Chapter 3 You're Sick

Chapter 3

Lana

You're Sick

Nothing in my nineteen years had equipped me for what was happening on the other side of that window.

Not the highway or the mill or the seventy restless dead.

The man in the chair had a face once. I could tell because he still had the general shape of one.

Wrists bound to the chair. Clothes ruined past the point of recognition. Head dropping and snapping back up with every hit, over and over, and the sounds—god, the sounds.

Fists against face. The wet, dense, horrible percussion of it rising up through the dark and the rain overhead and settling in the pit of my stomach where it vibrated.

Every survival instinct I possessed was screaming at me to leave

This wasn't random. This was rage.

I could see it in every movement the tall man made—the particular weight behind each hit, violent, specific, like every blow was a response to something.

Like the man in the chair had done something, and the tall man was making absolutely sure he understood the full consequence of it.

Personal. Surgical. Merciless.

What did you do?

Still whatever it is, this is still too much. He could die.

I can't let that happen.

Evidence, I told myself. I needed evidence. For the police when I report this.

And with that my phone was up, recording.

I know. I know. The journalist part of my brain had simply taken over from the part that wanted to live, and here we were.

Besides, my Dad always taught me never to turn a blind eye to injustice.

So, now I needed him to turn around. I needed to capture his evil face.

He stopped. Completely still.

The man in the chair's head lolled back, chin to ceiling, and my heart seized.

Oh my Jesus. Is he dead?

The tall man turned around.

And I forgot to breathe.

Good lord.

He wasn't ugly. He wasn’t even just handsome. He was beautiful in a lethal almost unreal way.

Long jet black hair, half tied back but wet and messy, framing a face that had absolutely no business existing, striking green eyes catching the thin flickering light of the room, a jaw that could cut glass, a mouth that was—the mouth was a problem, actually, the mouth was genuinely a problem—and a body under that soaked white T-shirt, the kind that made you forget entire sentences mid-thought.

The blood on his face should have made him hideous.

Reader, it did not make him hideous.

Is he a titan? Is he actually—

He crossed to the table at the edge of the deck.

Picked up a cleaver.

I had half a second—maybe less before he swung it down with terrifying speed.

The blade sliced clean through the man’s wrist. The severed hand fell to the concrete with a wet thud as blood sprayed everywhere.

The sound that came out of the man in the chair was not human, and the sound that came out of me was very loud and very human and announced my exact location to the entire building.

His head snapped toward me like a whip.

Green eyes found mine across the dark. He tilted his head and looked at my phone.

Oh shit!

He tossed the cleaver, picked up a shotgun from the table, aimed it at the window I was standing at, and bang!

He pulled the trigger.

The glass exploded. I hit the floor.

Shards rained down on me like deadly confetti, one slicing a line of fire across my forearm, and the gunshot left a high thin ringing where sound used to be.

I slowly looked back up through the blown-out frame and watched him plant one hand on the upper deck railing and vault over it.

He dropped the full fifteen feet to the ground floor, landing in a fluid, clean crouch that absorbed the impact like it was nothing.

Like falling from heights was something his body had reached an agreement with.

Jesus.

He straightened slowly. He looked directly at me and started toward me.

Not running. Walking. Long, unhurried strides, gun loose in one hand, green eyes fixed on me with the patience of someone who already knew how this ended.

That walk broke something open in me.

Something ancient and animal lit up every nerve ending I had at once.

I scrambled up and ran.

I had never run like that in my life. Not from the restaurant, not from Grayson, not from anything.

My bare feet hit debris and I didn't feel it. My lungs burned and I didn't care.

I stuffed my phone inside my bra so it wouldn’t fly out and kept running. Every muscle I had screaming, a sob clawing up my throat.

I needed to get out of this cursed mill and fast, the front doors’ almost within reach—

His hand closed in my hair.

My world yanked backward and I slammed into his chest and it was like hitting a building—solid and warm and completely, utterly unmoved by the impact.

The unmistakable cold muzzle of a gun pressed against my lower back right above my ass and every single thing in me went still.

I didn't move.

His mouth finds my ear.

“One wrong move and you'll spend the rest of your life watching the world from a chair.”

A pause, perfectly weighted. “Nod if you understand me.”

I nod immediately.

The gun pressed a fraction harder right into my spine.

I raised my hands slowly in front of me.

“Please, don't kill me.” I managed. My voice was embarrassingly small.

“I wasn't supposed to be here. I got lost—I was looking for shelter from the rain—”

He spun me around, and I got my first real close up look at him and felt my brain briefly stall.

Up close he was devastating in a stop-you-in-your-tracks way.

The blood spattered across his jaw and cheekbone made him look more—I don't know.

“Please. I won’t tell a soul what I saw. I saw nothing—”

“Phone.”

