Page 10

Possession: The state of being controlled by a force too powerful to resist submission.

I ’d die before I’d submit to anyone again .

I didn’t think I had ever ran so fast in my entire life, but as I took off out of that library into the corridor and continued into the parking lot and out into the fucking forest, it was like I was possessed by a fucking track star.

Possessed…

I certainly felt possessed. That infuriating man made me feel unhinged, like I couldn’t control my thoughts and emotions.

That irritated me more. I was sure, based on his looks, that women were always falling all over themselves for him, but I wasn’t that kind of damn woman. He just caught me off guard. That was all it was, and that was one time. It would never fucking happen again. Ever.

“Stupid fucking asshole,” I spat, stopping by a tree finally to kick the bark and steady my racing heart.

What made him think he could manhandle me in a fucking library?

I knew I shouldn’t have come to college, but my sister was getting suspicious of how my hair dryer magically ended up in my room every time I got a fever.

The bruises were still pretty fresh, and even being pushed against the shelf made the marks smart. The pain had been completely forgotten at that moment…but now it ached, and I welcomed the pain to punish me for my stupidity.

“Way to fucking go, dumbass,” I said to myself and the tree.

The breeze was blowing my hair around, and the smell of him wafted up my nose. Even his scent fucking branded me. When I first ran into him, he smelled like cheap perfume. I was probably the twentieth dumbfuck he had up against those damn shelves.

Hell, the librarian was probably there now, filling my place.

I growled. The thought made me angry, and the fact that it made me angry made me even more furious.

What was wrong with me?

“I need to read the fucking books on that floor, I guess.”

Speaking of, the whole reason I was in the library was to sleuth into Professor Masters. He looked, smelled, and felt like danger. I knew there was something about him that didn’t add up.

I dug into the pocket of my plaid skirt, digging out the crumpled piece of paper.

I tried smoothing it out on the tree, but it made it dirty.

Ugh.

The paper was a news article from about a year ago. It read in bold letters:

“Exoneration or a cover-up? Today, Pharaoh Masters was exonerated for all crimes committed. His stay at the previous Hospital Twelve for six years after a guilty verdict of murdering his wife in cold blood magically disappeared, along with the very walls that housed him and many other insane individuals. Rumors are floating that Pharaoh Masters’s sudden exoneration and the mystery behind the killings at Hospital Twelve may be linked.

With the government officials’ consistent denial of any claims of knowledge about the truth of the massacre at Hospital Twelve, the world may never know what those walls will forever hide now. ”

I read over the lines, my eyes widening as I absorbed the information.

‘Six years, wife, and massacre.’

I blinked, taking the paper and turning it over to try to read more, but the back was filled with annoying ads for lawn services. I sighed, bringing up my camera and clicking a picture of the crumpled paper.

“Whatcha’ reading?”

I screamed, nearly jumping out of my skin, the paper floating to the ground with my outburst. A strange redhead stood beside my tree, her eyes wide and unblinking. I swallowed, realizing I was pretty far away from the college.

“Uh, a scary book,” I answered and stuck my shoe over the parchment to block her wandering, eerie gaze.

“Hmm. Scary is objective! What you find scary may make me laugh.” She giggled, and the sound was like that of a warped doll in a horror film.

I forced a smile, joining in her weirdness if only to get the fuck away from these woods and their unnatural inhabitant.

“You wanna know something fun?” She giggled again, twirling her dress and dancing on her toes. “We’re not far from the new asylum they built. The last one magically disappeared with bulldozers, but this one is so close sometimes you can hear the cries of the Reaper’s victims.”

I looked around the wooded area, not seeing so much as animals nearby. This lady creeped out even wildlife.

She pointed into the distance, and I could see a prominent fixture. It was dark, a building without any light coming from it. It looked from here as if it were floating in the dark rain clouds above.

The girl kept laughing, her creepy melodic voice singing some horrible song.

“Tick-tock. Another drops.”

The words made me shiver, spreading goose bumps on my exposed arms.

“Riiiight. Well, I should be going. I need to get back to school. I have my professor waiting on me.”

I spread out my arms in a lazy gesture and started walking backward. The woman tilted her head and scowled at me.

“Don’t you wanna be friends?” she said, a pouted lip jutting out.

Fuck no, I didn’t want to see this lady again, but I didn’t put it past her wondering gaze to bash my head into the tree…

“Of course…girl,” I blurted a bit too enthusiastically. “I just need to get myself back to class now. Before I get in trouble, ya know’?”

She didn’t seem convinced. I held up my camera to her and snapped a photo, her wicked red hair practically glowing in the picture. She blinked rapidly and stepped back, waving her hands in her face.

Oh fuck…I just pissed off this nut job.

She had said that the asylum was close by. Maybe she was an inhabitant of it. I wouldn’t put it past her, especially with her never-ending smiling and giggling.

She belonged in a horror movie.

“Yeah, sorry. Beep boop, and something droops?” I tried to recall her creepy song, and her curiosity got the better of her.

Before I knew she was up in my face, mere inches from my eyes.

She tapped on my forehead with her bony fingers and said, “No, no, no, look at me now. Watch me.”

I stared at her weird expression. Her eyes were so bright in color that I felt a weird pull to them. She was singing that song, and it felt like it was scratching chords in my brain. I tried to look away. The feeling was uncomfortable and foreign.

“Tick-tock,” she said soothingly, holding onto my head with her cold hands like a plug of electricity.

“Tick-tock,” I repeated mechanically.

“Another drop—”

The weird pull to her broke, a tether snapping string with one barked command in the distance.

“Fallon!”

I blinked, shaking my head and rubbing my eyes. When I opened them, the girl was gone.

