Long, Lonely Nights (25 page)

Could she go back to that though? Now that she had been with him, she wanted more. She wanted to know how it felt to be held by someone like him.
But you can’t have more, Tina. You want too much. That’s why you’ve never found anyone to suit you. You ask too much of them. Face it. It’s over. You screwed up.
Tears ran down her face. She hadn’t even realized she had been crying. She dried her eyes and swallowed back the pain. Then she concentrated on work. She would always have work to think about.

The next day at noon, Jenna and Tina ate their lunch at the park down the street from where they worked. It wasn’t as hot in the shade as it had been the last few days. They ate in silence for a while then Jenna began to ask questions.

“So, what happened the other night?”

“I made a complete fool out of myself,” Tina said.

“How?” Jenna took the last bite of her sandwich and threw a piece of crust out to the pigeons flocked around them.

“He fucked me on my desk at home.”

Jenna’s eyes grew big. “Now that is hot!”

“I know. But I screwed up,” Tina said. She hadn’t eaten half of her sandwich.

“I don’t understand. How could you have screwed that up?”

“He was going so slow. Too slow. I wanted it faster and harder.”

Jenna fanned herself. “So what did you do?”

“I begged him to go faster, and then I begged him to fuck me hard.” She crumpled up her half eaten sandwich and got up to throw it in the trash.

“Why do you think you screwed up? I bet he went faster didn’t he.”

“Yeah, but he wouldn’t look at me the next morning. He hasn’t said two words to me since it happened.”

“He probably doesn’t know how you feel about it. Tell him how hot it was,” Jenna said.

“He probably thinks I’m a slut or something.”

“No, he doesn’t. And if he does, he’s the fool.”

“What am I going to do? Now I have to live next to him with how I acted. I’m so ashamed.”

“You get that out of your system right now. You are not a slut, and you have no reason to be ashamed to ask for what you needed. He is the one to blame for not giving it to you to begin with.” Jenna sighed. “Come on. Stop thinking about it. We need to get back to work, and you’re all upset.”

“I’ll be okay. Like I said, I have to get over it and live next door to him now. I’ll be fine.”

The days flew by and Thursday night found Tina eating a solitary meal in the form of a frozen dinner. Logan had assured her he had already eaten, and she hadn’t felt like cooking. The frozen fettuccine tasted like cardboard in her mouth. She just wasn’t hungry. She really didn’t want to lose any more weight. Her clothes hung off her now as it was. She would have to put back on a few pounds or she would have to buy new clothes. The thought of shopping was almost as distasteful as eating seemed to be.

Tomorrow was Friday. She still hadn’t told Logan that Jenna would be staying over with her. But then, it shouldn’t make any difference. It was her house. She would tell him in the morning before she left. Hopefully, tomorrow night would be it. They would either catch him, or he would kill her. She was tired and didn’t care anymore. She just wanted it all to be over now.

She took her shower and curled up in bed ready for another long sleepless night. She would either fall asleep and dream of Logan only to wake unsatisfied, or she would have the nightmare again and wake up crying. Either way, she would be awake the rest of the night.

She fell asleep and dreamed of the stalker almost immediately. She knew it was a dream again, but was helpless to wake up. He had gagged her and taped her hands to the headboard while she slept. She couldn’t scream or yell out for help.

He laughed at her frantic movements. She tried to get loose and sobbed when she didn’t get anywhere. All she could see of him through the mask was his green eyes and the excitement dancing in them. Her helplessness excited him.

Tina kicked out with her feet screaming into the gag. Her foot made contact with his leg. He slapped her.

“Be still bitch. I told you that you belong to me. You went and screwed that bastard downstairs. Well, I took care of him. He won’t bother us again.” He leaned in and licked her. She tried to pull away.

“Be still so I can taste you.” He licked across her cheek again.

She squealed and turned her head away from him. He grabbed her by the hair and held her still as he licked all over her face. She couldn’t help crying. He was going to kill her. He had told her that before. Now that it was happening, she couldn’t do anything about it. She didn’t want to die.

He pulled out a knife and slit her nightgown from hem to neck and then each arm hold until it fell away from her body. He ran the knife around her breasts and down along her belly. He laid the knife aside as she whimpered. He pulled her panties down. She fought to try to keep them on, and he jerked them off and threw them on the floor.

“Fight all you want. It will only make things more fun,” he said.

She tried to calm down. She didn’t want to make anything fun for him. He ran his hands up and down her body, pinching her here and there to elicit a cry from her. He twisted her nipples until she had tears in her eyes. He bit them until she screamed into the gag. Finally, he unfastened his pants and pulled them down until his engorged member poked out short and thin. He climbed up on the bed and tried to enter her. She fought at him with her legs. He slapped her hard enough she saw stars, and she woke up.

Right into another nightmare.

She looked up into the crazed green eyes of her stalker. She tried to scream, but found she had something in her mouth. The lingering odor of something foul threatened to choke her. She felt bile rise in her throat. She’d choke to death if she threw up. She struggled but found her arms taped to the headboard.

