly became a little loose, not enough that I could escape, but enough that I no longer felt a burning sensation across my skin. Five seconds passed, and he didn’t speak; all I could hear were the screams of the guests. I could only help but smile through the tape. They seriously think this is just a cute Halloween night, not that we have killed people today. As far as I know, it’s two, but from Max being at the entrance to me being inside, he could have killed five people. I know he isn’t like me; he doesn’t take his sweet time. A good bullet in his head is fine for him. My eyes dropped as he started fisting his cock on one hand, sliding up and down.

“Ready to be glistening in my cum?” I go to answer, but then I’m reminded I’m not allowed to. I stay right where he put me and wait for him to make me soaked in his cum. Seven strokes and his seed is painting my forehead, eyebrows, and eyelids. His body jerks, and the sound breaks apart before it could become a sentence, collapsing into something small, muffled, and useless. That was part of what made the darkness of it feel so complete. He missed nothing. Not the hitch in my breathing. Not the way my body went taut with the effort of holding myself together. Not the flicker of humiliation that must have crossed my face before I could smother it. His silence did not feel empty; it felt watchful. Intent. Like something alive in the dark, patient and unblinking.

I could feel the weight of his attention on me more clearly than if he had laid a hand on my skin. It was inescapable, a presence that seemed to close in from every side until the shadows around us felt narrower, deeper, almost suffocating. The room was no longer just a room. It had become a trap made of dim light, swallowed words, and the unbearable awareness of being seen too clearly. Every weakness in me felt exposed. Every thought seemed one breath away from being dragged into the open.

And that was the part I hated most—that he could see me unravelling. Not all at once, not dramatically, but in quiet, devastating fractures. In the way my breath turned uneven. In the way my mind began to scatter, grasping for anything solid and finding nothing that would hold. In this way, shame and fear twisted together so tightly inside me that I could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.

It would have been easier if I could have turned it into anger. Anger was clean. Anger was sharp enough to carry, sharp enough to fight with. But this was something murkier, heavier, harder to survive. This was exposure. This was the sickening knowledge that he had found the exact place where my composure thinned to nothing, and he was standing there now, waiting, watching, saying almost nothing because he didn’t have to. The silence was doing enough damage on its own.

I kept my eyes fixed somewhere beyond him, on the blur of darkness gathering at the edges as if I could disappear into it if I stared hard enough. But the shadows offered no shelter. They only seemed to deepen, pooling in the corners like something sentient, something feeding on the tension winding tighter and tighter between us. Even the quiet felt hostile. It pressed against my ears until I could hear every uneven breath, every tremor I tried to suppress, every frantic beat of my heart hammering against my ribs like it wanted out.

And beneath all of it—beneath the shame, the fear, the suffocating vulnerability—was the most terrifying truth of all: part of me understood that the moment had already shifted beyond anything I could easily control. He knew it. I knew it. That knowledge passed between us without words, dark and poisonous, settling into silence like smoke.

For one awful second, I felt hollowed out by it, stripped down to nothing but instinct and pulse and the desperate effort not to break apart where he could see. The dark seemed closer. Even time itself felt altered, stretched thin and trembling, every second dragging against my skin until it became unbearable.

Still, somewhere deep inside me, something refused to die quietly.

It was small—so small it almost disappeared beneath the dread—but it was there. A thin, shaking thread of defiance, buried under all the fear and humiliation, stubborn enough to keep burning in the dark. I held onto it the way a lost person might cling to a dying light, not because it was strong, but because it was the only thing that still felt like mine.

I draw in the shallowest breath I could manage, and he lifted my chin, kneeling to my level.

“Beautiful.” One word, but for so many reasons, Max rips off the rope, and then the tape. I sit on the muddy grass right next to the dead body. I crack a smile. Rest in hell, mother fucker.

MAX

Emma walks beside me, her clothes barely hanging onto her body. She’s covered in blood, but she doesn’t seem to care. I can’t take my eyes off her. She looks so fucking breathtaking, even with blood smeared across her skin and her hair tangled from the grizzly kind of mishap she had earlier. There’s something feral about her now, something wild and untouchable, and I can still remember exactly how she felt beneath me.

“Hurry up,” I holler when she starts to fall behind.

“I’m trying,” she calls back, her voice faint and strained.

I stop long enough to let her catch up, then shove my hand into my pocket and pull out my phone. The screen glows against the dark as I check the time. 11 p.m. Less than two hours left before we have to be finished. Part of me wishes we had killed more people, but killing isn’t quick, and it isn’t supposed to be. It should be slow. Dragged out. Painful. That’s the whole point. They have the red pin for a reason, and even if Emma and I don’t know every detail behind why they wear it, we know enough. Enough to know they deserve what’s coming.

There’s one person I spotted near the entrance, and I never told Emma. I didn’t want her to spiral. I wanted her focused, wanted her doing what she does best without getting distracted by the one face that could crack her wide open. I know she wants him dead, and I fully support that. God, I’d help her do it myself. But I don’t know if putting her face-to-face with him tonight would destroy him—or destroy her first.

I will tell her I know I have to, and while I don’t know the extent to which happened between the two of them, I know it shaped her in a way I don’t like, but then I also know her father did that, and maybe that’s why we both prefer no strings attached, it’s easier, and no one gets hurt. Emma catches up to me, and I look over, studying her face—her mental state. I need to tell her she should have told her the second I saw him, and she’s going to be pissed when she finds out I didn’t.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks. Her voice croaking and sounding lost.

“I got something to tell you,” I tell her, my voice lower and tinged with concern.

“So tell me.” Her eyebrows tighten into a tense line, and her forehead wrinkles show up.

“Danny’s here,” I jolt out. Emma’s eyes open wide; she clicks her teeth together and turns. Then turns again just to look at me again.

“Walk away,” she says again, almost casual, but out here in the maze, with the corn towering over us on both sides and the night pressing in tight, it sounds like a threat.

I stare at her. “Emma⁠—”

“Max.” Her voice turns sharp enough to cut. “Walk away.”

The path beneath us is narrow, damp dirt packed down by hundreds of boots, and somewhere deeper in the maze, people are laughing, shrieking, getting lost on purpose. But this part of it is quieter. Too quiet. Just wind dragging through dry stalks. Just the rustle of leaves. Just Emma looking like she’s one wrong word away from doing something irreversible.

“No.”

Her jaw tightens. “You do not get to tell me no.”