Bitter Angel (25 page)

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” chimes the Devil himself.

The way Alpha says it convinces me that he knows exactly who’s back here. All the air knocks out of my lungs in one quick exhale. I attempt to shove myself between the dumpster and the building, but there’s not enough space. Funny how the thing decides it’s not going to move when I don’t have the force of my running body flailing against it. Not that that would work in my favor. It wouldn’t move without scraping and groaning, thus worsening my chances of hiding.

How the hell did he find me?
After all this time. I’ve been out here for hours.

“Come on,” he says lazily, almost pleasantly as if he has all the time in the world. But I know he’s only going to bestow it patiently for another few seconds before he comes after me. “I know you’re back here, little pumpkin-fucked bitch. We have some words to exchange.”

A familiar plea leaks out, hushed and dismal. “Oh God, oh God, oh God…”

“You have about three seconds before I take your ass out the hard way. Come out nicely, and I’ll preserve that fuck-ready face of yours a little longer.”

He’s giving me a choice? For what, a short death or a longer one? Is that supposed to appeal to me? Will I even make it out of this alive? Is this how it ends—me in the back alley of a shitty apartment in the slums an hour and a half away from my temporary college home and who knows how far away I am from the person I love most in this world?
No matter what he’s done, Jay still holds that position in my life. Nothing could ever usurp him.

I picture last night, rolling on the concrete with Alpha. His heavy, panting body on top of mine. His livid, triumphant face inches away. I thought that was the end, too. This is déjà vu in its most devastating form.

“Three,” he starts to count, the same hair-raising smirk in his tone. He’s loving this.

Every inch of my skin springs with goose bumps.
Do it,
I scream inside my head, but my fingers want to remain in their shock-numbed state.

“Two.”

Do it!
I make a move, press my hands tentatively against the side of the dumpster.

“One.”

Now or never.
DO IT!

Before he can say anything else, I pop out of my hiding place and into his line of sight. The hazy glow of a streetlamp backlights his body and shadows his face, which only amplifies the deadly look in his eyes. My hands instantly become fists, legs prepped for battle or fleeing. There’s nothing behind me but brick. If I plan on getting out, I’ll have to go through him.

This entire experience has been one huge mind game, full of regrets and wishes and coulda, shoulda, wouldas. One thing I’m regretting more than anything else right now is not knowing exactly how to get myself out of this. That lack is probably the reason I’ve wanted to run every time I’ve seen him today. Other than common sense, I mean.

When Nilah, Heather, and I were sixteen, there was a rape at our school. It was a girl we all knew but didn’t really
know
. It happened on school property, which concerned school officials even more, and the guidance counselors set up extra office hours to handle the influx of concerned students and parents. There was a student body assembly that the three of us idiotically skipped to get lunch at a café down the street, not that we really needed to go. We knew exactly what had happened. A jackass football player had been not quietly bragging about it in the locker room afterward. Once the girl cried rape, however, he zipped his lips like the pansy that he was, but we all knew by that time. None of us were worried.

Except that Nilah’s father wouldn’t let it go. A month after, he insisted she take a self-defense class. Apparently pink-studded pepper spray wasn’t enough to ease his fatherly conscience. Nilah threw a tantrum. She didn’t want to do this alone.
How dare he?
So her dad told Heather’s dad who told my dad. Before we knew it, we were all enrolled in a class given at the local community college.

We dressed in our cutest workout clothes and showed up with naïve fists at our sides, ready to learn to fight! But the instructor was a huge bonehead. His muscles were the size of miniature candy bars, and he didn’t even try to hide the fact that he got off more on touching us than teaching us the steps to get away
from creeps like him. It was ridiculous. We quit after the second class. Essentially, we learned to not believe douche bags like him to begin with and we’d be fine.

Now I’m not feeling so fine. I have an inkling I should’ve stayed in that class, pervert teacher and all. Hindsight is just a torturous game of
fuck you
.

I assess the situation with frantic glances in every direction—up, down, left, right, diagonal. If only it were like a living video game, I would only have to find the trick exit to get me the hell out.

Everything
wants to come at me all at once—the fact that Alpha’s stronger than me, bigger than me, and more experienced at this than me. I shove it all away. Lock it up tight, tight,
tight
, and then…I’m floundering for a moment, pieces of me floating around as if I’m hovering over us at an angle above my scared self. Floating Me gazes back and forth at Real Me, then him, then me, and I realize I am not actually what my mind pictures. I look strong and capable.

When I crash land into myself, my thoughts are still. My head is clear. My gaze is pristine as the dusky blue-black sky above me. I know what I have to do.

My eyes lock with his.

“Now, see? That’s a good girl.” He just stands there, unhurried.

I’m sure he’ll take his time, just like he did last night when he was on top of me. When he was breathing on me in the bathtub. When he was holding the knife to my throat.

His cocky-ass smirk is lighting me on fire. I’m taking in all the energy the sun left behind, allowing the flaming rage to lick at my bones. “How did you know I was back here?”

He chuckles, jutting his chin at me. “Camera flash. What did you think you’d catch out here?”

“Nothing I don’t have already,” I say with steely confidence.

I have to force myself not to shake my head in disbelief. I followed him all around the city, took pictures of him everywhere, dog-tailed him up and down that building, and made enough noise to wake up a hibernating bear when I jumped into that dumpster. All of it was unseen, unheard. But a few clicks of my flash, and I’m Alpha-lunch.
Rocking awesome.

My answer sparks something in him. The evil goes three shades darker, telling me I only have a precious few seconds before he’s done playing nice with me.

“So…” He crosses his arms. “What am I going to do with you?”