He laughed low in her ear. “You belong to me.” He began easing a knife up her nightgown, cutting as he did. Tina managed to get her feet up between him and her body and pushed back at him. The knife slipped and cut her abdomen. He fell backwards into the wall. She felt blood trickle down her side. She pushed with her feet to try to move up in the bed, so maybe, she could keep him away from her with her feet.

He lunged for her again and managed to get his hands around her throat. She kicked and screeched through the gag. She kicked him back again and again until he hit the wall again. When he got his hands around her throat this time, he was lying across her body. She couldn’t use her legs against him again. The room grew dimmer as he cut off her oxygen supply. She began seeing spots before her eyes and the edges of her vision began to grow black.

The bedroom door flew open hitting the wall behind it. Someone grabbed her attacker from behind and pulled him off her. She gasped for breath. The French doors flew open and someone else entered the room. Riley spoke into a phone, she thought, then he dropped it and pulled the tape off her mouth so she could spit out the gag. He tore at the tape holding her hands to the headboard above her head. When he noticed the blood soaking the bed, he left her hands to pull back the remainder of her gown to expose the wound on her belly. He pulled a knife from his boot and cut off a piece of the sheet, and folding it, applied pressure to the cut.

“Logan, get over here man. She’s bleeding.”

Logan was pummeling the intruder over and over with his fists.

Riley yelled again. “Logan! She’s bleeding. Get the hell over here.”

This time he stopped and dropped the limp figure. He raced over the bed to her.

“Here hold this tight against her while I finish getting the tape off her. The ambulance is on the way.

Logan took Riley’s place and Riley cut the rest of the tape off her hands and slowly lowered them to the bed.

“Easy, baby. It’s going to be okay. We got him. He’s never going to bother you again.”

Tina couldn’t stop crying. Shock must have set in since all she could do was sob. The pain in her belly was beginning to grow now.

“I got you, baby. It’s going to be all right. I’m so sorry he got by me. I don’t know how he did.”

The distant wail of sirens let her know help was on the way. She would be okay. Logan promised she would be.

Riley must have gone to check on the intruder.

“He’s alive, but he isn’t going to feel too good when he wakes up. You did a number on him, Logan. I’ll go let the cops in.” Riley disappeared from sight.

A few minutes later, cops ran up the stairs to find the intruder out cold and Logan holding pressure on her stomach.

“Put your hands up.”

“I can’t she’s bleeding.”

One of the policemen holstered his weapon and came over to assess her wound. He held pressure and Logan put his hands up. Tina kept trying to tell them he wasn’t the intruder. He was helping her.

“I’ve got a gun in the back of my pants,” Logan told them.

They took the gun and turned him to face the wall while they checked him all over.

“Ma’am, can you tell me what happened?” The one holding pressure to her wound asked her.

Tina told them the best she could what happened. She begged them to let Riley and Logan go.

“They were helping me. Please don’t do this to them.” She started crying.

He nodded his head, and they let Logan go and called down to let Riley go. The paramedics arrived and started asking her questions. She answered the best she could, but she wanted to know that Logan was okay.

“He’s fine, ma’am. They are just getting his statement downstairs.”

They applied a pressure bandage and loaded her up to go to the hospital. ‘

“You’re going to need some stitches in this,” one of the paramedics said.

Before they took her to the ambulance, she got to see the man that had attacked her for the first time. It was the man, Jack, she had danced with the other night.

“He told me his name was Jack the other night. I danced with him. I didn’t know it was him. I should have. He had green eyes.”

She spent four hours in the emergency room. It took ten stitches to sew up her wound. It was deep, but it hadn’t perforated anything. She was very glad. She expected them to let her go and she asked to be released. Instead, they gave her pain medicine and she began to fade in and out of consciousness. She remembered seeing Riley and Logan at some point, but she couldn’t say anything. She was too far under.

Finally, the next day they let her go home that afternoon. Jenna picked her up to take her home. Logan helped her out of the car and carried her up to her room. He carefully laid her on the bed and turned to leave without saying anything.

“Wait, Logan. Thank you so much for saving me. I was so afraid.”

“I should have been there to stop him from even putting a finger on you. I still don’t know how he got by me,” Logan said. He spoke in a quiet voice. “I’m sorry.”

“The detective told me that he was a salesman for the security company I used. He knew how to bypass the codes. He slipped in the back door and up the stairs when you went to the bathroom.” Tina took a deep breath and continued. “It wasn’t your fault, Logan. You can’t be everywhere at one time. No matter what, you saved me. Thank you,” she said.

“You’re safe now. That is all that matters. He’s in jail and won’t get out anytime soon. I don’t think he will try to bother you again even when he does get out. Riley promised to give him a new smile if he did.

“He threatened him?”

“So did I. Only I wasn’t so nice about it,” Logan said.

He turned and left. Tina felt a tear escape her eye. She knew he wouldn’t be watching her anymore.