Page 83 of Dance of Thorns

Doom thunders through me as cold, anxious dread pools in my stomach.

I lied to him before, when he asked me how many men I’d been with. I knew what he was insinuating based on my addiction.

It pissed me off, which is why I said dozens, just to stick it to him.

But it wasn’t dozens. It wasn’t asingledozen.

Or a half dozen.

Or three, or two.

I’ve slept with a grand total ofoneperson: Scott, my high school boyfriend from seven years ago. And I don’t even remember any of it.

Since then, there haven’t been any other men.

I know that hyper-sexuality, promiscuity, and casual, even transactional sex go hand in hand with both the sort of nightmare I experienced and hardcore drug use.

But ironically, the trauma that pushed me into heroin addiction in the first place is the reason I could never bring myself to engage in that kind of behavior.

Being chained to a cot and listening to your best friend being raped and murdered in the room next door has a way of eradicating your sex drive.

So, yeah, there haven’t been dozens.

I’ve slept with exactly one person, seven years ago in a previous lifetime, and I literally have no memory of it. For all intents and purposes, I’m sneaking around the misty dark of this rooftop, waiting for the villainous shadow hunting me to find me and fuck me, as avirgin.

And that maybe is what gives me the harshest reality check. Some part of me is clinging to this romantic notion of how your first timeshouldbe.

…And this sure as fuck isn’t it.

Part of me screams that I can’t lose my virginity likethis, in a fucked-up game involving a man hunting me in the dark. Catching me. Pinning me down and tearing it from me.

But that’s exactly what’s about to happen.

“Zero.”

The number thunders out like doom. But doom isn’t supposed to make your insides liquefy. Doom shouldn’t send heat flickeringthrough your core, forcing your thighs to clench together and making your nipples tighten.

“Ready or not,here I come,” he rasps from the misty darkness.

From everywhere and nowhere all at once.

For a second, I consider keeping right where I am, just curling into a ball and hiding in the shadows. But this is literally his home.

He knows this hunting ground inside and out. I’m the tourist here.

I hear the rustle of a large body brushing past tree branches from somewhere to the left. My pulse jackhammers, my skin tingling with a terrifyingly erotic rush as I scamper to the side and duck behind another looming statue. I glance back around the corner, peeking back toward the stag statue. A shadow ripples across it, and I suck in my breath, darting back.

“Mmmm, you’re hiding so well,” Bane growls through the dark mist. “But the thing is, I cansmellyour fear and anxiety.” He chuckles darkly. “I can also smell how fucking wet that greedy little cunt is. It’s giving you away, baby.”

I scurry down a path, then dart into the shadows of the low, overhanging branches of a tree.

“Your pulse is as loud as a drum. Every breath gives you away, baby girl.”

I shake as I huddle under the branches, hugging myself. He wasn’t fucking kidding when he said he'd hunt me like prey. That’s exactly how I feel right now: like a small forest animal being stalked by an apex predator.

A twig cracks nearby. It’s so quiet up here on the roof, under the glass, high above the noise of the city. Maybe hecanhear my heartbeat. My breathing. My very thoughts.

I peer through the branches and spot the stag statue again. Wait. The statue was back theotherway. And that’s not the way stag’s head was fac?—