My heart skips a beat. My core clenches, and the color drains from my face.
What the actual fuck.
My brain almost can’t process it. Because the second he says that name, I know who is on the other side of the door.
It’s him.
My stranger. The one I blew off tonight. The one I didn’t use the safe word with. The man I’ve planned an anonymous rape fantasy with, who somehow just fucking found me.
Alone. In a club bathroom.
My pulse skyrockets. Something raw, exciting, and terrifying explodes through my system as my mouth falls open.
This is real.
This is happening.
Now.
I yank the wig out of my bag. I throw my hair up into a bun and quickly shove the blonde wig on over it, tucking any stray strands under the edge. It’s not perfect. And it’s probably a stupid idea anyway. But I’m still hanging on to the whole idea of this being at least semi-anonymous.
Not to mention dangerous and insane. What are you thinking?
“Tick-tock, babygirl,” he growls, his voice like gravel and whiskey. Like black smoke and the stain of India ink on paper.
I’m pushing one last strand of dark hair under the wig when the stall door suddenly kicks in. My scream lodges in my throat as I look up with wide, terrified eyes at the leering neon mask towering over me.
Holy fuck.
He’s fucking huge. I’m five-foot-four without the heels I have on now. And the man still looms over me, easily over a foot taller than me. He’s in black jeans and a black leather jacket, left open to reveal a white t-shirt pulled tight across a massive, muscled chest.
A venomous, deviant energy throbs off his very skin as he slowly inclines his head, creepy neon mask and all, to the side.
“You tried to evade me,” he growls again, that rough, deep voice sliding over my skin like tentacles tightening around me.
“No…I…”
“That. Was. Foolish.”
In a nanosecond, he charges into me. I scream as he grabs me and roughly spins me around, pinning me hard against the metal wall of the bathroom stall. My pulse explodes into orbit, my eyes wide with terror and my ears ringing. He yanks my arms behind my back, and I choke on another scream as a zip tie yanks tight around my wrists.
“Should have used your safe word, babygirl,” he hisses darkly into my ear, the spicy clean scent of him mixing with my paralyzing fear. “Too late now.”
A bag is yanked over my head, plunging me into darkness.
7
BIANCA
It’s impossible to tell time when you’re lying across the back seat of a car with your hands bound and a bag over your head. So it could be either five minutes or an hour before the car comes to a stop, the engine abruptly switching off.
The door by my feet opens and I gasp as huge hands grab me and yank me out of the car. Gravity goes sideways as the man throws me over his huge shoulder. I can feel the rippling muscles rolling against my stomach, and the pulse-quickening tease of air up the back of my skirt.
Wherever we are, it’s quiet. Quieter than a city should sound.
He walks, stops, unlocks a heavy lock, and then swings a door open on rusty, creaking hinges. The door clangs shut behind us, the sound echoing as if we’re in a big cave or something.
He sets me down on my feet, and I stiffen when I feel the sharp, cold metal against my wrists. But all he does is cut the zip tie.
Then, there’s nothing.
The seconds tick by. My breathing is loud in my ears inside the stuffy heat of the bag over my head. Then—
“Take off the bag.”
He sounds further away, even though I swear I never heard him take a single step after he cut off the zip tie. My skin tingles as I reach up, grab the velvet of the bag, and slowly pull it off my head.
Woah.
My mouth falls open, my mind a jumble I drag my eyes up and around.
I’m standing in the middle of a huge, old, crumbling gothic church. A myriad of half-melted candles in metal candelabras sitting in groups on the floor cast flickering light and create haunted shadows on the walls. Old pews—some still upright, others knocked over—are in a vague approximation of the rows they were once in. Rickety scaffolding rises almost to the ceiling on one side of the space, and dim city lights pierce cracked stained-glass windows.
“Blonde doesn’t suit you.”
My eyes suddenly snap to the front of the church, and my pulse jumps.
He’s sitting on a huge throne at the front of the nave, where the pulpit would usually be, a few wide steps up from the main floor. But instead of being gilded and ornate, suitable for a king or the Pope, the seat is as decrepit and crumbling as the rest of the church.
