Page 11 of Grave Love

A last chance at survival surges into my mind:if I don’t move, maybe he’ll think I’m a corpse.In theory, I—that stupid crematory operator—could have forgotten to store the body. Blaze will come to that conclusion, skip over this room, and leave. And besides, he’s new, right? It’s unlikely that he knows that we keep the bodies—even the cremation orders—in the refrigeration unit. He’s a groundskeeper. Agravedigger.He stays outside. He doesn’t do anything indoors.

So why is he here?

The footsteps still, the boots stopping on the tile outside of the doorway, the whistling tune fading to silence. I hold my breath, mentally crossing my fingers that he loses interest.

This is nothing,I think.I am nothing. Don’t look at me.

Seconds pass. Minutes. A damned eternity.

A groan of approval escapes his lips.

He comes closer, his steps delicate, like he doesn’t want to scare off a frightened animal. His weight shifts across the floor, each movement wringing my chest, weighing it down like a sack full of sand.

“What do we have here?” Blaze asks, his voice a low rumble rippling over my skin. His hand presses into my ankle. His skin is warm. So damn warm that a chill slithers up my legs to my core. The pressure of his touch balloons inside of me. Unwieldy, like intoxication.

“Still warm,” he says. “I can work with that.”

What?

A zipper rips through the air, my chest seizing all over again. The unmistakable slapping of skin against skin fills the room.Friction.

He’s rubbing his erection. Masturbating to my lifeless body.

My legs part slightly, saliva building on my tongue. Ishouldbe scared. Panicking. I try to tell myself that Iamscared. That I’m only frozen because I don’t know what to do. I bite my lip, my pussy pulsing, and hemoans.

My thighs tense reflexively. But corpses don’t jump. They don’tneed.They’re just bodies.

I’mjust a body.

He touches my ankle again, and my pussy constricts at the contact, the hairs on the back of my neck standing with sensitivity.

It’s everything I want.

“Who left you here naked, Ms. Smith?” he taunts.

He knows.He knows I’m not dead. That a body isn’t supposed to be here.

He’s playing with me.

Does he know it’s me?

My skin prickles as he strokes my ankle bone, his fingertips riding up my calves. He gets closer to the valley between my thighs, his heat somehow frigid. Goosebumps crest over my skin.

“Our crematory operator knows better than to leave you here like this,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. “I apologize for this disrespect. Really, I do.”

My face heats. With one fist still running up and down his dick, he reaches under my dress, into my bra, then captures my breast with his free hand, hard and unforgiving, pain shooting to my temples. I squeeze my eyes shut, so grateful for the bag over my head. My eyes blur, need swelling inside of me.

I’m a toy that he’s using. A sex doll. A body without a brain. An inanimate object.

Why does it feel so good?

“A body is a body,” he murmurs. “And you’ve got such a nice pair of tits for a dead girl.”

Tension coils in my gut like a wave rolling across the beach, meeting back at the center between my legs. I try so hard to stay still. To be numb.

I can’t help it. I feel everything. The touch of his fingers. Soft, thenrough.Like it doesn’t matter how I react, only that he gets what he wants.

He takes. Exploring. Pinching. Skimming my body, open land that he owns.