Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 94076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
She arches her back, and her lips part. Her lids grow heavy. She reaches back and presses on a distinct bruise. One of the marks I left with the flogger. The cameras don’t transmit any sound, but I can tell she’s let out a small, sighing moan.
My chair creaks under me. Every muscle in me strains—
There it is. Her cheek curves in a hint of a real smile.
It lasts only a fleeting moment before it’s gone, and she completes her routine. She pads naked to the closet and dresses in a simple sleep set. Then she takes her gun and clears each room in her duplex. She checks the armed security system and each door and window lock twice. She thinks this will protect her from the world. From monsters like me.
She’s wrong.
Her guard is back up when she settles into bed. She sets her gun on the bedside table but doesn’t go to sleep right away. Using her cellphone as a light, she sits and sketches in the notebook she keeps close to her at all times. My fingers cramp with the need to get my hands on it. Having every inch of her life on screen isn’t enough. I want to pry her apart, get under her skin. I want to know her innermost thoughts.
And I will. All the hunting I’ve done on the streets of New Rome has prepared me for this moment. For her.
I must go carefully. Tonight, I was just a top to her. A nameless, faceless stand-in who gave her the pain she needs.
She doesn’t know I’m always watching. That I’ve been hunting her for years. I’ve spent more time hunting her than all my other victims combined.
Soon, it’ll be time to reveal myself to her, and she will know me as I know her.
But first, I need to get her attention.
Inara
Smoke billows around me. My eyes sting with it. It’s all I can taste, all I can see.
“Inara!” someone is shouting.
I spread my arms, accepting my death. It has to be this way.
I’m ready.
And then—
There’s a blast of excruciating heat. Strong enough to sear my flesh from my bones. I turn and leap into the cool air. I’m falling from a great height. I will not survive, but it’s lovely, this surrender. The darkness is cool and sweet.
But I know this is the end.
I know I’ve died. The pain and fall were too great for me to survive, but the dream continues. Death comes for me and folds me in a powerful embrace. And instead of feeling dread, I feel relief. In oblivion, I am free.
“Inara,” Death says my name. I reach up into the darkness, stirring the seething void like smoke, and the darkness begins to take the shape of a man—
I jerk awake, my hands in the air like I’m holding off an attack. Or cupping a man’s face.
I dreamed of my death again. The first time this dream came to me, I was ten. Over the years, I’ve dreamed it again and again, returning to me like an old friend. And each time it takes over my sleep, it becomes more detailed. There’s more color, noise, even the grainy feel of thick smoke. One day, I will experience it fully, but I won’t be dreaming. I’ll be living my last moments. When I finally know how the dream ends, I will be dead.
I don’t know the day or hour I’ll die. I only know that I’ll recognize it when it’s here.
And I have the feeling it will be soon.
But the death dream I just had is different. I dreamed of the end and past that. I know, in dream logic, that I had to be dead.
Because Death sounded like him. The mystery dom from last night who claimed a hold on my psyche, and I’m afraid to find out what that means.
I flop onto my back, and my lingering dread dissipates. I’m alive and awake and covered in deliciously sore spots. Marks the dom left on my back.
Who was he? He knew my name. Not only that, he wanted me to know that he knew it. He might be someone I’ve scened with before, or someone I’ve met, someone from work. But I would’ve noticed his intense presence if I’d met someone like him before.
Inara, he said in that beautiful voice. He’s unlocked the deepest parts of me, the parts I’ve tried so long to hide.
My sex still throbs from the orgasm he gave me. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the touch of his flogger. His marks are like lingering kisses on my skin. It’s my favorite part after a scene, bearing the marks and bruises for days afterward. I admired them in the bathroom mirror last night, but now, they only make me feel like I’m missing something.