I forced myself to calm down, finally able to pull in a long, deep breath.

“Are you…are you going to hurt me?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

He doesn’t know?

“Do you want to?” I pressed.

“Kind of.”

His masked voice was like a breeze through the trees.

“Why?”

“Because I’m sick,” he answered.

What? No one was that self-aware. Especially psychopaths.

He took my upper arms, and I stiffened as he pulled me up, both of us standing again.

He moved in, his shirt brushing my arms. “Because I can’t feel guilt, sadness, anger, or shame as strongly as I can feel fear anymore, and there’s no stronger fear than when I scare myself.” He brushed a tear off my face, and I jerked away. “I never know quite what I’ll do,” he finished.

Everything he said sounded like a threat, only worse. As if he had zero control over himself, and he was just as much a victim in this as me.

Fuck you.

I shoved his body again, and my nails caught his neck as I kicked and yelled for help.

But he grabbed my wrists and spun me around, circling me with his arms like a steel band. My own arms were pinned as his breath fell on my ear.

“Save your strength,” he told me.

But it was gone. My knees buckled and he fell with me, both of us crouched on the floor on our knees, his hold keeping me from falling forward.

I put my hands on the wall, my head bowed as I tried to get my head clear.

But that’s when I noticed the chill seeping through my jeans. And the faint scent of chlorine. His bottoms were damp from the pool.

“I smell the pool on you,” I told him, my voice strengthening a little. “You were at the party. Lots of people. Lots of witnesses. They will find you.”

He held me quietly for a moment, and then spoke low but clear. “My kind of fun has a price,” he whispered. “Better enjoy myself while I can.”

“Why me?”

I mean, really. Not that I wished him on anyone, but was it because I was blind? Because he thought I was an easy target?

“I don’t know,” he said, and I finally heard a clip of his deep voice, although it was still too low to recognize.

“Were you in the ballroom when I was dancing?”

“Yes.”

“You watched me the whole time?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” I asked.

Oh, my God. The initial creak in the floorboards I heard upstairs before, too. That was him. He was here the whole time. The idea of his eyes on me. Being in the room, lurking in a corner and watching me…toying with me.

Why would he just hang out and watch?

“Because it was pretty,” he finally said.

Pretty?

“You asked me why you?” he said, holding me to him, my back pressed into his chest. “That’s why. You’re pure.”

Pure? What…? Did he want to make me impure now or…?

“Your parents are bad,” he explained. “Your sister lacks any depth to be interesting, and I hate my house. It’s so dark there.” He paused, then continued. “It all fucking disappeared when you were dancing, though. It made the world prettier. I liked it.”

“So, what?” I argued. “You wanna lock me in your basement to dance for you on command? Is that it?”

But instead of the creepy, monotone, and calm response I’d been getting, his chest shook with a quiet laugh. “Can I hide there with you?” he asked.

I knitted my brow, taken off guard by the tone. Almost sincere.

I pushed my confusion away, though, and thought fast. Jerking my head back into him twice, I finally felt it hit his face, and I didn’t waste a moment once his hold loosened. It was only a second, but I planted my foot on the wall and pushed against it, making him lose his footing and sending him falling backward. He took me with him, but it was enough to loosen his grip on me, and I scrambled away, across the floor.

My parents had a landline in their bedroom and bathroom. I could lock myself in and still have plenty of time to grab for some kind of a weapon. Hell, I could break the mirror for the shards if I needed to.

I scurried up the stairs and down the hall to my parents’ room. My legs felt like rubber, my lungs hurt for air, and my hair stuck to my face and body, a light layer of sweat cooling my skin.

I threw open their double doors and raced for the bedside table, hitting my leg on the bed frame as I rushed past.

“Shit,” I grunted, pain shooting through my shin. I fumbled for the phone, found it, and gripped the receiver.

But just then, he was at my back. A sob lodged in my throat as he wrapped his arm around my stomach, lifted me up, and yanked the phone out of my hand.

I breathed hard, my head falling back on his shoulder as he carried me away. My limbs were exhausted, and the fear had drained me. Everything felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

He stopped, leaning against what I thought was the wall next to the closet, and I used what strength I had left to alternate between pushing at his arms around me, trying to get him off, and batting for his head behind me, barely able to hit much while facing the wrong way.