I lie desperately, voice trembling.

“I lost it while I was running. I don’t have it. You can search my purse if you want.”

He saw right through me. The gun swung to my face. I screamed.

“I have it! Wait, I have it—okay, just don’t pull the trigger, please!”

“Where is it?”

I hesitated, shame burning my cheeks. “It's… um, it's…”

He cocked the gun.

That sounds rearranged my priorities immediately.

“Okay, okay, okay—I'll tell you!” I sobbed. “It's in my bra.”

His brow rose slightly, his eyes dropped to my chest.

He slowly trailed the muzzle of the gun from my face down to my neck, lingering for a terrifying second there, then lower between the valley of my breasts.

I sucked in a sharp breath, fingers gripping the hem of my wet dress.

He's not really going to put his hands inside my bra, is he?

His hand slid inside my bra, a frightened sound tore from my lips.

The cold metal of his rings brushed my nipples, making them harden instantly against my will.

My face burned with humiliation as his fingers deliberately brushed and pinched over the sensitive peak.

I gasped in shock.

His gaze stayed locked on my terrified face the entire time as he searched.

He moved slow.

Like finding the phone was optional and this—whatever this was—was the actual agenda.

He's touching me. A complete stranger is touching me and I can’t do anything about it.

My face went scarlet. I stared hard at a blood splatter on his shirt.

His hand stilled. Found what it was looking for. Didn't take it.

Just rested there, while I stood very still and breathed very carefully and pretended I wasn't aware of every single millimeter of contact.

He finally pulled the phone out, tossed it to the floor and shot it without looking down.

My ears ring violently. My body seizes.

I stare at the pieces. At the smoking hole on the concrete floor.

And I understand—not intellectually but bodily—that this man could kill me.

That the only reason I am still breathing is because he has decided I am still breathing.

That decision is entirely his. It could change at any moment, on any provocation, for no reason at all.

The panic that moves through me is not the manageable kind.

I pressed my hands together, begging through tears.

“You got the phone. I swear I didn't see anything. You'll never see me again, just please don't kill me—”

He took me by the shoulder, turned me to face the wall, and kicked my legs apart.

The breath left my body.

Is he going to shoot me execution style?

I felt him step into the space between my spread legs, closing the distance until there was none, until I could feel the full, solid heat of him at my back—and I became very immediately aware of him.

All of him. Pressed against me without apology, like he'd noticed my noticing and had decided not to pretend otherwise.

My palms pressed flat against the charred brick wall.

“What are you—”

“Making sure you don’t have any other incriminating little devices on you,” he said, voice dropping low enough that I felt it more than heard it.

“I swear I have nothing else,”

His hands settled at my waist first, unhurried, like he was taking inventory, fingers spreading slow across my ribs.

And I want to be completely clear: this was not a search.

A search was efficient. A search moved with purpose and got it done.

This was something else entirely.

His hands moved upward—and I stopped breathing—cupping my breasts from behind with a thoroughness that had absolutely nothing clinical about it, his palms warm underneath them.

Heat crawled up my neck. I stared at the wall.

His hands moved down. Across my stomach, slowly, like he had all night and knew it. Down to my hips.

Then lower—and through the tears in my dress, his fingers found skin.

Found my thighs. Moved upward with a patience that made my jaw clench and my knees threaten to give, until his fingertips found the hem of my panties and stopped there.

Just—stayed there.

Playing. Unhurried. Deliberate.

Oh god.

My breath was shallow and too fast.

My body had opinions about this that I had not asked for and could not afford.

Heat pooled somewhere low and deep, a want so sudden and shameful it punched the air out of me.

I felt him pressed firmly against my ass. He was massive.

The realization made heat flood between my legs, a dull, shameful ache forming deep inside me.

My pussy throbbed traitorously. I had to fight the insane urge to push back against him, to grind against that—

A soft, mortifying moan almost slipped out.

He has a gun, I reminded myself desperately. He just chopped off—he literally just—

He leaned down to my neck, inhaling my scent like he's savoring it and I shivered, not from the biting cold but from something I didn't want to mention.

His breath found my ear.

“You'll ruin those batteries tonight, little virgin.” he murmured, low and lazy and faintly, devastatingly amused.

My eyes snapped open.

He pulled his hands away with a dark smirk, turned, and walked away without another word, disappearing deeper into the mill like a ghost.

Shame painted my face crimson.

I slid down the charred wall, tears of shame and confusion stinging my eyes.

My body was still—I wasn't going to finish that sentence.

Oh god, what have I done?

He just treated me like a cheap whore.

The worst part? Some sick, broken part of me liked it.

“You're sick,” I whispered.

I hate him.

I hate him with a totality and a heat that I feel in my back teeth.

But I hate myself more.