Isaac was coming to save me…
“Oh, is he?” the monster says with mock surprise. Then he chides me like I’m a child. “Chloe, my love, we really need to talk about the kind of people you surround yourself with. You’re not making the best choices.”
When I don’t respond to that, too speechless, his voice thickens with sincerity. “I’m worried about you.”
Words elude me once more. How do I respond to that? Especially because I know he’s being completely sincere again.
He truly cares.
My throat starts to tighten up and my eyes burn.
Then I feel the throbbing in my thigh growing stronger.
He’s coming for me.
“Is Isaac okay?” I finally manage to ask before I forget how to breathe.
For the second time today I’m fearing the worst.
There’s a long, pregnant pause then he says, “He’s fine.”
I let out the air I was holding in a gush.
My shadow stalker says menacingly, “For the time being.”
That sounds way too ominous for my liking.
Sitting up straighter, I ask, “What do you mean?”
“What do I mean?” He chuckles softly. “I mean it all depends on you.”
Alarm bells ring in my head.
“Asher,” I say slowly, carefully. Like one does when they’re dealing with a dangerous animal. “Is that your name? Asher?”
There’s another long pause, and when his voice fills my ear again it’s full of so much emotion my mark pounds a heavy beat, pulsing up and down my leg. “Yes.”
Heat courses through my body and I have to squeeze my knees together. Fighting against the sudden flood of lust that wants to rob me of my senses.
“Please don’t hurt him,” I plead, my words almost slipping into a moan. “Please, Asher.”
Asher lets out a harsh breath.
Then he says almost as if he regrets it, “I can’t promise that.”
Panting now, my fingers squeeze hard around my phone. “What can you promise?”
Voice dropping low, so low I feel it thrumming in my stomach, he says, “Come to the door, Chloe.”
I want to go. Oh, how I want to go. I can feel a tug, a pulling, as if there’s a string inside me, urging me to get up, to move.
But I can’t.
Not.
Yet.
Gritting my teeth against the compulsion, I grind out, “No.”
“Chloe,” Asher growls, his anger licking at my skin again. “Come to the door right now.”
The pain of resisting, of refusing him, when he’s this close, just within my reach, brings tears to my eyes.
“No,” I groan in misery. Hoping. Praying. Secretly begging he gives me what I want. “Not until you promise me you won’t kill him.”
“Fine,” Asher snarls. “If you come to the door, if you come to me, I won’t kill him.”
The relief I feel is so powerful it’s almost like having an orgasm.
But he didn’t promise.
He has to promise.
“Promise?” I ask, shakily getting to my feet.
I sway, waiting for him to answer, the world spinning around me and becoming hazy.
“I promise,” Asher says impatiently.
I’m walking before I realize I’m even moving. My feet stepping over every little thing in my path with ease.
My hand opens my bedroom door without being told to, and every step I take down the hall and through the living room carries me closer to what I’ve been running from my entire life.
Floating as if I’m in a dream, a dream that is about to become a nightmare reality, everything passes by me in a blur.
I can feel him. His aura, his presence, reeling me in closer and closer.
Calling to me.
Singing to me.
When I finally reach the front door, I pause. The barrier bringing me up short.
“Don’t do it, Chloe!” I hear Isaac bellow on the outside before he grunts in pain. “You swore!”
I hesitate. What did I swear?
Oh yeah…
“Open the door, Chloe,” Asher commands. “Now.”
Unable to refuse him, to resist, my fingers find the handle and twist it open.
The night air hits me in the face at once. Sweet. Too sweet…
And though I want to look ahead, I force my eyes down.
Needing one more moment to myself.
To have free will.
Isaac makes a choking, gurgling noise as if he’s in pain and reality comes rushing back in.
My eyes finally see what’s in front of me. There are two sets of shoes. One pair is black, polished, and clean. The other pair is scuffed up with dirt and blood.
Focusing on the scuffed boots, I slowly drag my eyes up until they land on Isaac’s face.
He’s changed. Gone is the young, serious boy I knew in my youth. In that boy’s place is a man. A man with a strong square jaw and blue eyes that are screaming at me in terror and rage.
I’m sure he’d have a lot more to say if there wasn’t a hand locked tight around his throat, strangling the life from him.
Words almost fail me. The force of Asher’s pull attempting to strip them away.
But, somehow, I manage to croak out, “I’m not breaking what I swore to you. I’m not inviting him in.”