

Once Gone (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #1)
Blake Pierce · Completed · 72.0k Words
Introduction
Chapter 1
Prologue
A new spasm of pain jolted Reba’s head upright. She yanked against the ropes that bound her body, tied around her stomach to a vertical length of pipe that had been bolted to the floor and ceiling in the middle of the small room. Her wrists were tied in front, and her ankles were bound.
She realized she’d been dozing, and she was immediately awash in fear. She knew by now that the man was going to kill her. Little by little, wound by wound. It wasn’t her death he was after, and it wasn’t sex either. He only wanted her pain.
I’ve
got to stay awake,
she thought.
I’ve got to get out of here. If I fall asleep again, I will die.
Despite the heat in the room, her naked body felt chilled with sweat. She looked down, writhing, and saw her feet were bare against the hardwood floor. The floor around them was caked with patches of dry blood, sure signs that she wasn’t the first person to have been tied here. Her panic deepened.
He had gone somewhere. The room’s single door was shut tight, but he would come back. He always did. And then he’d do whatever he could think of to make her scream. The windows were boarded, and she had no idea if it was day or night, the only light from the glare of a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Wherever this place was, it seemed that no one else could hear her screams.
She wondered if this room had once been a little girl’s bedroom; it was, grotesquely, pink, with curly-cues and fairytale motifs everywhere. Someone—she guessed her captor—had long since trashed the place, breaking and overturning stools and chairs and end tables. The floor was scattered with the dismembered limbs and torsos of children’s dolls. Little wigs—doll’s wigs, Reba guessed—were nailed like scalps on the walls, most of them elaborately braided, all of them in unnatural, toy-like colors. A battered pink vanity table stood upright next to a wall, its heart-shaped mirror shattered into little pieces. The only other piece of furniture intact was a narrow, single bed with a torn, pink canopy. Her captor sometimes rested there.
The man watched her with dark beady eyes, through his black ski mask. At first she had taken heart in the fact that he always wore that mask. If he didn’t want her to see his face, didn’t that mean that he didn’t plan to kill her, that he might let her go?
But she soon caught on that the mask served a different purpose. She could tell that the face behind it had a receded chin and a sloped forehead, and she was sure the man’s features were weak and homely. Although he was strong, he was shorter than she, and probably insecure about it. He wore the mask, she guessed, to seem more terrifying.
She’d given up trying to talk him out of hurting her. At first she had thought she could. She knew, after all, that she was pretty.
Or at least I used to be,
she thought sadly.
Sweat and tears mixed on her bruised face, and she could feel the blood matted into her long blond hair. Her eyes stung: he had made her put in contact lenses, and they made it harder to see.
God knows what I look like now.
She let her head drop.
Die now
, she begged herself.
It ought to be easy enough to do. She was certain that others had died here before.
But she couldn’t. Just thinking about it made her heart pound harder, her breath heave, straining the rope around her belly. Slowly, as she knew she was facing an imminent death, a new feeling began to arise within her. It wasn’t panic or fear this time. It wasn’t despair. It was something else.
What do I feel?
Then she realized. It was
rage
. Not against her captor. She’d long since exhausted her rage toward him.
It’s me,
she thought.
I am doing what he wants. When I scream and cry and sob and plead, I’m doing what he wants.
Whenever she sipped that cold bland broth he’d feed her through a straw, she was doing what he wanted. Whenever she blubbered pathetically that she was a mother with two children who needed her, she was delighting him to no end.
Her mind cleared with new resolve as she finally stopped writhing. Maybe she needed to try a different tack. She had been struggling so hard against the ropes all these days. Maybe that was the wrong approach. They were like those little bamboo toys—the Chinese finger traps, where you’d put your fingers in each end of the tube, and the harder you pulled, the more stuck your fingers became. Maybe the trick was to relax, deliberately and completely. Maybe that was the way out.
Muscle by muscle, she let her body go slack, feeling every sore, every bruise where her flesh touched the ropes. And slowly, she became aware of where the rope’s tension lay.
At last, she found what she needed. There was just a little looseness around her right ankle. But it wouldn’t do to tug, at least not yet. No, she had to keep her muscles limber. She wiggled her ankle gently, gently, then more aggressively as the rope loosened.
Finally, to her joy and surprise, her heel popped loose, and she withdrew the whole right foot.
She immediately scanned the floor. Only a foot away, amid the scattered doll parts, lay his hunting knife. He always laughed as he left it there, tantalizingly nearby. The blade, encrusted with blood, twinkled tauntingly in the light.
She swung her free foot toward the knife. It swung high and missed.
She let her body slacken again. She slid downward along the post just a few inches and strained with her foot until the knife was within reach. She clutched the filthy blade between her toes, scraped it across the floor, and lifted it carefully with her foot until its handle rested in the palm of her hand. She clutched the handle tight with numb fingers and twisted it around, slowly sawing at the rope that held her wrists. Time seemed to stop, as she held her breath, hoping, praying she didn’t drop it. That he didn’t come in.
Finally she heard a snap, and to her shock, her hands were loose. Immediately, heart pounding, she cut the rope around her waist.
Free
. She could hardly believe it.
For a moment all she could do was crouch there, hands and feet tingling with the return of full circulation. She poked at the lenses over her eyes, resisting the urge to claw them out. She carefully slid them to one side, pinched them, and pulled them out. Her eyes hurt terribly, and it was a relief to have them gone. As she looked at the two plastic disks lying in the palm of her hand, their color sickened her. The lenses were bright blue, unnatural. She threw them aside.
