Because this pretty girl knows me. Our paths have crossed more than once, but where she has failed to remember me, forgetting her is impossible. Will never happen no matter what life we’re reincarnated to.
The day Gabriella Moore stepped foot inside my home, asking for help, I found my angel. My perfect prey.
I trace her kneecap and then farther up, pausing where the heat between her thighs kisses my flesh. Even without cupping her pussy, with the tips of my digits just a few inches to the left, it burns me. This need is near maddening and so is the rise of goose bumps across her flesh, showing me without words how much she will always enjoy my touch.
A hard shiver runs through her frame, and I lower my face so our lips hover, not touching as I breathe her in. Tasting her sweetness in the air around us. Pushing myself past rationality, my will is stronger because I know the reward is worth the brief denial.
“Always cherries with a hint of vanilla.” Her nose twitches at my words, but she doesn’t wake up. If anything, she settles and sighs. Such a lovely sound.
For a few minutes we remain this way, my hand on her skin and her breathing even beneath me while I watch and re-memorize every freckle and luscious red curl on her head. A true ginger, the tone is luminous and one of the first things I noticed about her, the second being her delicate height at only five-foot-one; she’s short with an indecent amount of curves for someone so petite.
Soon, I mouth and move down, stopping at the area just above her clit. There, I inhale deeply, and my mouth waters at the heady scent she emits from between her thighs.
It’d be so easy to taste her. To force her will to become one with mine.
“Not motherfucking yet,” I hiss out from between clenched teeth and get off the bed, retracing my steps until I’m once again beside the painting. I’ve tempted her fate enough for one night and need to leave before the fragile tether holding my desires hostage snaps and I bloody her bed.
I survey the room a final time before pausing at her door where a soft scratching sound catches my attention. It’s low and the whine accompanying it pulls a low chuckle from me.
That dog hates me, while I find its loyalty admirable.
He’s of use to me. I know his weakness, and he will submit.
Looking at her a final time, I bite my lip. “Goodbye for now, pretty girl.” And when I walk to the door and open it slowly, revealing myself to her pet, the way he lowers his head and averts his eyes gets a nod of approval from me. I step out, and he shivers. I close the door and he knows his place, following behind me without another sound as I make my way to her studio.
My little artist.
Canvas after canvas fills every inch of wall space, pictures full of color and celebrating life while others depict death and a morbid curiosity. The latter are my favorite.
Blacks and reds and the emotion of grief reach across the finished pieces, and I finger one in particular of a man in shadow. No face can be seen and he’s tall, his build muscular as his exposed torso is the focal point.
Not the blood dripping from his hand.
Not the small body on the ground or the other three strewn about in different sections of the dilapidated road where he stands staring at the destruction left behind.
I want this one.
I know how to get it.
“I’ll see you soon.”
2
Gabriella
“Goodbye for now, pretty girl.”
I awake with a start.
Chest heaving. Palms sweaty. With this all-consuming feeling—fear—gripping me in its stinging bonds while refusing to let go.
Because all I see is red. Red everywhere.
Everything.
It’s all one shade, and yet depending on the lighting, the tone changes its hue to an eerie reminiscence of blood. This blasphemous and disturbing tint that slides down each corner and object I see, destroying any hint of purity within the four walls my mind is trapped within—where breathing is a struggle and my chest aches from the terrifying memory that feels real.
“Pretty girl.”
Inside that room—the same cursed room—and the voice that I’ve dreamed of every night for the past year as if my mind refuses to escape its dreariness while demanding that I remember each detail vividly. To catalog the representation of death. To embrace its mockery of my sanity.
And I do. Even while lying in bed, fully awake, I’m held inside my mind in an inescapable trap.
With each shaky inhale, I still see the antique furniture with intricate carvings in a black mahogany wood that shouldn’t be seen unless under direct sunlight, and yet, in the dead of night as I visit this room, the symbols glare at me. They dare me to ignore the circular carvings with a hidden meaning that I’ve yet to uncover.
You’re awake. Focus, Gabriella. And yet, I can’t.
No matter what books I look into while awake. No matter what internet searches I perform, dating back to a time where each house held a crest that symbolized their status, I fail.
No amount of searching or digging provides answers to the questions destroying my mind like a horror-filled movie reel. No matter the days lost behind a screen or sitting cross-legged between shelves in the back corner of a library, stacks of books burying me within their information; I’ve done it all, but still come up blank.
“Pretty girl.”
Taking in another deep breath, I focus on the rise and fall of my chest while ignoring the male voice. I’m begging my lungs to cooperate and my mind to fight this suffocating hold those words have on me when spoken by the rich and gravelly tone. In and out. Slowly, Gabriella. However, my body feels as though a heavy weight sits atop my chest, slowly suffocating me.
I’m scared, but curious. Idiotically so.
“I am
