Page 20 of Fright Night
On my way to her room, I drop a duffle bag of clothing into the spare empty room—soon to be mine. The bag is a symbol of what’s to come, and it’s one she’ll understand.
In her bedroom, my eyes take a second to adjust, given the lack of light coming from the window; her curtains sealed nice and tight.
Oakley’s stretched on her back, one leg half off the mattress, which spreads her legs into a V beneath the comforter. Hair is tossed over her face, which is pushed into the pillow. Her breaths are steady, her sleep probably filled with happiness and smiles and so unaware of the monster hovering over her.
She can keep sleeping—for now.
Smiling, I tug the rope from my pocket and move around the bed, tying each limb to a bedpost while checking her to see if she wakes. Knocked out from a day of event planning and stress searching for me, she does not.
Since I already rooted around her room before taping myself the other night, I’m aware there’s a black satin sleep mask in her nightstand’s drawer, which I retrieve. Testing the elastic once, I push it over her head and into place so when she eventually wakes, it’ll be to darkness.
Then I settle onto the end of the bed, pull one knee up, and watch her sleep.
TEN
OAKLEY
“Trickster.”
I’m sleeping.Definitelysleeping. Hearing my Knox-given nickname crooned in my ear is simply in my mind and he’s not here.
He wouldn’t dare sneak in again.
Oh, who am I kidding? In the last forty-eight hours alone, he’s crept into my bedroom to jack off onto my back while I was asleep, broke into my house after spending the entire night tormenting me, and then stalked me to a restaurant.
Yet again, there’s a feeling of being watched; the prickle of something beingoff, even before discovering the proof. That’s what’s drawing me from the sweet bliss of slumber and away from the darkness.
Or…that’s what’s supposed to happen, but as my eyes open, it’s to ongoing darkness.Reallydark, accompanied by the sensation of cloth resting along the bridge of my nose.
A blindfold?
Fucking asshole.
I go to move, only to realize too late my limbs are stuck. Legs in a wide V, arms the same, and when I try to bring them in closer, something around my wrists tighten.
“What the hell did you do to me?”
Silence.
I’d be more scared if not knowing the presence is Knox, and that he wouldn’t risk our parents’ wrath by doing any permanent damage to me.
Huffing, I drop my head back onto the pillow. “At least remove the blindfold.”
The bed shifts with movement, and a second later, the cloth is shockingly pulled off my head and tossed aside. The scrap of black resting beside me is my sleep mask from my side table, used infrequently.
Then a face appears, attached to a form crouched over me—and that same mask from the video covering his face. All dark except the sewn mouth and two Xs for eyes in a fluorescent orange.
“Jesus fuckingChrist!”Thatwas not what I expected . “What thefuckis wrong with you? You have some serious maniacal genes, I’m telling you.”
Being yanked from sleep and forced immediately into high alert by the horror movie copycat hovering over me was not necessary. Regardless of being aware who’s behind the mask, no one needs that kind of heart attack in the middle of the night.
I jerk against what I now see is rope tied around my wrists and ankles, and it worries me he managed to do so without me waking. My body was knocked outthathard?
Or he drugged me, which I wouldn’t put past the psycho.
“Untie me.” I jerk my limbs, attempting to punch and kick him, but the rope only gives a few inches of leeway, which means nothing happens other than a few awkward knees into his legs.
He remains mute.