Heart slamming, Reba pulled herself up and quickly limped to the door. She took hold of the knob but didn’t turn it.
What if he’s out there?
She had no choice.
Reba turned the knob and tugged at the door, which opened noiselessly. She looked down a long empty hallway, lit only by an arched opening on the right. She crept along, naked, barefoot, and silent, and saw that the arch opened into a dimly lit room. She stopped and stared. It was a simple dining room, with a table and chairs, all completely ordinary, as if a family might soon come home to dinner. Old lace curtains hung over the windows.
A new horror rose up in her throat. The very ordinariness of the place was disturbing in a way that a dungeon wouldn’t have been. Through the curtains she could see that it was dark outside. Her spirits lifted at the thought that darkness would make it easier to slip away.
She turned back to the hallway. It ended in a door—a door that simply had to lead outdoors. She limped and squeezed the cold brass latch. The door swung heavily toward her to reveal the night outside.
She saw a small porch, a yard beyond it. The nighttime sky was moonless and starlit. There was no other light anywhere—no sign of nearby houses. She stepped slowly out onto the porch and down into the yard, which was dry and bare of grass. Cool fresh air flooded her aching lungs.
Mixed with her panic, she felt elated. The joy of freedom.
Reba took her first step, preparing to run—when suddenly she felt the hard grip of a hand on her wrist.
Then came the familiar, ugly laugh.
The last thing she felt was a hard object—maybe metal—impacting her head, and then she was spinning into the very depths of blackness.
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"Let me go," I whimper, my body trembling with need. "I don't want you touching me."
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"Are you sure you don't want me to touch you?" He whispers, untying the knot and slipping a hand inside. "Because I swear to God, that is all I have been wanting to do. Every single day from the moment you stepped in our bar and I smelled your perfect flavor from across the room."
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When Draven meets Domonic, he knows that she is his mate, but Draven has no idea what a mate is, only that she has fallen in love with a shifter. An Alpha that will break her heart to make her leave. Promising herself, she will never forgive him, she disappears.
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The Lycan Prince’s Puppy
“Soon enough, you’ll be begging for me. And when you do—I’ll use you as I see fit, and then I’ll reject you.”
—
When Violet Hastings begins her freshman year at Starlight Shifters Academy, she only wants two things—honor her mother’s legacy by becoming a skilled healer for her pack and get through the academy without anyone calling her a freak for her strange eye condition.
Things take a dramatic turn when she discovers that Kylan, the arrogant heir to the Lycan throne who has made her life miserable from the moment they met, is her mate.
Kylan, known for his cold personality and cruel ways, is far from thrilled. He refuses to accept Violet as his mate, yet he doesn’t want to reject her either. Instead, he sees her as his puppy, and is determined to make her life even more of a living hell.
As if dealing with Kylan’s torment isn’t enough, Violet begins to uncover secrets about her past that change everything she thought she knew. Where does she truly come from? What is the secret behind her eyes? And has her whole life been a lie?
Shadows In Durango
But Durango brings its own set of challenges. The first being Vincent Walker: the school's intoxicating bad boy who taunts her relentlessly yet sends mixed signals with his unexpected moments of protection and flirtation. Rumours swirl about his family's deep ties to the criminal underworld, only adding to the mystery that surrounds him and the town.
As Sofia navigates through her new life, she also meets Vincent’s best friend, Daryl— a total sweetheart who offers a stark contrast to Vincent's dangerous allure. Drawn into their world, Sofia's secrets begin to unravel. When Vincent and Daryl discover the truth about her living situation, they demand that she moves in with them, promising her safety and a place to belong.
Torn between the enigmatic Vincent and the endearing Daryl, Sofia finds herself falling for both. But her newfound stability is shattered when her past catches up to her, bringing her toxic ex-boyfriend Ashton back into her life. With his relentless apologies and attempts to win her back, Sofia is thrust into a tumultuous love triangle, all while fearing the return of her father and brother who are determined to take her back home.
Caught between three loves and the ghosts of her past, Sofia must navigate a treacherous path to find where her heart truly belongs. Will she choose the dangerous allure of Vincent, the sweet safety of Daryl, or the familiar yet toxic pull of Ashton? And can she ever truly escape her horrifying past?
HIS REJECTED SECOND CHANCE MATE
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"Sorry," I mumbled, wide-eyed.
"Is that?" Levi mind-linked, and I nodded my head.
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I slowly nodded my head.
"Great," my father said. "Alpha Noah has also informed me that you are his fated mate."
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"Superb, Alpha Noah has requested your hand."
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Both my father and Alpha Noah nodded.
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Did Alpha Noah really believe I would just blindly obey an order from my father without a fight?
Zara is a silver wolf descended from one of the most powerful packs on the continent.
A year after he rejects her, her fated mate comes knocking on her door to tell her he is back to claim her.
Zara turns down his proposal, and he goes behind her back and asks her father for her hand. The old Alpha agrees to the arrangement.
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Will he stop the proceedings and claim her as his mate?
A story about two broken hearts finding each other and getting sucked into a web of lies and prophecies.
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Secrets of Us: A Forbidden Love Romance
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I Am His Wolfless Luna
Ethan also kept emitting deep roars in my ear, 'Damn... I'm going to cum... !!!' His impact became more intense and our bodies kept making slapping sounds.
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Don’t Poke the Luna
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