Still, I waited. It took time for her to settle in and to stop fidgeting. I mean, fear is a powerful motivator to keep someone from settling down right away and I’d caused her quite a jolt. But as the minutes wore on, she calmed down, the rustling of her unrest stopped and so did her random mutterings which were just that side of inaudible to me, damn it. It would have been nice to know what she’d been muttering about. The scent of peaches lingered in the air behind her even now, for all the time it took for her to settle in. I waited for it to dissipate completely before I made any kind of move.
The air outside was still, crisp and cool, edging toward chilly, and though she had been startled by the brief glimpse she got of me through her curtains, she had left her balcony doors, not only unlocked but slightly ajar. They would have been no barrier to me even if she had locked them, but I found it convenient that she still obviously felt so safe and secure in her own home.
This was one of my favorite parts of the hunt. The moment just before the kill, or the capture in this particular case. She wasn’t asleep. Almost, but not quite, her breathing hadn’t deepened enough, the cadence was wrong for true sleep. My patience had run out though and so I moved with the silence of a shadow, slipping down from the tree and through the open door. I stood, for a moment, looking down at her. She lay on her back, the light robe tossed to the foot of her bed. Her night gown clung to every curve of her in a thoroughly distracting manner where her blankets didn’t cover her body. I was pretty sure she wasn’t wearing anything else under the nightgown.
While I waited, I watched, taking in every minute detail. Admittedly, I stood there with a raging hard on growing in my jeans while I did it. I was waiting for that moment, that one precise moment that was one of the sweetest sensations in the world. The moment she realized subconsciously that she was being watched, that the predator had found her and it was already too late.
The thing about the human mind that so many people have forgotten is that not long ago, on an evolutionary scale, human beings were ruled far more by their instincts than their rational minds. And to this day, in the back of their brains it still resides there. That instinct, that fight or flight reflex that lives on in the primal, animalistic, part of the mind. That part of deeply ingrained humanity that you all try so hard to push down and suppress. The instinct. The sixth sense that tells you when you’re being watched. That tells you when you’re being hunted.
She didn’t disappoint me. Her eyes snapped open and locked on mine. In that very instant I moved, lightning quick, my left leg came up and I leaned over, letting my leg fall heavily across her middle. My left hand covered her mouth as she opened it to scream and my right slipped under the blankets, up her leg, and beneath her nightgown. It landed directly on the juncture between her thighs. I smiled a very unfriendly smile. I was right. No underwear. I was also intentionally being a prick, watching the fear unfurl in those pretty blue eyes. I put pressure on her pubic bone, pressing her ass into the yielding mattress beneath her and leaned in close.
“Don’t scream… and if you value your life? Don’t bite me either. There are things swimming around in my blood that you
really
wouldn’t want in your system,” I grinned at her and I knew it was intimidating. I wanted it to be. “You’re going to have to pay for the sins of the Father, Little Huntress,” I breathed.
She struggled, of course. They always do. She screamed, of course, they always do that too, but my hand over her mouth kept the noise from being any kind of audible, and there was no way she would be escaping my grip. I was far stronger than I looked and her slight build was no match for my larger one. She threw her weight around anyways, as much as she could but she weighed all of a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet and with my hand between her legs, the leverage I had kept her from doing much, if anything, but kick her feet ineffectually.
I waited, calmly, until she had worn herself out in her struggles. Her fists beat at my shoulder but she was unable to move me. Eventually she fell still. Her breath coming hard and fast, nostrils flaring and relaxing rhythmically.
For a wonder, there were no tears. I’d expected tears. Usually people cry when they’re as afraid as she seemed to be. Or maybe she was angry. Come to think of it girls cried
more
when they were angry. Whatever the case, she hadn’t tried to bite me, so there was that.
I looked down at her, acutely aware of the weight of her breasts against my leg and the pleasant warmth of her body beneath me. Without thinking my fingers moved between her legs, going for an even more intimate touch than I already had on her, but I quickly stilled them. That wasn’t why I was here.
