Page 68 of Lost to the Woods

The trees are closing in. I can’t see straight. I can’t think. I’m shaking so hard I can barely stand. The exhaustion is slowly hitting me. I trip over my own legs and fall again.

“Get up,” I whisper to myself. “Get up, get up, get up—”

I haul myself forward on hands and knees, then stagger upright. More blood runs down my body, and I’m not even sure what exactly is bleeding.

I hear them in the distance, whistling. The same noise we heard at the Airbnb. Now I’m sure they were there that night, whatever they are.

“You were made for this.”

A sound rips out of me. I don’t know if I’m crying or laughing anymore. I feel delirious.

“You’re already ours.”

Something brushes my hair. Too soft to be a branch. Too deliberate to be the wind.

I try to scream, but my voice dies in my throat.

Then, arms wrap around me from behind—tight, possessive, so strong.

“Got you,” Ghost breathes against my ear.

He flips me like I weigh nothing, and suddenly I’m flat on the ground. Cold dirt bites into my back, sticks and stones digging into my skin. My legs kick wildly beneath him.

“Guess what I’m gonna do with you now?”

I swing. Fist slamming against his chest, weak and frantic. I claw at his mask, try to rip it off, push him away. But he doesn’t budge. He’s solid, heat and muscle and menace, pressing me down like I’m prey he’s already caught.

He shifts his body, so close I feel every twitch of his muscle, and the knife appears again. The blade glides up slowly, just a hair from my skin, until it hovers at my throat.

I freeze, gasping, every muscle locked, paralyzed by fear. My eyes flutter closed, and I brace for pain, for death, for whatever twisted version oflovelives inside his hollow heart.

But the cut never comes.

I open my eyes slowly and look at him. The mask hides what’s underneath it, but his body is warm and familiar, his chest rises and falls the same way it always does around me.

He still seems like my Ghost.

Then why am I trembling from head to toe? I can’t stop it. I’m naked, covered in sweat and tears and little rivulets of blood. And it’s all his doing.

“Please, please, please…”

He tilts his head. “Please what?”

“I-I want to go home,” I whisper, broken.

He laughs—a low rasp that doesn’t sound human anymore. “Thisishome now, baby,” he tells me, like it isn’t the most psychotic thing he’s ever said. “You were afraid of losing me, huh? Now you don’t need to worry about that. You’re stuck here. With me. Forever.”

His hands, still gloved, roam down my body—slow and greedy. They squeeze my breasts hard, smearing blood across my skin, making me gasp. He drags his palms over my belly, down to my hips, gripping like he owns me. Then, lower still.

He exhales heavily through the mask as his leather-clad fingers brush between my legs. “Your swollen little pussy is so wet and ready.”

I hate him.

I fucking hate him.

But my body doesn’t care.

It’s betraying me in the filthiest way—squirming beneath him, clenching around nothing, slick and needy, aching for the very monster holding me down. My thighs twitch, nipples stiffand throbbing, breath catching in my throat like I’m about to cry or cum or both.

---