It’s a long shot, but I try it. “Let me go, and I’ll destroy it. All the shit I have on you.”

He turns his head and laughs. “Yeah, no. One, because I know you don’t have shit. And two, because letting you go would be such a waste. You’re going to be so much fucking fun.” His voice goes rough and gravelly at the end.

Lust is radiating off of him. This is not something I felt earlier. He must be giving in to himself now that he thinks he has me cornered.

“I won’t go quietly,” I say, low and hard.

His expression mocks me. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

He starts toward me, not quickly, but it’s evident in the mercilessness of his eyes that I’m not getting out of this unscathed. Negotiations are over, if they ever began. Fun time is over. Talk is over.

Go time.

The flames of my fury lick higher. I let it all overtake me, tense up my muscles, bring forth the bitch that has wanted to take this bastard down since I first woke up to his voice cloaking me in promised agony. It’s amazing what the body can do when it has no other options.
What it thinks it can do
, a ragged voice whispers in my head.

He’s still several yards away when I charge. I’m a bull, and he’s my red cape. His eyes go wide. He isn’t expecting this. The element of surprise is exactly the precious advantage I am aiming for. My momentum takes us down, and I’m on top of him, releasing endless anguished cries that match my fisted punches to his face, venom for venom.
That’s
for Heather, and
that’s
for Nilah, and
that’s
for the girls before us, and
THIS
is for me
.
I’ve bloodied his nose, busted his lip, cut his cheek, and blackened at least one eye before his dazed, concrete-smacked brain has the idea to restrain me.

“
Fucking, motherfu
—”

But I’m too quick. On my feet, I stomp one of his wrists to the ground while heeling him in the gut. He oofs and retracts his limbs, catching one of my ankles. I kick him in the head, effectively loosening his hold on me. I feel swollen with power. Inflamed to the point that my head buzzes with it.

This is one of those moments that you hear about all the time. Those people that lift cars off of their babies or cut their own leg off to save their lives. It’s all so intoxicating, seeing him down and in pain and bloodied, I’ve completely forgotten that I should probably run
at some point in time.

That time would be now
.

As he grunts himself into a sitting position, I leap away, but he bear hugs my thigh and yanks. My one steady foot is in the air. Pavement punches into my side. I let out a hoarse scream. My right arm, which landed underneath me, is tingling and scraped where the hoodie sleeve hiked up. He has me half underneath him, his head right above my crotch.

“I knew you’d be fun,” he snarls, dragging himself over me.

I go ballistic, grabbing fistfuls of his hair. I shove his head up and thrash my knees, desperately hoping to hit sensitive spots. I feel one colliding with the bottom of his rib cage while the other hits the soft peak of his stomach just below the ribs. He growls. I shriek.

Someone has to hear me! Please! Someone! PLEASE!

He corrals my legs with his thighs and attempts to sit back in a straddle position. With one breath, he spits blood beside me and jams his forearms against the inside of my elbows. My fingers rip out thick dark tufts of his hair.

“Aw, fuck!” he cries out, laughing breathlessly at the same time. His hands automatically retreat to the burst of pain in his skull.

It gives me a moment to squirm out a few inches until I’m right where I want to be.

One foot slams into his manhood. His face goes slack. I think his body is going limp when I slide rapidly out from under him and roll onto my belly. I ignore the raw sting from the abrasions against my palms. Bits of glass dig into the knees of my jeans, reminding me of running away from him last night—more déjà vu—as I haul myself clumsily to my feet.

I tear away, gasping, not imagining what’s behind me.
Forward, only forward.
But I misjudged him. I’m nearing the mouth of the alley when a horrendous roar rings out. I can actually feel
the air racing ahead of him as he catapults himself toward me. My palms thrust out to break my fall. Unable to support myself, my left wrist bends at an unsafe angle, and I wail in horror, twisting up on the ground. He grunts his way on top of me. He must’ve learned his lesson because he kicks my legs together, restraining them again with his own.

Forced onto my back, I’m disoriented, only for a moment, and then I go feral—vicious, kicking, thrashing, biting any part of him that comes near me. He remains unaffected. One of his hands easily pins my injured wrist to the ground. His other hand shoves around my body, forcing itself between me and the ground, trapping my semi-useful tingling arm to my side. He’s using his full strength now. A thought terrifyingly clicks in my brain—maybe he was letting me hit him earlier, allowing
me to get away. This has all been a perverted, warped sport to him. Alpha, the hunter, and Lila, the prey. He’s really lived up to his name.

I was never going to get out of this, was I?
But I’ll never give up!

I scream and scream and scream.

He chuckles cruelly. “You think anyone will hear you?” Blood from his lip dribbles down his chin and drips onto my cheek. “Let me rephrase that. You think anyone will care? You think I didn’t do my research when I set up here? You’re fucking dumber than I thought. I should’ve known when I first saw you, you weren’t smart enough to work for my father’s goon.”

That’s who he thought I worked for? His father?

That has me thinking.
What does his father know? Does he know his son is…?
The weight of his body pressing into me brings me sharply back. No time to analyze.

I spit in his face and he lowers his head, my eyes blurring from the proximity. I squirm. Animalistic grunts rip from my throat. I rotate my good wrist and claw at the bits of his skin I can reach. He doesn’t move. His sweaty forehead tips toward me. I clamp my mouth shut and curl away from his face as far as my neck will go, but he comes closer anyway. His mouth touches the corner of mine, smearing blood on my lips. It tastes like rust and ashes. His tongue snakes out and licks it off of me.

“Mmm,” he murmurs. “Tastes like defeat.” He draws a breath in through his nose, sniffing me. “I can smell the fear on you. Fucking turns me on,” he whispers coldly.