Page 14 of Bound By Blood

“Please, don’t touch me.”

He smiled at that but hadn’t moved his hand from her hair. “You are stunning.”

She batted away his hand. “That’s a little forward, Jim.”

He wiggled his eyebrows at her. “A girl like you should like me being forward, especially after flirting with you for the last hour.”

Carly shied away from him, her hand going to her thigh where her knife rested. For the last hour, she had forgotten that all homeless were predators. She could tell by the glint in his eye that he was becoming a predator.

“I think you should leave.”

His grin turned into something feral as he leaned closer, his face inches from her. “I think you want me to stay, don’t you sweetheart?”

“No,” she said sternly, even though she had begun to tremble a little. “Leave. Now.”

“Or what?” He closed the distance between them, his lips landing on hers. She shoved at his chest with her free hand, using her forearm to get leverage.

A sickening feeling coiled in her stomach, and fear begin to take over. She shoved and shoved at his chest, but he was stronger than her. He got up to his knees and grabbed her hand, pushing her backward into the dirt.

“Get off me!” she screamed into his lips.

“Don’t fight me, and this will be over quickly,” he growled back.

“No!” she screamed when her back hit the dirt and the blanket fell off her shoulders. Before she knew it, he stilled. His eyes had gone wide, and Carly only stared at him. It was then she realized her hand was near his armpit, the same hand that held the knife. Her fingers gripped the hilt tightly, the blade stuck inside him. Even as blood began the trickle down it and made the hilt slick, she hadn’t moved.

“You bitch,” he muttered, but his body became weak, and his weight settled on her until his body completely stilled.

Carly breathed heavily underneath him. She glanced around, but nobody was there. Nobody had seen him attack her, and nobody had seen her kill him. The man was dead. He was dead, and Carly felt . . . nothing. Shouldn’t she have felt relief? Shouldn’t she have been afraid that she murdered someone? She felt none of those things as she shoved him off her.

The dream faded away when the inky blackness encroached on the scene.

Carly woke with a start, bolting upright. It took her a moment to realize she was in her own room. She wasn’t there under the bridge, having freshly killed a man. Her heart pounded in her ears, and her stomach churned. She didn’t feel nauseous because she killed a man. She felt nauseous because he had attacked her with the intention of raping her.

If Carly hadn’t had her knife, she would have not been able to defend herself. She didn’t care that she had killed the man. He was her first, but he wasn’t the last. She didn’t care any longer that she hadn’t felt anything but nothing about it either. She had a darkness inside her, something that she was sure made her sick, twisted, and demented, but like her weight, she had made peace with it a long time ago.

Carly looked at her window. It was still dark outside. She could see the moon and the stars that surrounded them. She reached over and tapped the screen of her phone that lay next to the picture of Landon Creed and his father on her nightstand. It was three in the morning.

She groaned as she ran a hand through her tangled hair. She sighed as she looked around the room, her heart now calm but her mind wide awake. There was no way she was going back to sleep like this. She was still dressed in the clothes she had worn last night, and all her notes and books still lay across her bed, some rumpled from when her legs had disturbed them.

Her stomach growled, but she ignored it because a movement in the corner caught her eye. The shadow there seemed thicker than on the other side of the room. She squinted at it, coming to a certain realization. He was here. He was here, and he was watching her. She just knew it.

She should be afraid, especially after her dream, but she wasn’t. Instead, she felt exhilarated, knowing he had come back, but she was also peeved because he had been watching her sleep like a stalker.

Discreetly, she slid her hand underneath her pillow. Her fingers coiled around the hilt of her knife, the knife that had killed a few people. Quickly, she pulled back her arm and threw the knife at the shadow. She wasn’t trying to hurt him, but she wanted him to know that she knew he was there. She also wanted to see what he would do when he became what she hunted.

A hand snapped out of the shadow and caught the blade with ease. She hitched a breath at how fast the hand moved. His fingers were curled around the blade’s sharp edge, and he squeezed. Blood rolled down his hand and wrist in small rivulets. She didn’t know why, but the fact that he caught it turned her on, and the fact that she was right made her feel that she was victorious.

Landon stepped out of the shadow, his eyes full of amusement. He stepped closer to the bed and tossed the bloody knife on the notes next to her thigh. She snatched it up and looked at the cut on his hand, which was still outstretched. Neither the slice nor the blood made her squeamish.

She looked back up into his eyes and found the monster that lurked underneath them. He watched her, and for a moment, neither one of them saying anything to the other.

“Breaking and entering is illegal, you know,” Carly began. “So is stalking.” Though she said one thing, her body felt another. She liked him in her room, his big frame taking up more space than Carly thought possible. Here, he towered above her furniture. She felt drawn to him, and she had no reason to explain it.

“I’m not one to follow the rules,” Landon said after a moment.

“Clearly,” she grumbled. “You tried to kill me.”

His eyebrow raised. “And you tried to kill me, so we’re even.”