But then he took one of my hands, clutching my fingers tight, and held it steady, even as I continued to pull and tug at his grasp.

Even with my resistance, he pulled my hand over my shoulder and pressed my fingers into his neck, the pulse of his vein there throbbing wildly against my fingertips.

He dropped his head into the back of mine, breathing heavy. “You know what I have to do to myself to get it to pump like that?” he whispered.

He sounded spent.

It was beating hard, and I could feel the sweat on his neck under my fingers. But so what? My pulse was pounding, too, you freak. We just ran up the stairs. What the hell was he talking about?

“Don’t worry,” he finally said, releasing my hand. “I’m not going to hurt you. Not tonight.”

I brought my hand down, grazing his collarbone, but there was no rosary there. And he didn’t have Damon’s scent.

His hold around me tightened for a moment, though, and I didn’t trust a damn thing he had to say. Then, he let me down, my feet touching the carpet.

But he wouldn’t loosen his hold.

“I wanna leave,” I told him.

If he wasn’t going to hurt me, then he could let me go. We had no cameras inside or outside the house, and no one else was here. No one would know who he was if he left now. I certainly couldn’t place him.

But then came his cocky response. “Then leave.”

“You’re not letting me,” I growled, trying to push against his arms.

“People aren’t going to let you do a lot of things, Winter.”

So he wanted me to make him let me go? What game was he playing?

I was done entertaining him.

“Please,” I said.

“Don’t walk away from me!” someone suddenly shouted down the hall.

I popped my head up, realizing someone else was in the house.

What?

My mom. She was home.

“Fuck,” the boy whispered.

I opened my mouth to shout, but he clamped his hand down over my mouth, hauled me up again, and I heard doors behind us swing open and realized he was hiding us in the walk-in closet.

I kicked and screamed, but the doors swung closed again, and his hand muffled my cry.

I heard the bedroom doors on the other side slam shut and a switch next to me click. He must’ve cut the light in the closet as he hid us behind the wall.

“No, no, no,” I heard my father argue. “Since you had to drag us back home tonight, I’m just trying to make sure we’re behind closed doors so the girls don’t have to witness your drunk-mother-tantrum.”

The guy holding me turned me around to face him, his arm circling my body and holding me to him tightly as his other hand stayed pressed over my mouth.

“Mom!” I called out, but his hand was so hard over my words, it barely carried. I breathed hard through my nose.

“Oh, yes, by alllllll means,” I heard my mother shout back. “Let’s take them to the next company function where your latest twenty-year-old slut can suck the sweat out of you in the men’s room with all of our friends outside!”

My ears perked, and for a moment I stopped fighting him.

“Is this one pregnant, too?” she went on. “Paying for another abortion and to keep her mouth shut about it is really going to nail home those good Catholic values we’ve tried to instill in the children. You’re such a piece of shit.”

“Say it again,” my father dared her.

Pregnant? Abortion? What?

I shook my head, clearing it, and called out again. “Mom! Dad!”

He held me so tight, my teeth cut into the inside of my mouth.

“You work for nothing and spend, spend, spend, you lazy bitch,” my dad continued, “so if I want a young piece of ass to bounce up and down on my cock once in a while, then I’d say I earned it!”

I winced. Young piece of ass? Oh, my God. What the hell were they doing?

“And you can smile and take out my credit card, go shopping, and shut the fuck up about it,” he told her.

A slap pierced the air, and I startled.

“I hate you,” my mother choked out. “I hate you!”

The springs in the bed squeaked, and it sounded like a struggle.

“We weren’t always like this!” my mom cried. “You wanted me. You loved me.”

“Yeah, I did. When you were a young piece of ass.”

Fabric ripped, and my mother growled as they fought. I froze, not fighting anymore and tears pooling so heavy they threatened to spill over.

“But thanks to my money,” Dad said, “you still have the tits.”

She cried out, and I heard another slap, and then grunts and groans, and I shook my head, starting to cry. But before I could think of what to do, the hands left my mouth and waist, and instead came up and covered my ears as he pulled me close.

“Shhhh,” he soothed, his mouth next to my temple.