“You’re not going to scream if I take my hand away, now are you?” I asked, calmly.
There was nothing for a moment as she glared at me, but then she shook her head, just slightly.
“Good girl,” I took my hand away from her mouth and wiped her saliva on the sheets next to her.
“Who the fuck are you?” she snapped as soon as my hand was away. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Who am I?” I grinned at her again, I couldn’t help it. That was always one of the first questions asked. Who was I? Did it really matter if they knew who I was when I was usually about to kill them? Would it make any difference to them to know who had them at his mercy?
“You don’t really need to know who I am,” I said. “Not right now at least. As for what do I want? Oooohh… now that,
that
, my dear, is a much better question.” I jumped into the air, turned and came down straddling her waist faster than she could track it or react. I grabbed her wrists as she shrieked and tried to hit me and I pinned them to the bed above her with one hand, re-covering her mouth with the other. I leaned down until we were practically nose to nose.
“What I want, little girl,” I growled, my voice deepening and taking on a rougher quality. “Is to save my world. My life that
your
family,
your
father destroyed! Now keep your mouth shut!”
She blinked and shivered for a moment before she nodded. I took my hand away slowly and she spoke, hesitantly. “My father is an accountant, what could he have possibly done to–” She cut off mid-sentence as I threw my head back and let out a short, quiet laugh.
Amazing! Impossible even. She didn’t know? She had no idea what her father did? She had no idea who she was living with, what kind of monster her daddy was. Huh.
“You don’t even know what Daddy Dearest does for a living, do you?” I crowed, my voice returning to normal as I pushed back the change.
“I told you, he’s an accountant–”
“He’s a murderer!” I snapped. “He killed my father. He destroyed everything! And now, he’s going to lose his daughter. I’m going to take her from him, just like he took my father from me.”
I leaned over and snatched the belt from her robe. The thin garment went flying but I had what I needed. I used it to tie her hands together at the wrists while she babbled incoherently at me. I didn’t listen to her. Rage battered at my will to hold it back and I couldn’t afford to kill her. Not yet. I needed her.
I slid to the floor and hauled her up by the wrists. I ducked and threw her over my shoulder and with four long strides, I was out of the room. I didn’t stop my momentum, leaping fluidly over the balcony railing to the garden below.
Behind me I heard a loud whoosh of air as my shoulder was driven into her stomach on our initial landing. All the breath was driven from her lungs and any protestations she’d been spouting suddenly ceased. I didn’t care, it only helped me really. I grabbed the bag I had packed for her and strode forward, letting us out the back gate. I kept walking, making the final strides around the corner to my car.
I wrenched open the back door, threw her and the bag inside as she dry heaved, trying in vain to force her battered lungs to inflate. I gave no quarter, spared no pity and slammed the door shut. I paused for a moment, watching her through the tempered glass as she struggled to breathe before making long strides around the sedan to get into the driver’s seat. In less than a minute I was pulling out onto the road and heading for the nearest entrance to the I-80 West. From one coast to the other, we were heading for Seattle.
Chapter 2
Chloe
Oh my God
, he was crazy. He was fucking crazy! I tried valiantly to pull air into my lungs but my body just wasn’t having any of it. Tears leaked out of the corners of my eyes, hot and stinging, which pissed me off. I was not going to cry. No, fuck that. My father’s daughter didn’t cry. No, the tears were definitely not from emotion. They were purely from having the wind knocked out of me, a physical reaction. I worked hard to draw air but it so wasn’t happening.
Damn it!
Where were we going? Where was he taking me? How did he make that jump? How had he not broken anything?
So many questions, no way to get any answers. I was drowning on dry land, no ability to pull air, I was panicking; my body struggling, my mind not far behind and finally,
finally
, I sucked in a breath.
I coughed, violently and struggled, trying to get into a sitting position, to flag someone down to get help.
