Page 26 of Beautiful Scars

Shit. No. I’m going to sneeze.

Thump—creak.

“Do you really think I’m that stupid? Or are you just trying to entice me into a game of hide and seek?” Thud go his feet on the concrete. “Where’s she hiding? Is she... behind the curtain?”

He’s using the tone a shit annoying uncle would use with a toddler.

“Is she...under the bed?”

Yes! That’s where I am, you sick, perverted fuck. Right there with all the dust bunnies and ghosts of sex slaves past. And if you go look for me, you’ll walk right past and I can bash you upside the fucking head.

A billow of cigarette smoke announces his arrival a second before his silhouette crosses my line of sight.

I leap out of the shadows with a primal shriek, and slash out with the whip.

He catches it without bothering to look in my direction, and twists it out of my hands with a flick of his wrist like some sex-crazed Indiana Jones on steroids. He has me pressed to the closet with a hand around my throat before that black cat-and-nine-tails hits the concrete floor.

He plucks the cigarette from his lips and blows a plume of smoke into my face before crushing it under his heel.

“I had no idea you were into role play,” he purrs at me in his thick Scottish accent.

There’s no missing the sadistic gleam in his jade eyes as he scans my body with a quick, condescending glance.

“I could say the same about you,” I spit back at him.

“Watch it, little girl.” He smirks, and puts his mouth by my ear. “You want to act like a child? Then I’ll treat you like one.”