Page 52

Something isn’t quite right.

My eyes snap open, and my heart is about to explode. Two nights in a row, I’m yanked out of my sleep with a terrible feeling shooting my anxiety rate through the roof. Yesterday, it was because I thought I missed Butterfly Man’s note. Tonight…I don’t know.

Although I should feel safer I have Jacob in my corner along with Tristan and his team, and more in control after the moves I’ve made this morning, I can’t shake the feeling something bad is going to happen, like the sudden death of your favorite character in a book.

What are you up to, Butterfly Man?

Without getting up—I don’t want Tristan to barge in again—I reach for my phone on the nightstand to check the time. 1:36 a.m. Great. I only got two hours of sleep. I guess stress and fear do that to you.

Emotions are little tricky things. As a woman who, at a very young age, has been taught not to show her emotions—or there will be heavy consequences—for self-preservation purposes, I’ve learned to keep them locked. With time, however, there was no closet big enough to contain them, no lock strong enough to hold them back. That’s why I write. I let my feelings out in my stories, a safe haven where they roam free without the fear of being caught.

Opening the nightstand top drawer, I glance at the many journals and notepads hogging most of the space. I need an outlet for the emotions that are tearing me apart. Tempted, I brush my fingers over the engraved leather cover of the journal on top.

Swiftly, I draw my hand back and shut the drawer. If I start writing, I won’t stop, and I need to get some sleep. So I open the second drawer and settle for the next best thing to blow off some steam. The rose.

Unpopular opinion, but wands, dildos and even bullets aren’t my best friends. The idea of inserting anything that runs on batteries inside my vagina is terrifying, and if I’m being honest, nothing works better than my own fingers while my all-time favorite written smut scenes play all together in my head. The rose, though, has changed my perspective about sex toys. Whoever invented it must be a woman as she clearly understands the female body anatomy and the annoyance a cock-shaped toy—anything man related in general—could bring.

Glancing up at the security camera, I hesitate to start. What’s Monarca’s protocol on intimate privacy? I don’t think it’s detailed in the contract, and I’ve never bothered to ask. Sexual pleasure in any form has been at the bottom of my priority list since my performance for Butterfly Man. The last thing I want is another self-pleasure scene caught on camera.

Should I put a towel on the camera and text that I need a moment? Could you be more obvious, Birdie? I blow out a frustrated breath. “I just need to get some sleep.”

My eyes dart between the camera and the drawer. “Fuck it.” I slip the rose under the covers. It’s a covert toy—hopefully the men don’t know what it’s for—and the room is dark. If I stay very very quiet, no one will even notice.

The team in the control room, maybe, but you know Tristan is also watching, and he will notice.

I don’t care. It won’t be the first time he sees me come. My need for some shut eye is bigger than my shame.

And if he comes in? Right in the middle of it? Or just when you’re at the edge and desperate for release? Will you have the clarity to tell him to leave? Will he have the decency to listen?

Images of shirtless Tristan barging in while I’m spread open, a sex toy between my thighs, play in my head. My whole body throbs with forbidden desires. I close my eyes, and I see it. The hunger that will spurt in his intense gaze, the swelling in his pants that will grow with every undulation of my body as I chase my pleasure. Every contort of my face, every gasp, an invitation, a call to everything primal in him to take over. To punish. To claim.

I bolt out of the bed and lock the door.

“Okay. He can’t come in. Let’s do this. Nice and quick.” I slide under the covers, pulling them over my head, and give my back to the camera. Setting the rose on my favorite mode, I pull down my panties.

As soon as the vibration hits my wetness, my dirty imagination does its thing. Vivid visuals of my antiheroes come alive, in my room, in my bed, touching and tasting every inch of me, doing, together, naughty wicked things to my body, each in their way.

Then it sneaks up on me. A face I haven’t written, fully masked with a neon butterfly for a mouth, peeking in from the dark like a flash of lightning that disrupts the night.

My heart skips a beat as my eyes snap open. The rose humming its vibrations along with my accelerated breathing are the only sounds in the room, but for a second there, in sync, another breath joins mine.