“What the fuck?” I said.

I had a pounding headache, and when I looked up at the sky, the rain clouds had gotten super dark, the light from before was waning, and I could see the moon peeking over the sun’s last rays.

“Fallon?” The masculine booming voice was closer now.

I looked down at my foot, and the paper I had was gone, too.

Did I imagine my encounter? Did I imagine getting information on my professor? What the fuck was going on?

The thunder grumbled, and rain started dropping down and smacking into the fallen leaves, making little popping noises as the raindrops got stronger and heavier.

I sighed and leaned against the tree. My hair was soaked.

I shoved my Quick Shot camera into my shirt to protect it from the onslaught of freezing raindrops.

“Thanks for that,” I spat to whatever god was listening.

I saw his fancy shoes gleaming in the moonlight before I saw his face. His white button-up was soaked from the rain, making his tattooed body visible underneath. Holy fuck, this man would win a wet T-shirt contest any day.

No, stupid vagina. You’re mad at him.

Professor Masters stood next to the tree trunk I was leaning on, scowling down at me from his massive height.

“Are you punishing me?” he said with disapproval in his tone.

I scoffed. “Don’t assume my actions are about you.”

He folded his arms, making his muscles even more visible in his drenched button-down.

“You’re an idiot,” he said, getting down to my eye level.

I forced a fake smile as strongly as I could muster and wiped my hands over my face to get off the cold rain that had fallen all over my skin.

Glancing at my hand, I grumbled at the black smeared all over it…

my makeup had to be fucked to hell from the rain.

I probably looked like a dying raccoon’s ass.

“Thanks. Am I lucky, or do you insult all your library lays?”

His jaw clenched, and I clearly struck a nerve, making me smile.

This asshole didn’t get to gloat about that. I was hot from the room in which they kept the rows of those stale, old books. That was all. It felt better in that stuffy-ass library with fewer clothes on. So, I would have been that way, regardless.

However, his words bounced around in my brain involuntarily. ‘Wanna scream, Little Voyeur? I’ll make you scream.’

God, I could still taste his precome in my mouth.

“Let’s go,” he barked, yanking the strap from my camera up and me along with it.

I growled at his demands and yanked my neck away from him.

“What makes you think I have to listen to you?” I mocked, about to plop my ass back down and wait for the crazy lady to bring me back my article.

He looked at me, a dangerous glint in his crystalline green eyes.

“If you don’t get your ass off the ground and walk like a good girl,” he warned, getting close enough to my face that I could taste the rainwater dripping off his lips. “Then I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you back.”

I started to snort but then realized Professor Masters wasn’t the kind of man to make false promises. Still, I knew my book bag made me at least fifty pounds heavier, and the extra protection of his body from the rain would maybe save my camera from too long of a rice bath.

“You wouldn’t dare.” I challenged the need to bolt from the threat, raising the hairs on my neck.

“Try me, Little Voyeur. Try me.” He smiled a dangerously sadistic smirk. “I’d love to get a front-row view of what I did to you.”

I blushed beat red, instinctively crossing my legs so he couldn’t see the wet mark stained on my panties. The mission to save my camera was not happening now. I’d sit my ass here till morning, and he’d have to fucking deal.

“Goodbye, Professor,” I said dismissively, sinking down on the leaves and the wet mossy ground.

His face was mostly covered by darkness, but his mouth was visible in the moonlight.

“I warned you,” he said, and before I had time even to scream, he scooped me up like a bag of dog food and threw me over his shoulder.

Being so high up, I felt nauseous, and the rain pelted my face in stinging slash marks. My poor camera hung down by his irritably amazing ass and was taking the brunt of the rain storm.

He had my arms locked to his chest, and my wiggling to free my hands was only giving him a hard-on. I stopped immediately, not wanting that giant thing to go anywhere near my hand again.

“Asshole,” I groused, accepting my fate to be a damn jiggling bauble. My ass was reflecting the moon’s rays, and whatever deer or crazy ladies were stalking the night were undoubtedly getting a show.

“You chose this, Fallon,” he said in a calm tone. He was speaking to me like an infant who’d touched a hot stove.

Maybe I had. His body heat certainly felt like the devil himself was carrying me. The rain repelled off his body, dissolving into his warm skin like nothing.

“You’re going to blind people if you don’t at least pull down my skirt.” I huffed, the chill making my legs shiver.

I felt his rumbling laughter. The deep depravity of it made me shiver almost as much as his words.

“Believe me, if someone dares to stare at your ass, Little Voyeur, I will do more than just blind them.”

I didn’t say another word. I just watched the ground, and his ass move from the position ‘the skyscraper of a man’ had me in as he carried me back to my car. Once we arrived, he put me down without another word, and I watched him leave.

The uncertainty in my ability to comprehend what the fuck just happened was alluding me. Shaking off my confusion, I got in my car, frowning, when I saw the water splotches inside my camera lens.

Turning the car on, I set the heater on full blast and purposefully locked my doors. Some random song was playing on the radio as I tried to blow heat into the lens area. Hitting the power button on my Quick Shot camera, I sent a prayer to whoever the fuck would listen that it wasn’t toast.

The screen flashed white, and an image was frozen on the moisture-covered display.

It was an image of the zoomed-in section of that article. It was glitching, but it kept showing the same spot: ‘The walls hide forever now.’

Hmm. The walls of the asylum.

Pharaoh Masters had a room there for six years. Maybe it wouldn’t be hidden after all. The warm air from the heater pushed the water bubble around inside the glass display, revealing more and more words.

Going to this asylum had to be the answer.

Finding out what they wanted to stay hidden, and maybe, just maybe, I could get this arrogant ass-head back where he belonged—leaving me the hell alone.