Page 62

Rhue

The sound of her voice. The feel of her skin. The incredibly sweet pulp of her pussy. The mist covering her eyes as I took her. I’m hard again. A little sore. My muscles ache. My lips are dry. My heart is singing, full of all kinds of beautiful, wonderful things.

It feels like only seconds ago. Yet my body seems to have gone through the Paris-Dakkar rally somehow. I’m spread too thin, like the last sandwich made from the last jar of peanut butter. The bed sheets feel soft and warm, but my side is cold.

I take my time. Trying to fight through the fuzz that has taken over my mind. I barely had a sip of wine last night, yet it feels like I’ve been swimming in an entire barrel. Rubbing the heels of my hands over my lids, I peel my eyes open.

The sun breaches through a half-open curtain.

Bright gold through red brocade. The air smells sweet, of Madison and her perfume.

It’s a little bit salty, too, hints of the mind-bending sex we had all night lingering behind.

A smile curls up the corners of my lips and for the first time in a very long while, I can honestly say that I am happy. Stupidly happy, even.

I listen to the silence for a good, long minute, waiting for Madison’s footsteps to pad through the room.

Or maybe for the faucet in the bathroom to run.

A flush of the toilet, perhaps. But even after a few more minutes, nothing comes.

There’s no water running. No shuffling. Not even a click or a slight cough.

“Maddie?” I call out, closing my eyes.

The golden light stretches across the room, ever so slowly, and finds my face. I sprawl over the bed like a lizard in the sun.

“Maddie?” I try again, hoping she might hear me from the kitchen.

Except something tells me she’s not in there either.

There are no pots clanging. No ring from the microwave oven.

No whistling from the kettle. Not even the gurgling of the coffee maker or the thick hiss of water running in the sink.

It’s quiet. It’s too quiet, and my contentment dissolves.

I don’t like what remains.

Getting up, I decide to look for her myself. But my head feels like a barrel full of chowder. My skull rings like a fucking toll bell.

“What the fuck?” I mumble, licking my lips. They’re dry and chapped, like they’ve been starved of hydration for the better part of a decade.

“What the—actual—fuck,” I say once more as I realize that the sun isn’t rising. It’s setting.

It’s the afternoon shimmer that warms me up. It doesn’t make sense. Maddie and I haven’t left the bed since last night. We were exhausted, our bodies and spirits humming in the afterglow of what I can only describe as shattering sexual transcendence. It should be morning.

I check my phone on the nightstand, first. A few missed calls. Nothing out of the ordinary with that. Of course I didn’t hear a thing, I left it on silent. There are some messages, too, but nothing important at first glance. Not a sign from Maddie, either, so maybe she’s still here.

“Maddie?” I call out a third time and listen closely.

Something is off. It’s too quiet.

I take another step, wobbly on my feet. This is weird. Suspicious. Alarming, even. I’m not supposed to feel like this, after only a sip of wine.

I rub the back of my neck in a bid to relieve some of the tension and immediately cringe. There’s a tender spot there. Tender and just a bit painful. There’s a tiny lump just under the skin, too. I rub at the spot again, prompting the same reaction as the first time.

A swarm of ideas pump through my mind, filling me with the kind of paranoia that I don’t need right now. I try to reason with myself. Try to calm myself down. I need to find Maddie, get some coffee in my system and wake the hell up.

“Maddie,” I call out again, rushing through the house.

I check the bathroom first. Empty. In fact, there is no sign that Maddie was here.

Not in the bathroom and not in my apartment in general.

Her dress is gone from the living room. Her shoes gone from the hallway.

And I know, it’s one hundred percent possible that she just woke the fuck up and strolled through the door, but--she would have left me a note. Or called. Texted. Something!

I reach for my phone. Logical thinking, logical acting. I scroll through my call records and tap her number. I wait for it to ring. Okay, her phone’s on. It rings once. Twice. In parallel, I hear a buzzing sound somewhere in the house.

It doesn’t take me long to find Maddie’s phone under my bed.

I’m so confused right now.

So fucking confused.

If she left her phone here, where is she? After how terrified she was when I found her last night, I doubt she trekked back to her apartment.

I check the front door. It’s locked. The deadbolt is still in place.

Dread takes over as there is no other place for me to check.

“What the fuck is going on here?” I ask myself, increasingly frustrated in the absence of an answer. Madison’s phone buzzes. I’m not the one calling, this time.

It’s a text message.

I swipe a finger across the skin, surprised to find there’s no security code.

A shiver travels from the back of my neck and all the way down my spine as I open the message.

Maybe I shouldn’t. It’s Madison’s phone.

Privacy and whatnot. It’s not right. But the message contains a photo attachment of someone familiar.

The text is simple. Hey there.

“What the…”

Someone took a photo of Madison and texted it to her number. She’s wearing last night’s dress, and she’s bound to a chair. Gagged and, by the looks of it, unconscious, too.

“Fuck. FUCK!” I snarl, milliseconds away from smashing the phone against the wall, only to make the image disappear. Except I can’t. I need it, that much is obvious.

Someone got in here, somehow. They left the door locked, yet they got in. By the way that I’m feeling; the ache in my neck, the fuzziness in my brain, the fact that I slept through the entire fucking day, I don’t think it’d be a stretch to assume that they did something to me.

Urgency washes over me like ice water, pumping my blood hard and arctic through my veins. The implications of this unexpected situation transform last night’s dream into an ugly, vicious nightmare.