His hand comes up, cupping my chin. My step-father did something similar not thirty seconds ago, but this is so much different. The intruder’s fingers are long, calloused, and crooked. He has the hands of someone who does hundreds of pull-ups every day, hanging from a bar, forging his muscles in steel from countless repetitions of physical exertion that have clearly kept this older man in the prime of male physical condition.
Even behind the black makeup smeared on his face, I can tell he must be closer to my dad’s age. There’s something about his face that looks familiar, but neither I nor anyone in the house has seemed to place it…
His skeleton suit, the white bones painted over it, feel like less of an anatomy class and more like a study of the perfect male specimen’s body, what’s possible if you devote an entire life to becoming the perfect Greek God, reincarnated as the devil himself.
Why aren’t I more scared? Yes, my arm is trembling and there’s a tick in my cheek that I can’t quite seem to stop, but these involuntary reactions aren’t from the fear of the known, but rather the unknown.
Why is this man more attractive than scary?
Why do I despise violence, yet I’m having a physical and mental reaction to him that’s anything but negative?
And most importantly, I might be naive but I know what that look in his eye, the way he touches me, tells me what he really wants right now. That one thing I’ve been saving, and it most certainly wasn’t for a moment like this. This, I could have never imagined, yet my body is telling me this isn’t a dream, and something in my subconscious tells me not to be afraid to proceed. As if I have any say in the matter.
I swallow hard. “The master safe is in the bedroom. There’s money, stock certificated, jewelry, gold b—” Without turning his wrist or moving his hand he puts his thumb on my lips, the tip like a big button sewing my mouth shut, silencing me mid-stutter, in the midst of my nervous rambling.
“I didn’t come here for any of that.” He pauses. “I came here...for you.”
Gulp. It feels like the floor below my feet swallows me up as I slide into the vortex of a deep abyss.
“No. Not her. She’s…innocent,” Jenson protests.
One corner of the man’s mouth turns up into a smirk as he admires me, studies me like the finest gemstone the world has ever seen. “Exactly why I’m here.” Another pause before his hand swiftly leaves my face and he grabs me and throws me over his shoulder. “Now…you’re coming with me.”
Before I can kick, scream, holler, or throw punches, I feel my body turning like a thrown baton, as he tosses me over his shoulder and carries me to the couch in the other room.
“No,” I hear Jenson’s cry echo throughout the spacious interior of his estate. “I’ll give you anything you want, just not her. She’s mine.”
He dumps me onto the couch like a used sack of potatoes, my back finding the oversized cushions as I just lie there, too scared to move as I look up at him as he wrings one hand out in the other and then reverses the process, looking at me equally like a Thanksgiving feast he’s ready to devour and the sweet Halloween treat he wants to savor.
“That true?” he grits out, his nostrils flaring as I hear him grind his molars. “That loser got some sort of...claim on you?”
All I can do is shake my head.
His smirk returns as the anger on his face disappears. “Didn’t think so. No way a back-stabbing loser like that has any sort of claim on the most beautiful girl in the world, which is exactly what you are.”
He leans in, putting one hand on the top of the couch, and drags a single finger across my cheekbone, along my jaw, and then down my neck, gripping me there lightly, letting me know exactly who’s in control.
The thought of struggling, fighting, anything other than giving this beast what he wants would be absolute suicide. But the bigger question is why I don’t want to do any of those things. Why I…feel this strange feeling, this warmth, this trust, this complete and overwhelming satisfaction in turning myself over to him.
My face heats once again and I wonder why I’m not struggling, not putting up a fight, even though that’s the last thing I should be doing right now...making this mountain of a man angry.
“You ever been with a man before?” he asks, his grip tightening slightly as he pushes the question forward like it hurts to ask, like he’s afraid of getting an answer he doesn’t want to hear.
I go to shake my head no, but his grip has moved up and under my chin, holding my skull in place and I can’t. But apparently, the flex of my muscles is enough for him to understand what I want to do. And I most definitely understand what he wants to do…. Me.
“Because you’ve been saving yourself for me. Isn’t that right?”
“I…I’m not sure.”
“Oh yes you are,” he replies immediately with complete conviction, using his hand to make my head nod before he releases me. Leaning in even closer, his mouth just a tiny fraction of an inch from my ear. “You know it. I know it. And in a second your mom and that prick are gonna know it.”
He knows too much about me. How? This isn’t some fly-by-night half-cocked robbery. This guy did his homework. He’s good. Too good. And it only reinforces that I’ve got no chance of doing anything other than what he says, because clearly he’s thought this all the way through, just like his plan to rip through my innocence and take whatever he damn well pleases.
“But don’t you worry, little girl. I’ve got a Halloween treat for you you’ll never forget. And it starts right now.”
3
Jack