Our house, to be exact.
It’s small, but it’ll do for now.
She gives this uncharacteristic, small squeal and wiggles against me. “Remy! What the fuck? What are you doing?”
It’s odd how much I’ve come to love the fact that she refuses to call me Baron.
“Claiming my woman and my new home,” I say, flashing to her front door. With my mind alone, I unlock her door and send it swinging open. “I told you to be ready for me, bébé.”
She’s about to learn what being my female entails.
And that involves an extreme lack of personal space.
Two centuries separated from her were more than enough. From now on, it’ll be her and I, always.
I pity anyone that tries to get in the way of that. Including herself.
Villainous
Marie Ahls
Chapter One
Natalie
The sheets felt cool even though they should have been warmed by a body. After several nights together, I should be used to this. He’ll leave the bed only to be found huddled over his laptop where his eyes flicked from the screen to the notepad in his lap, writing furiously on it.
Every time I wandered sleepily out into the living room, he would startle and quickly abort whatever he was working on. I was curious. I wanted to know what was so important on the laptop that it would draw him from bed.
It was one of those nights when I wandered to the living room, hoping that night would be different and that he would swivel in his chair and pull me tight against him, and it was different. The laptop sat ablaze, illuminating the room, but he was not hovering behind it.
Curiosity got the better of me as I sidestepped the trail of clothing we had left in our wake as we made a quick beeline to the bed earlier, not being able to get enough of each other’s bodies. I stood in front of the laptop; nerves churned in my stomach as I gave myself a pep talk. My finger brushed across the mouse pad, forcing it to come to life. Luckily, it had not yet gone to sleep. An image of a naked woman with lacerations and bruises all over her skin, marks on her wrists and ankles like she had once been tied up, and words and images written across her body with red ink showed on the screen. Dozens of similar photos were there. Some of the first woman from different angles and others of different women. Each woman’s dead eyes showed horror of their last moments. It was terrifying seeing these. Then it hit. Why in the world would Duke have these photos?
Before a logical reason or excuse could come to mind, the toilet flushed in the bathroom, the faucet came on and went off, the doorknob squeaked as it turned, the latch clicked—all happening in slow motion—the door swung open, and there was Duke staring straight into my eyes before they flicked to the brightly lit laptop.
I could feel my pulse quicken and bile rose in my throat as a wave of nausea came over me. My hand came to my mouth, and I couldn’t hold it in. I ran to the kitchen on my left, further away from Duke and the ugliness on the screen, where the sink stood waiting for the contents of my stomach.
The cool water I splashed on my face and into my mouth did the trick and woke me up further. My mind flashed back to when I found two red lipstick tubes in the medicine cabinet in the very bathroom Duke exited from moments ago. I had been looking for some aspirin after one particular rough romp together, and there glaring from the small shelf were the lipstick containers.
“What are these?” I asked, holding up the tubes and letting the accusations be known. Typical for my love life if he was seeing someone else.
“Where did you find those? I didn’t even realize I still had them. I used those for a Halloween costume last year.” He easily explained away in the moment, but then the memory flooded my mind; the look of concern that crossed Duke’s face before he answered had gone unnoticed at the time but then stood out like a sore thumb. It could be red lipstick on those bodies easily mistaken for red ink. I raked my mind for other clues—the late-night hours, the sudden change in plans, random phone calls, clothing that seemed to disappear.
I was sleeping with a killer.
The clicking of the laptop closing caught my attention, and I spun around to face Duke, almost forgetting that he was still in the room. I have to get out of here. Now! Before I became his next victim.
“Nat, let me explain.” His hands went into the air to show he had nothing to hide, but I knew then that he had a lot to hide.
“I saw the pictures. I know what you are. I... I...” The words would not come as I started to have visions of him tormenting me like those poor women from the photos passed across my mind. A sob escaped. “Please let me go.”
“I have no intention of hurting you. You’re free to go whenever you’d like, but I would like to explain this.” He pointed to the computer.
Not taking my eyes off him for a second, I grabbed my purse and what clothing I could find on the floor, and I bunched it across my chest to at least cover my exposed breasts. There was no time to even put on anything. If he was going to let me go, then I was going.
The hallway was quiet since it was so late; I scrambled away from Duke’s door. The more distance I put between him and myself the better. It didn’t even matter that I was naked except for the clothing I held. The front doorway leading out of the building came into view, and I glanced over my shoulder to see if he was following me when, but I was alone in the dimly lit hallway; I slowed to cover myself.
The fresh air that burst into my lungs when the glass doors of the building opened helped ease my breathing and clear my head.
It wasn’t until the lock on my own apartment door clicked that I could catch my breath and think. Think. What did I know, and what should I do?
Chapter Two
Duke
Fuck. Shit. Damn.
I shouldn’t have let her go until she understood the importance of keeping it quiet. I was close to blowing this wide open. There could be no mistakes. No tip offs.
She looked beyond frightened, like I might actually have hurt her right there in my apartment, and I couldn’t even fathom what she must have been thinking of me, so I let her go instead of convincing her that it would all be okay in the end.
I needed to get her on board or else all of the work, all the long hours, would be for nothing. There would be no justice.
I’d have to get to her before she contacted the cops or tried to put the pieces together in her mind, developing theories about things that weren’t really happening.
The phone flicked to life when the call went through to Nat’s phone. She declined the call. I called back immediately. She declined again. Shit! She wasn’t going to make this easy on me.
The keys for the car jingled in my hand as I raced down the hallway toward the parking garage. The engine of the car roared to life, and in a matter of minutes, it was speeding down the dark and empty city streets toward Natalie.
My foot gently pressed on the brake, slowing the car and pulling it alongside the curb in front of Nat’s apartment building. My eyes gazed upon the tall row house that had been converted into three separate units, the nightly shadows making it look dreary and run down, and they landed on Nat’s windows on the top floor. The curtains were drawn closed, and even in the corners where they hung loose, there was no light, making me wonder if she’d come home or went directly to the police station.