Famished, Meghan O'Flynn [free ebooks romance novels .txt] 📗
- Author: Meghan O'Flynn
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“Yes.”
“But you…you helped me, helped to fix me—”
But then I knew: helping me had been a side effect, not the goal. What was the goal? He clearly hadn’t fixed those other women. Or Timmy. Or…Jake.
He killed for me. He loves me.
No, he doesn’t. He’s going to kill me.
It wasn’t a question. His face mutated into a mask of predatory excitement. Adrenaline zinged from me to him and back again, a ricochet like a wayward bullet.
My muscles coiled in anticipation.
He lunged, impossibly slow as if the world had stopped spinning. I leaped sideways, and pain shot through my skull as he dragged me by the hair, the room sliding past my socks on the marble as if I were walking on ice. I skidded, flailed, kicked, and pain blazed up my leg through my ankle under the distant sound of shattering glass.
The world wobbled. A dream, just a dream.
I clawed at his fist, and he tightened his grip on my hair. Bright orange pain pulsed through the top of my head into my vision, dimming the shadowy white plaster of the moonlit ceiling. Then the white ceiling disappeared. A light flickered on, illuminating deep wood, and I could smell leather and books and my own rank sweat. Rugs. Wood.
He stopped at the bookshelf and reached for something. A sound like a slithering snake hissed in my ear, then a thunk as he threw something on the table. I clung to his arms, tears blurring my vision as the room pulsed black and focused again.
On the table, a box full of silver tools glittered sharply on velvet. A scalpel.
Panic screened my senses and tunneled my vision, and there was only him, the box, and the scalpel he grasped. Then I was being dragged again, attached to his fist like a doll, flailing, clawing, kicking until my knee connected with something hard, and a clatter reverberated through the room. Chess pieces rained off the table from the toppled board.
He stopped and stared, then jerked me toward him, my feet skidding against the hardwood as he raised the scalpel and plunged it into my upper arm.
Pain—hot, white, exquisite—shot through me. My arm weakened, and my hand faltered against his.
He tore the scalpel free, and the scent of copper thickened the air.
The pain. Endorphins poured into my bloodstream, smooth and warm. My vision opened. Air filled my lungs.
I wondered how long it would take me to die.
He pulled me out of the library and into the living room, and the ceiling swam, painted in bloody moonlight. Glass jangled around our feet as he dragged me through the kitchen toward the mudroom door.
No, no, no, I cannot leave this house with him. My fingernails dug into his skin, slipping in my blood.
“Dominic, please! I won’t; I’ll never—”
His chuckle told me there was no point. He’d just make it hurt more. Like my father had.
My pulse thundered in my temples. I could see, feel, smell the cold, dark room where sheets of poetry would be scattered over pieces of my body. Here a foot, there my ear, here my entrails shoved into my dead, gaping mouth.
The pain. Focus.
I drove my palms against his hand, every drop of energy pooling in my wrists, pushing away from his grasp on my hair. An audible grinding screamed inside my head as the roots of my hair cleaved a chunk from my scalp. Wetness dripped over my ear. I crashed to the marble, free.
Run! I scrambled toward the living room, glass from the broken sculpture tearing into my feet, my lungs burning, threatening to implode. His shoes crunched closer, closer. I cut around the couch, slipped, and fell to my knees. My fingertips closed around a chunk of broken sculpture—sharp, jagged, deadly.
He bared his teeth and lunged, arms extended.
You’re stronger than you think.
I lurched upward with the piece of broken glass and thrust it into his belly. Blood bloomed across his abdomen in a vibrant red stain. A dream, just a dream. I plunged the glass into his flesh again, pushing until the hilt disappeared into the wall of his stomach.
He reached for me again, but I leapt backward, sliding on the glass and on blood that was probably mine, but maybe his too. I tumbled onto my left side, and my head struck the floor. The world turned in dizzy circles—some nightmarish alternate universe where I had just stabbed the man I loved. He raised his arm above him in a final gesture of hope.
But the blackness didn’t care about hope. It was trying to swallow me. Maybe I wanted it to.
Why couldn’t he just love me?
I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me.
Noelle pulled the blanket up to her neck, wondering if she should try to sleep some more or just give up and watch television. The nightmares had been decreasing, so she probably wouldn’t have another tonight. But that didn’t mean she felt like risking it.
The curtain whispered in the dark, rippling in the current of the heat vent. She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. The attack itself was not what was bothering her. No matter what Jim had planned, she was alive. And he wasn’t. The news story about him swinging in his jail cell had been oddly comforting.
All men were assholes.
Well, almost all men.
She exhaled, forcing her frustration into the air.
What am I missing?
She had slapped him when he tried to kiss her, then managed to get her knee in between them enough to pop the car door and roll out. Even in heels, she had torn through the woods until she found someone else, someone to help her. “Like a freaking kickboxer,” Hannah had said.
That was the problem. Hannah.
Jim had cried when the police slapped the cuffs on his wrists.
“I need her, Noelle. Please, I need your help! I thought if I could make her jealous… I just love her so much.”
As they’d ducked his head into the car, he had stared straight at her, straining against the officers.
“I can save her from him! She will save me, too. Please! I can save her!”
Then he was gone.
Noelle rolled over. Her friend didn’t need saving from anyone. Now that Jake was gone, Hannah could finally be happy like she deserved to be. With Dominic.
Maybe I should call her.
Noelle looked at the bedside clock. 12:10 a.m.
She sighed. Hannah was fine. Waking her up wouldn’t do anyone any good. Besides, what was she going to say? That killer dude wanted to save you from…uh…not sure who?
Thomas’s scent clung to her pillow. Her stomach flipped.
Thomas had been Jim’s best friend. What if—
She shook her head. Jim was a serious whack job who’d fooled everyone, even his boss. And Thomas was the nicest guy she had ever met. The fact that he was charming and friendly and super smart didn’t hurt either. Besides, he idolized Superman. How twisted could he be?
She fought the urge to get her phone.
None of this shit mattered anyway. That asshole was dead.
Noelle pushed aside the tingling that ran along the back of her neck and wrapped her arm around the pillow. She’d call Hannah first thing in the morning.
I felt like I was on a bed of hot coals, skin sizzling under me. The wet throb of my heart pulsed sharp, bright pain through my skull, into my arm, and down over my ankle.
Asleep. I was just sleeping. Just dreaming. It’d be over soon.
I opened my eyes. Glittering pieces of broken sculpture peppered the living room. I’d have to clean that up later. And someone had spilled something on the marble, dark and shiny in the moonlight. That would stain if I didn’t take care of it.
And…his legs. Unmoving. Still. Understanding crashed through me. I pushed myself to my knees, my injured arm twitching and throbbing—letting myself hope, for one exquisite moment, that he was not dead.
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