While She Sleeps

The carnal hunter who lives in my soul yearns for the chase. And I wonder if she’ll enjoy the hunt. Of course, she will. It’s woven into her DNA. Only she doesn’t realize it.

Will she accept me the way I am?

Or will this be one big mistake?

4

Vera

In my apartment, I open my laptop and find a response from him.

BP: Would you run when I come for you? I’m not a man who sits in a coffee shop to talk. I have violence in my blood and sin in my veins. And nothing you can do can change me.

Frowning, I think about what he means. He doesn’t realize what I grew up with. My family is far from perfect. I grew up around violence and destruction, and the sins of my father and his acquaintances have made sure that my past is littered with overheard threats, with gunshots ringing in my ears, and most of all, the fear of being forced into a marriage of convenience that I ran away from.

I know if they find me, they’ll push me down the aisle, make me say “I do,” and then I’ll be made to bear the children of the asshole my father has practically sold me to. But Dad is in prison, and he has no way of keeping me safe now. The man who was supposed to be my husband ran, he saw me and left, and my father brokered a new deal to have me married off to his father, the man I knew to be Dad’s best friend. Older, unforgiving, and just as volatile as a criminal that needed to be locked up.

That wasn’t happening, at least not under my watch. So, I ran away. At eighteen, I left the home I grew up in and found myself here, in Pine Lake. I managed to use my father’s old contacts to buy a new identity. The moment I had the documents, I pulled a trigger to make sure he couldn’t run his mouth off and cried for months. But I knew the moment I walked out, they would call the man I was meant to be bedding on my eighteenth birthday and inform him where I am.

One thing I learned from my father’s mistakes is that you should never leave a trail. My mind wanders to the man, to the prince, and I wonder if he knows who Herbert is. Does he work for him? Is that why he found out where I lived?

No.

If he did, I’d be dead already, or worse. I would be kidnapped and taken to the Oakridge house, where I know the man does terrible things to good people. He’s evil, and if he found me, I’d be tortured for running. Herbert Oakridge isn’t someone who just gives in, or forgives easily, and what I did will only earn me death by his hand.

SB: What if I didn’t want to change you? I’ve lived my life with violent men, and I’ve grown up around sinful acts. I’ve watched things that no girl my age should. Danger doesn’t scare me. It’s the emotion that comes with allowing someone in that forces fear into my gut. Into my soul. Then we don’t meet at a coffee shop. Perhaps we meet somewhere private. The park, at sunset. There’s a small blue bench that overlooks the town. I’ll be waiting.

I hit send. Then I move to the closet and pull open the door. The box that’s been gathering dust sits on the top shelf, half-hidden, but still visible for when I need it. I haven’t touched the items inside for over a year. When I was seventeen, I watched my father get taken to prison. When Dad told me that I had to be careful, I knew something was wrong. Even though he signed the contract for me to marry Herbert, there was something else he didn’t tell me. And now I can’t even contact him to get the truth out of him.

I stood aside and saw how they cuffed his hands behind his back. There was nothing I could do but look on as the tears streamed down my face. And in that moment, I knew if I stayed, Herbert would make me his bride. Even though I was a teenager and he was an almost fifty-five-year-old man.

I lift the lid of the box and find the custom-made gun sitting in the holster. It was carved from metal and marble with my initials in the grip. My father gave it to me on the day of my seventeenth birthday. I hid it away until I needed it the day I collected my new identification. And now, the second time I’m holding it since that day I shot a man, I feel uneasy. I strap the holster around my thigh before slipping on black shorts that fall just below the weapon.