Briony
I don’t want to know the meaning behind his cryptic message. The man is terrifying. I thought I was scared in the presence of Jacob’s attempted…whatever that was. But he still had some fear in him when I pulled that knife from my tights and stuck it under his neck. Aero? Well, whoever he is, he has none. No soul either, it seems.
This is a game to him, one he’s getting pure entertainment out of by the look of the repulsive bulge in his jeans when I escaped.
Somehow, I knew he’d be there in that office. It’s as if I can feel him now. I can sense when his eyes are on me, burning his holes through that door, setting fire to my skin. What I can’t figure out is what his purpose is. He clearly gave me that knife, knowing this would happen today, knowing I’d be ambushed in that supply closet.
Chills sweep over me, the thought wracking me with terror. How? How could he know? And more importantly, why?
Walking into that classroom, I quietly close the door behind me. A male student reads a passage aloud to the class as Saint follows along in his catechism. He looks up from the page and spots me from across the room.
Watch his face change.
Blank.
Saint’s face is entirely blank as he peers over at me with my books. With a quick blink, his grin forms, pulling at his full lips.
I don’t understand. Aero insinuated I’d see something on his face. Some evidence of the fact that maybe he also knew Jacob was waiting for me. That this was some sort of setup in the making. But I get nothing from him at all. Nothing but a nod with his bright, sexy grin, silently calling me over to him.
I get this strange feeling that I can trust Aero. I don’t know what that is. Call it intuition perhaps, but so far, everything he’s said and done has seemed like a game to force me not to trust the only people I know.
Class finishes achingly slow as I’m left wondering about what’s happening on the other side of the building behind those closed doors. After the session is over and the students file out, I pack up my bag as quickly as I can, needing to leave this building before my anxiety over what happened cripples me entirely.
I want no part in whatever Aero did to Jacob. But I know if by some random chance he’s still alive, I’ll be tied to his assault. His family is far too proud and far too rich to allow the injuring of their baby boy to go unpunished, even if his intentions were to harm me. It’s sickening, really.
Saint drives me home, stalling outside near the curb of my house as he puts the vehicle in park. He turns to me casually with his elbow on the console.
“So I know this may seem odd…” He pauses, and I await what’s next to fall out of his mouth. “But I wanted to know if you’d come with me to the Governor’s Ball tomorrow night.” He clears his throat, looking down between us before his eyes slowly trail up to mine. “As my date.”
My heart thuds in my chest. I feel something inside of me wanting this; wanting to be his date and to allow him to show me who he really is. But there’s another part of me that knows what I’m feeling right now is the extent of what I’m going to feel for him.
My mind flashes to Aero. It’s strange to think of your psychotic stalker when you’re getting asked out by a guy who’s truly more your speed.
Saint and I come from similar backgrounds. Our families are very religious and heavily involved in the church, and the need to progress our names has never been more prevalent. We’re both hard workers, evident by the constant competition between us in our past, and have real goals that don’t involve camping out and watching girls in their rooms late at night who they haven’t completely decided if they want to kill or not.
Feeling angered by the mind games, I answer quickly, “I’d love to.”
A genuine smile crosses his face, and as I turn to open the car door, he grabs for my left hand. Turning back to face him, he pulls my hand up to his lips. With his soft eyes on mine, he brings his warm, gentle lips to the top of my hand, placing a kiss on my skin.
I get that flutter between my thighs again and my mouth parts, sucking in a breath, as he rests his lips against my hand, almost savoring the sensation for himself. His eyes trail down from mine, settling at my lips.
Just as I’m getting the feeling he’s contemplating kissing me, a loud crash has me screaming out loud.
Pulling my arm back to my chest, I curl into myself as an explosion of sharp objects rain down on me. Saint throws an arm over me for protection as his windshield shatters into thousands of pieces.
Trembling, I find the courage to open my eyes. A single brick lies on the hood of his Jeep, his windshield now a distant memory. His eyes are wide and panicked as he pants through his parted lips.
“Are you alright?” he asks quickly, scanning my face and brushing the hair back behind my ears.
He dusts some shards off the shoulder of my uniform, sending them to the bottom of the Jeep floor, adding them to the collection pooled below.
“I-I’m fine,” I stutter, my hands now shaking.
As we both turn to look out the broken glass, I spot a shadow behind him.
There he stands, on the driver’s side of the vehicle, in his black, dirtied jeans, and his mud-stained sweatshirt, the ski mask still over his tipped head. He shakes his head once at me before disappearing behind the Jeep.
