Page 146 of Ly to Me

My thighs ached by the time we laid in bed, my pussy drenched and heart racing.

How the fuck was I supposed to sleep?

“You’ll need your rest,” Carver purred into my ear as he pulled my back to his front, getting rather cozy. Maybe the chase wouldn’t be tonight. “Sleep, Lyra.”

I tried biting my tongue for all of two seconds. Two whole seconds. And then, I snapped. “You’re insane if you think I can drift off.”

“Nervous the boogeyman might come for you?” He chuckled when more time passed and I hadn’t answered. “I can fix that.”

“Car—”

“No, really. One sec.”

He rolled toward his nightstand, the drawer opening and snapping shut. When he rolled back, his arm wrapped around me. I looked down at his hand where a silver Zippo lighter was paired with a rolled joint.

“Here. Calm your nerves a bit.”

“You rolled that?” I asked as I took it between my lips, shifting in his hold to lay on my back. Carver did the same as I lifted the lighter and sparked the end.

“You judgin’?”

I inhaled the flowery smoke, notes of citrus filling my taste buds. “Only slightly.” I pinched my fingers together, leaving a small space to show how much I was judging him.

He laughed as I passed the joint back to him. “You were always much better than me at that.” As he took a hit, I watched his chest expand, then followed the plume of smoke he released above us.

When he passed it back to me, I admitted, “I missed this.”

His head turned until his cheek rested on our shared pillow. My body turned into his as I shifted to do the same. As I brought the joint to my lips, he brushed his thumb over my hollowed cheek.

“I missed this too, sweetheart.”

Right as I was about to release the smoke, his fingers found the nape of my neck, and without telling me what he needed, I shifted to meet his lips. He breathed in what I let out, slipping his tongue in while smoke funneled out through his nose. The tension I’d held in my body quickly dissipated as he held me, letting the kiss slow and then break naturally before taking the still-lit joint from my hand.

The room turned hazy as I settled along his arm, my eyes growing heavy. His soft kiss along the crown of my head was the final push as I drifted off to sleep.

And then woke with a start, my hands shooting up to cover my ears as a deep thudding bass boomed along the walls.

“Car?” I rolled to my other side, feeling around the bed in the pitch-black room. No Carver. With the curtains closed, I was disoriented—unsure if it was morning or night. And with thatsongblaring, I couldn’t tell if Dick was right outside the window or not.

“Car!” I shouted loudly over the words, ‘I wanna fuck you like an animal,’ though the deafening screeches were now so loud, I couldn’t hear myself. “Car!?” I screamed as I leapt from the bed, stark naked, searching around the nightstand for the knife he’d given me. My unsteady hands found it sheathed and held onto it like a lifeline.

This was it.

I was either about to be murdered by some psycho who’d taken Carver first, or this was himchasing me. The song made me sure it was the second option.

Not sure my eyes could adjust, I steadied my breathing as I held my hand that wasn’t clutching the knife for dear life out, feeling around our bedroom until I found the window I’d hopped through before. Only this time, I did so with excitement as I undid the latches and flipped it open. The song had begunreplaying again as if on a loop when I landed on the porch—also unlit.

Only the moon, the eerie display of his truck doors left wide-open, and music blasting from the speakers like he’d been ripped from his car by some beast in a horror movie guided me from the porch. I stayed far from the truck, and the barn, and bolted toward the narrow strip leading to the facility.

I knew his cameras were picking up on my movements.

I planned on it.

The aching in my core longed for the chase, the thrill of knowing he was watching me, waiting somewhere to catch me and fuck me so hard that I’d forget everything except for the man whose cock was thrusting into me.

I wanted to let go. To feelfree. To let my husband pull my mind from the terrors of my past and bring me to the present.

Under the light of the moon, the feeling of gravel turning to sand beneath my feet and the jagged outlines of trees in the night, I felt almost at peace. Until a clanking of something that sounded an awful lot like chains pulled me back to the thrill of being hunted.