“I wouldn’t,” he drawled from the front seat in a threatening tone. I looked up into the rearview mirror. Deep brown eyes, intense, brooding, and
very
unfriendly were illuminated by the headlights from the oncoming traffic. I met their reflection with a grim resignation. I had nothing on him size wise. Nothing at all. I was stuck.
My breathing was returning but it hurt, I knew I would be bruised, but I could live with that. I could probably live if he raped me, even if the thought did make me ill… but if he actually physically took me away? Out of the city? No. If he took me away, I knew the odds. I knew the likelihood of what happened next. If he took me away I couldn’t live with that, I
wouldn’t
live, statistically speaking. If he took me, rape would be the least of my worries. If he took me away he was going to kill me and I wouldn’t, couldn’t go down without a fight.
As soon as I could draw full breath I struggled into a sitting position. I was about to let loose and start screaming when he
growled
at me. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before, an animal sound emanating from his very human throat. It caught me so off guard I forgot about the whole screaming and making a fuss that I was supposed to be doing. He knew it too! The bastard jerked the wheel and slammed on the brakes and I was thrown back down below the level of the windows. My head connected sharply with the tempered glass on my way down and I cried out, my hands tied and useless in front of me, though I desperately tried to stop myself from colliding with anything else.
He jerked the car’s shifter into park and got out, the crisp fall air swirling into the car’s warm interior in his wake. The back door opened and I kicked out. He cursed and grabbed my ankle and I screamed. I screamed and howled and I kicked out with my other foot and connected solidly with his chest. Predictably, it didn’t do a damned thing for me, except piss him off.
He grunted and dove into the back seat, over the top of me, his large hands curving around my tied wrists. He was between my thighs and I gasped which I choked off into a whimper. His black jeans may have been two sizes too big, his belt working overtime to keep them up, but there was no amount of fabric in the world that would disguise the hot, solid length of his erection which pressed solidly at the apex of my thighs.
“You keep struggling, I
will
rape you, just to make a point,” he threatened. I blinked and he grinned savagely, his teeth very white and almost sharp looking, nestled in his dark blonde goatee.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked and hated how breathy it was.
“None of your business, either behave, or I’ll put you in the trunk.”
I turned it over in my mind. That had possibilities, I could break out a tail light or pull the emergency… I gasped and suppressed a moan as he squeezed my wrists so hard, I swore the bones in them ground together.
“You’re hurting me!” I cried.
“That’s the idea, Little Huntress, you going to calm your shit?”
“Oh my god, fuck you!” I spat, “Why should I cooperate with you? Why should I help you
kidnap
me?”
He leaned back a bit, actually considering the question before meeting my eyes again. “Because I’m not the only one interested in finding you, and they aren’t nearly as nice as I am.”
I stilled, confused, but that didn’t stop me from considering the implications behind his statement.
“I don’t understand…” I said and he scowled.
“You don’t need to, you just need to do what you’re told,” he shook his chin length, dishwater blonde hair back, out of his face.
“It’s not in me to go down without a fight,” I told him. He smiled and it wasn’t a nice one.
“While as much as I would like to find out what it’s like for you to,” he cleared his throat, “Go down, we’ve got a long drive ahead of us. Now you can either lay here, real nice and quiet, or…” he gripped one of my fingers and bent it back painfully, “I can start breaking little pieces off. Your choice, Little Huntress.”
He wrenched on my finger until I cried out, “Okay! Okay! I’ll be good.” Oh my god it galled me to say it. I was no match for this asshole physically though. Even if I did manage to hurt him, it would have to be bad and there wasn’t anything I could do with just my body to incapacitate him. I needed a weapon and there, predictably, weren’t any back here.
“Good girl,” he praised me mockingly before he let my hands go. He ground his hips and by default, his cock, into me suggestively once, and raised an eyebrow to get his point across. I closed my eyes and turned my face and he chuckled darkly, a menacing sound, before he backed off of me and out the door.
I was so fucked. He retook his place behind the wheel and put the car back into gear. I sniffed.
“You are such an asshole,” I muttered and my captor barked a laugh.