Page 94 of My Big Fat Daddy Issues

I get behind the oak. The ladder's on the far side, out of his sightline.

I manage one hand on the first board and I'm hauling myself up when my head jerks back with a violent tug of my soaked hair and I tumble back to the wet earth with a hard thud.

I scream. The rain sucks it from the air.

There's nowhere to run.

Chapter 3

Billie

My back slams against something broad and hard and the air puffs out from my lungs.

The hard edge of a belt buckle bites into my back through my soaked shirt. A massive arm locks around my waist like a steel bar.

"You're fast, little bunny." His mouth is against my ear, muffled through the hard mask. His chest expands against my back. "Thought you'd make it all the way up. But I would have followed."

I kick backward with a grunt, heel connecting with his shin, and he scoffs but it's a pleased sound, not a pained one. His arm tightens until my ribs ache.

"Fight all you want, little girl. Makes my cock harder."

He starts walking with me thrashing and throwing fists back over my head but all I hit is flat, stone hard muscle.

Heat lights up my skin, a tight fury in my belly knots as I settle my focus on the locked arm around my waist but it's covered by soaked, black fabric and as much as I pull and pound and scratch, I find no weak spot on this mammoth intruder into my life.

His footsteps speed as we move, not quite a jog, but strides that cover the ground like a normal man running.

We reach the porch as my strength wavers and he hauls me up the steps and through the open front door, my toes barely brushing the floor.

Inside, he kicks the door shut behind us with a bang that shakes the frame. Water pours off us both, pooling on the hardwood, and the sudden absence of the storm's roar makes the house feel like a vacuum. All I hear is my own ragged breathing and the drip, drip of the rainwater falling off us.

He sets me onto my feet, there's the thunk of the deadbolt, then he clutches the top of my head in an enormous hand and aims my face toward the stairs. "Move."

I do. Not because I've given up. Because the cold and the run have taken everything I have and my legs feel like over-cooked noodles.

He walks right behind me, guiding my head with his hand. Warm breath hits the freezing skin on the back of my neck sounding muffled through the mask, and the fingers of his other hand poke at the small of my back when my forward motion slows.

Up the stairs we go, my pulse pittering like a hummingbird's, down the hall until we're back in the bedroom.

"What do you want?" I scream. It's a fairly rhetorical question but I can't go down in silence. I won't.

I have to do whatever he wants so I live. That's the goal.

Just. Live.

"I don't want to ruin the surprise, little bunny." He answers, in a register so low it's barely audible but my already freezing exposed skin chills further.

He pushes me forward, slamming the door behind us, and before I draw a breath, that hand on my head returns, the fingers digging in as he spins me around and I'm shouldered against it with a thud.

"Let me go!" I work my knee upward but there's not enough room to gain any velocity. I curl my fingers into fists and pound but the only body part I can reach are shoulders that feel like rocks.

"Shhhh, it will hurt less if you calm the fuck down." He towers over me in that skull mask, water squishing our clothes as he pushes against me, mud streaking my legs and the black fabric that covers him. The room is dark except for the lightning that keeps turning it into a series of still frames.

I glare back, panting and shaking and the idea that no matter how hard I fight, how smart I try to be, I may never leave this room again settles into my bones.

Finally, he reaches behind his back then his hand comes back around and even in the dark I know it — the shape, the weight, the smooth carved handle he'd made himself.

The knife he said he'd show me later.