I pause the toy and sit upright. In the darkness, my gaze bounces from one wall to the next. “Are you there?” I whisper.

When silence answers, I swallow and switch on the light on the nightstand. Bracing for the worst, I hold my breath and look around like a maniac. Except no one is there. It’s just me, alone, with made-up monsters to fuck me to sleep.

“It’s all in my head. You’re not here. You can’t be.” But I can feel you getting closer, watching me, as if you were here, in the same room with me.

I switch off the light and bury myself under the covers. With the rose back in position, behind my eyelids, I banish my familiar dirty friends and stare at the neon butterfly. A beautiful, terrible trap I’m falling into.

My fingers tremble as I restart the toy, the vibrations seem to intensify at the perverse fantasy. The terrifying glow pulses, a symbol of my madness, a hypnotic reminder of the danger that both frightens and entices me.

I imagine his breath on my neck, phantom fingers trailing across my skin. My own touch becomes his, and I shake at the thrill it gives me. The line between fantasy and reality blurs. Butterfly Man isn’t a fictional villain written to entice. He’s a stalker obsessed with me to the point of murder, and I’m soaking the sheets with my arousal picturing him in a scary mask claiming me.

“This is wrong,” I whisper to myself between gasps, even as my nipples harden painfully against the satin of my gown, and my legs spread wider in desperate need. The thought of him watching my fingers between my thighs, drinking in my vulnerability and darkness, comes into play, and it sends a shiver down my spine. Is it revulsion at the violation or the desire for more?

How many times has he replayed that scene? How many times has he touched himself to it? What sounds did he make when he came? Did he groan or growl? Did he break with my name on his lips? If he did, which one?

The neon butterfly smirks at me, mocking me with its silent glow. Then the mask vanishes, but the smirk stays, one I’m so irritably familiar with. Tristan’s.

No . My eyes twitch as I shake the intrusive flickers of his face off my head. I won’t go there. I reprimand myself as if masturbating to a killer is acceptable but to my bodyguard is an unforgivable sin.

Frustration huffs out of my lips. If I crave a villain, why do I not stick to the harmless ink-on-paper kind? If I desire a hero, why do I not rely on fiction to deliver one who isn’t morally gray?

But it’s not about the choice between villains and heroes. The truth is, I’m tired of fantasies. What I crave is something real. Butterfly Man is real. Tristan is real.

Jacob is real, too. Why is he not an option? He’s good, handsome, sexy, gentleman on the street, freak in the sheets and has proved he’d do anything—

“Don’t stop.” A strained whisper rips the silence as shadows congeal and take form beside me.

A gasp rips out of my throat as my heartbeat bursts my chest. Eyes wide, I jolt to open the lights, but forceful weight pins me to the mattress. Arms flailing, I open my mouth to scream.

My voice clashes against a firm grip unheard. The scent of leather fills my nostrils, and my wrists are squeezed together above my head. I kick as hard as I can, but my strength is nothing against the weight rendering me immobile.

My eyes squint to adjust in the dark in hopes of making out any details about him. A shadow around his head. A hoodie perhaps. His face and figure are a silhouette of black. I can’t see the glint of his eyes or the outline of his features. There’s only a flicker of a color where his breaths come out. He must be wearing a mask. Butterfly Man’s mask. Exactly how I’ve pictured him, except the butterfly isn’t glowing.

“No, darling. No kicking, no screaming, none of that,” the voice rasps, low and gruff and menacing, but, a part of me notices, it doesn’t threaten me, not outright anyway. “You’ll be a good girl for me and stay quiet. No need to tell anyone our little secret. I’m not here to hurt you. I never will. You know that. But I won’t hesitate to hurt anyone who stands in the way between us, like those bodyguards…”

Panic floods my system as the reality of the situation crashes over me. He’s here. Butterfly man has found a way to break into my house again. That breath I’ve heard… He’s been here in my bedroom all this time, watching me, and now, he’s pinning me down to my bed in the middle of the night, threatening to kill anyone I ask for help.

To be continued…

Thanks for reading book 1 of The Storyteller’s Bodyguard series

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