Un-Hate Me (Enemies to Lovers Romance) (DOM for Hire Book 3), Hazel Parker [ebook smartphone .TXT] 📗

warmth of the air now feeling like a sweat-inducing, sticky, gross feeling. It was funny how, just by shifting the context of the walk, things felt much different than they had on the walk over.

The nighttime wasn’t a quiet chance to walk and collect my thoughts. It was a void in which dark things entered; robberies, kidnappings, rapes, all sorts of ugliness I didn’t want to think about.

Burke’s absence wasn’t a chance to prove myself as a future single mother. It was a tragedy that my kids would only know him from a distance, like a faraway uncle or aunt that got seen only when life allowed it.

I was a stubborn idiot who had pushed away potentially a great opportunity.

I’d definitely brought this on myself, but I’d done so not realizing the weight of it all. I had no choice but to accept the consequences, but boy, there were times when I wished the consequences weren’t so damn heavy.

I swung my head around.

There was nothing but some pedestrians, an elderly man and a woman a little younger than me, walking about thirty feet behind me.

But there was something that felt very off about the moment. I felt like I was being followed. And not in the “surprise!” good way that Burke following me would imply.

I moved my hands out of my pockets and closer to my chest, ready to strike if need be. There was no one still.

The thing about being followed, though, was that as soon as you felt like you were being followed, that feeling did not go away until you were safe in your apartment—and even then, there was a window where you couldn’t help but worry that someone might have jumped into the room to try and do something to you.

Hopefully, it was all just in my head. Burke was maybe the one following me, if anyone, and when I woke up tomorrow, I’d realize the swarm of activity in my mind was just fucking me over.

Hopefully.

I kept looking back, never seeing anyone aside from the old man and the woman. At one point, the younger girl looked at me in confusion and with something starting to approach a scowl, but by that point, I could see my apartment. I didn’t have many friends there, but at least I saw familiar faces and people who knew me, if someone tried something, they’d see it and call 9-1-1.

It was all for nothing, however, as I got to the lobby doors untouched. I let my shoulders sag, the muscles holding them up on the verge of tensing and twitching. I headed to the elevator doors, got on with two guys in their early thirties, and nodded.

The two looked like they wanted to say something to me, but neither said a word as they got off five floors below me. Alone, the elevator took me up to my floor, and I walked with my head down to my place. I unlocked it, opened it, and stepped inside.

I kicked my shoes off and headed for the kitchen. I went to flick a switch on in the closet when…

The closet light was already on.

Rough hands grabbed me from behind. One went over my mouth. The other grabbed my waist and squeezed tight.

“Now, now, you be a good girl and stay quiet for me,” a rough, thick voice said.

I couldn’t even see who my intruder was. It sure as fuck wasn’t Burke. What the fuck?

I screamed, but I couldn’t get anything past this man’s hand. It didn’t just cover my mouth, it made breathing difficult.

“The quieter you are, the quicker this will go,” he said, leading me to my room.

No, no, no, no, this couldn’t fucking happen. I opened my mouth just slightly, got as much of my teeth apart as I could, and bit down, at the same time trying to deliver a punch to his groin.

“Stupid bitch!” he yelled, briefly giving me space.

I tried to duck under him, but he grabbed me quickly and slammed me into the wall. Dazed, I felt myself being lifted and carried to the bed. I tried to move, but there were so many stars…so much confusion…my world kept spinning…

By the time I collected myself, I was tied to the bed. My feet were painfully bound to the respective posts of the bed, my hands were tied over my head, and my mouth was covered with duct tape. Before me stood a man with long blonde hair, a tattoo of what looked like an enormous python coiling up his arm, and the most wicked glare I’d ever seen.

“What are you doing?” I said.

In reality, it probably just sounded like muffled noises. I tried to shake my feet and my hands free, but whatever this man had done, he was too good. If anything, I was going to lose circulation.

“My name is Snake,” he said. “And your boyfriend has been an absolute fucking nightmare on my back for far too long.”

Boyfriend?

Burke?

What the hell—

Oh no. He warned me. He fucking warned me…

“Your kidnapping me?” I said.

Snake tossed his head back and laughed. It was the most horrible, cruel, malevolent laugh I had ever heard.

“Kidnap?” he said. “No, honey, we’ve tried that a couple of times already. As fun as that game is, playtime is over with the DOM boys. No, I’m going to enjoy you, and then I’m going to kill you very slowly and very horribly so that they know what will happen to the rest of them.”

Panic hit my chest. I had to fight back. I had to!

I screamed as loudly as I could. I feared it didn’t even make a sound. Snake hardly seemed concerned at all, laughing as he took off his shirt to reveal more ugly, terrible tattoos. He was a fucking sicko—he didn’t