“No, you’re not.” He doesn’t even move from his spot.
“I’ll scream the whole place down.”
“No one will hear you.” His voice drops. “This room is soundproof.”
My gaze strays to the door.
“Only my people are out there, so don’t even try unless you’re in the mood to be manhandled.”
I take a step toward the door anyway. In a flash, Jeremy reaches me and appears like a wall at my back.
He grabs my jaw and directs my attention to the painting on the wall. “I’m going to need you to watch a live scene with me.”
Like in some sci-fi show, the painting is lifted and glass appears, revealing another room that’s similar to this one. Only the entire scene is different.
I gasp as the person on the other side materializes in front of me.
“See. Landon isn’t exclusively a member of that club. He’s a member of every club on this island and beyond. He doesn’t have one kink. He has them all as long as he can inflict pain. One of his kinks is exhibitionism, which is why he chose a room where anyone can watch him.”
Bile rises in my throat as Landon drives in and out of a bound, gagged, and blindfolded brunette at a maddening pace. The sounds mix with the graphic scene.
Groaning, slapping, gagging, moaning.
Sharp pain stabs my stomach. Then all of a sudden, I bend over and empty what I just ate on the floor.
Just like I did two years ago.
Just like back then, I can hear his voice over the ringing in my ears.
“You’re disgusting.”
9
JEREMY
Cecily’s not moving.
She’s not breathing properly either, considering the blue hue that flares beneath her skin.
Her eyes are fixed on the scene in front of us, but they see straight through it.
The slaps of flesh against flesh overlap with the brutal fucking and the raw gagging. One of her two limits.
Yes, I could’ve just told her about this, but she had to witness the scene for herself.
She had to see that her so-called prince is nothing but a hedonistic motherfucker who fucks more women than Satan himself. He’s insatiable, over the top, and most importantly, he couldn’t give a fuck about her.
She’s the pathetic and desperate one who’s holding him in high esteem when she should’ve cut him loose a long time ago.
I’ve planned to show her this part of him ever since I found out about her fixation on him, but I resorted to following her instead. If not for anything else than to find out her exact relationship with the fucker.
If he used her to spy on me, then I’m not beneath doing the same.
But then I started noticing things about the outwardly boring Cecily Knight. Like her infuriating love for animals, her nerd tendencies, her deliberate fa?ade, but none of those held my attention for long.
What kept me coming back for more is manifesting right at this moment.
She’s zoning out—or more accurately, dissociating.
I know the technical term for it. More than anyone else, I’ve been exposed to this phenomenon since a young age and researched it as soon as I could understand what mental health meant.
Soon after I started following Cecily, I noticed these moments where she’d stare into space in a catatonic state, unblinking, and completely unaware of her surroundings. Her friends or her colleagues at the shelter would call her name and she’d show no sign of hearing them.
It would take them a few tries, snapping their fingers and waving their hands in front of her face to wrench her out of it.
At first, I thought it was an ill-fated coincidence. After all, what are the chances of me witnessing someone suffering from dissociation again?
But the more I watched her from the shadows, the deeper I inserted myself in her life, the surer I was that she definitely has it, and the worst part is that she probably doesn’t know about it.
It’s mild, barely noticeable, and unlike severe cases, she can be brought out by external intervention.
The ghost remains inside her, though.
Lurking beneath her skin, waiting for the time he’ll be able to completely take over.
It’s come back now, right after she threw up.
Her body has stiffened, and she’s no longer staring at her beloved bastard while he’s fucking another girl.
I hadn’t planned to bring her here tonight. I was following her as usual, all the way to her apartment. It’s become a habit to shadow every move she makes, lurk in the darkness, and wait for the ghost to return.
Don’t ask me why. Even I have no fucking clue why I want to tug that part of her out and sink my knife into it.