Saint looks forward, eyes locking on the brick that broke the windshield. He reaches for it, his forearm littered with tiny cuts as he grips it in his palm. Pulling it toward his face, his eyes narrow as he appears to read something on it. Looking over at me through furrowed brows, he swallows.
“What?” I ask in a panic. “What does it say?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing.” He clutches it to his side, opening the door of the Jeep and stepping out into the street. “Stupid kids,” he mutters under his breath.
Walking around to the passenger side, he opens the door, the brick now gone, and holds his hand out to me.
“Come on, I’ll walk you to the door,” he says tenderly, his jaw flexing as his narrowed eyes scan the street protectively.
I take his hand, standing as the mess of glass falls from my lap onto the grass of my yard. Saint helps me brush off the rest of the glass before his damp palm squeezes tightly onto mine while he walks me up the stairs of our porch. He lingers there for a moment, running a hand over his shaved, blonde hair, keeping his eyes on the street.
Opening the lock, I take a step through and turn to face him.
“Do you want me to come in? Take a look around?” he asks.
I think about that for a second, contemplating it, before I feel the eyes burning into the back of my head. The hairs on the back of my neck stand.
He’s inside.
For some strange reason, I’m more scared of what will happen if Saint comes in here than the fact that a potentially murderous, stalking psycho is standing somewhere behind me, watching us intently.
“I’ll be alright,” I say with a dismissing nod, my fingers shaking as I hold the edge of the door.
Saint stills as if unsure about leaving me alone or not.
“Should I stop by later?” he asks, his eyes carrying the weight of his worry.
“Just…text me tonight.” I sigh. “Get your Jeep taken care of.”
He pauses, and I can see a thought cross his mind. The message on that brick, whatever it was, clearly haunts him enough to be worried about my safety.
“Alright,” he whispers, his shoulders slumping. “I’m so sorry this happened, Briony.”
He takes a step back down the stair of the porch, holding the railing as he stays facing me. Almost as if he finds a way to justify leaving me, he nods and finally turns, jogging back to his Jeep. I bite down on my bottom lip as I watch him pull away, the crunching of glass beneath the wheels a blood-tingling reminder of the man waiting behind me.
I close the door, letting out a shaky sigh as I feel him slide up behind me. With my eyes closed, I rest my forehead against the door, my blood turning cold in his presence.
“Such a good girl keeping that pretty little mouth shut,” he whispers in that cracked, rumbling tone against my neck, and I breathe in his memorable scent. The scent that floods my senses in a dizzying way.
With my palms flat against the door, he nuzzles the back of my head like a dangerous lion, assessing his captured prey. He moves my hair to the side, and before I can even think, I feel the sensation of a warm, flat tongue licking up the back of my neck. I shudder at the warmth I’ve never felt before as he says, “But you’d be a much better girl if you opened it up for me.”
My temperature rises at his indecent words.
His dirtied fingers slide their way up my left hand on the door, where there’s a decent-sized cut on my forefinger from his little brick-dropping game. The move is very reminiscent of the moment at the party when he pinned me to the door of that darkened bedroom.
“Dirtied my doll,” he says, clearly assessing the wound.
Peeling my palm from the wood, he brings my shaking hand back towards his mouth behind me. I feel the sensation of a warm, wet tongue lick a long stroke over the place where Saint’s lips were on the back of my hand.
He’s licking away the touch of everyone else on me. Cleaning me of their dirt in his own sick and twisted way. It explains the licking of the back of my neck where I described Jacob’s hands on me in that supply closet.
“Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed,” he quotes the bible behind me, making my breaths choppy and uncontrolled. “Save me and I will be saved,” he whispers softly. “For you are the one I praise.” Just as the cryptic words leave his lips, I feel the warmth of his mouth close around the bleeding finger.
With that warm tongue pressed against my wound, my head buzzes, the sensation running a direct line to the aching spot between my legs. I tighten my thighs, a breath slipping past my lips as he slowly sucks the length of it, caressing the wound with his tongue, coming off the end with a soft pop. My knees buckle into the door, but not before he catches me beneath my arms.
The crude act, meant to be entirely sexual, slithers its way into my veins. Heat replaces the cold blood, and that fever within me grows like wildfire in a field of dormant and dead brush.
My biggest fears and curiosities are combusting together like tiny bombs in the pit of my stomach.
Right and wrong dance together to the music of my own pitiful and weakened excuses, as I find myself locked in a slow dance with the devil himself.
