Page 62 of Lost to the Woods

I don’t know what’s happening.

I don’t knowwhyit’s happening.

But he clearly does.

I get hysterical and jerk against him, trying to push him out of my way. “Let me go! Please, we have to help them!”

But he doesn’t budge. “Help who? Not even a single tooth of them remains. Because of you.” His voice is too calm, too cold.

A mewl chokes out of me. My knees give up under me, but he holds me up, body pinning me with impossible strength. I can’t move. I can’t even think straight.

“Wha-what did you do?!”

“I let the woods eat,” he whispers, like it’s holy.

My eyes flood. My stomach clenches. Terror scrapes up my throat and spills out in ugly sobs.

He tilts his head slowly like he's watching me die from the inside. Like the sight delights him. “You look so fucking pretty when you cry,” he says. “When I take everything you love from you. When there’s nothing left for you to hold on to. No one left to save you. Just me, taking what’s mine.”

The tears blur everything, but I still see the knife. Still feel it as he lowers it. Down. Across my chest. Not cutting. Not yet. Just… exploring. My breath catches. My skin prickles. He presses the edge lightly over the swell of my breast, watching the way the cool metal makes me jittery.

“You're trembling,” he murmurs. “But not from just fear, are you?”

I choke on a sob. Shake my head. Try to shrink from him, even as my body betrays me, reacting to the cold, the adrenaline, the impossible intimacy of pain and dread and his goddamn voice in my ear.

Heat pools low in my belly, no matter how hard I fight against it, making me sick.

The knife slides lower as he slips the blade under the center of my bustier, slicing downward in one smooth motion. The fabric parts with a whisper, air hitting my bare skin as the corset falls open. My breasts spill free, nipples pebbling instantly under his gaze.

I gasp, arms instinctively trying to cover myself, but he nudges my wrist with the edge of the knife, ordering my hands away.

“Don’t,” he growls. “Don’t hide from me now.”

I whimper as fresh tears distort my vision. The fabric falls away completely, exposing my jutting tits to the camera that’s still recording.

He drags the flat of the knife over the side of my breast. Just a touch. Just enough to leave a chill trail that makes me want to scream.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” he murmurs. “Your body knows me. The way it listens to me. Even now. Even after you’ve heard your friends being ripped apart.”

He’s lying. Just messing with me. I don’t accept this… It can’t be true.

I want to tear off his mask and spit in his face. Kick him in the balls. Yank the knife out of his hand and make him bleed.

But I’m paralyzed. Trapped. My legs are jelly. My brain is static. The terror and the grief are too much to bear, and I shut it all down.

He traces the tip of the blade around my hard peak, teasing. The sensation is shocking, and I’m disgusted that my body reacts to the caress. My breath hitches. My back arches. A traitorous throb between my legs, a choked-down moan in my throat.

He watches intently, breathing harder now. “Look at you,” he purrs, dragging the knife across my chest to my other nipple. “You little slut.”

His hand shifts just a bit lower before he cuts.

A tiny slash. Shallow, but sharp, on my ribcage just below my breasts. The pain makes me yelp. The blood wells up, a thin line of red like a ribbon unraveling.

The knife glides down my stomach like a whisper, cold and deliberate, following the blood. I feel every inch of its path—over my belly button to the zipper of my jean shorts, the metal teeth catching for a second before the blade trails lower, grazing the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. My breath hitches as it traces down to my knee, then back up, slipping under the cuff of my shorts. With a sharp twist of his wrist, there’s a sudden yank, and a rip. The denim splits beneath the blade, the sound too loud in the eerie quiet of the woods.

“No, don’t do this!” I beg as horror shots through my body, and with all the strength I have in me, I shove him off me.

He barely even shifts back. All it seems to do is to amuse him. He drops the camera, catching my wrists in his one hand, and he pins my arms to the tree above my head, restraining me.

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