23. Ava

AVA

I stared at my phone, willing it to buzz with his reply.

The silence between each passing second felt heavier, the stillness pressing against my chest.

“I can entertain you more than your phone, eh,” Pierre said in his sexy accent.

He gazed at me with hooded eyes thick with lust. His fingertips brushed along the low neckline of my dress.

Why shouldn’t I enjoy a steamy night twisted in the sheets with his bronzed, south of France body?

But my body refused to respond.

It wanted dark shadows and the scratch of rope. It wanted to be chased and tied up.

It didn’t want blond, pretty, and French.

I typed out another message, more pointed, more daring, hoping it would pull him out of whatever shadow he was lurking in.

Me: He’s touching me… and I think I like it.

I leaned into Pierre’s chest, tugging his arm tighter around me, trying to rouse some level of interest from my stubborn pussy. I nipped at his neck and checked my phone behind his back.

Still nothing.

I repressed a growl.

I would lure him out.

Me: I like this guy’s lips. I think I might kiss them to see how they taste.

I hit Send, my heart pounding in sync with the flashing cursor.

Still nothing.

My thoughts raced as I chewed the inside of my cheek.

He never stayed quiet for long. He was always watching, always there. The silence now was almost suffocating.

Lisa giggled. I looked up from the glow of the screen to watch her curl a lock of the guy’s hair around her finger.

I should be enjoying myself with this handsome stranger. Like Lisa was with hers. Instead, I was glaring at my phone screen.

I gripped my phone in my left hand as my lips brushed against Frenchie’s earlobe. The deep guttural noise he made vibrated against my jaw.

But it wasn’t the vibration I wanted.

I wanted my phone to vibrate with a response.

I nuzzled into Pierre’s neck as I tapped out another message from over his shoulder.

Me: I bet he has a big dick.

I massaged Pierre’s knee as I waited, my skin itching from desperation. I was being stupid baiting my stalker like this. But I couldn’t help myself.

I wanted him to respond with something.

Anything .

I just needed him to let me know he still cared.

With every passing second, I was getting more and more frustrated. I glared into the shadows of the bar and at the dark entrance and rubbed my hand farther and farther up his leg.

My fingers brushed against the Frenchman’s hardening cock. He let out a low growl.

But it only pissed me off that it was the wrong growl.

And still there was no response.

At least, not the one I wanted.

Pierre’s fingers twisted in my hair as he whispered hot and urgent in my ear, “I want to fuck you.”

He tried to kiss me but I turned and planted my ass on his lap so I could look out to the bar.

I ignored Pierre’s hands on my hips as I scanned the crowd for a shadow reading the text message I just sent.

Me: He wants me to go home with him…

If this didn’t get a reaction, I wasn’t sure what would. He couldn’t just disappear. Not after everything.

I leaned back, my breaths shallow, staring at the screen like it held the key to him.

Come on. Prove me right. Show me you’re still here.

But minutes passed and I got no reply.

It didn’t even look like he’d read it.

Fury heated my blood and I leaned into it as I leaned back onto Pierre’s cock.

I would hate-fuck the Frenchman instead, then. I’d hate-fuck him to make myself feel better that my stalker had given up on me.

Over the noise of the bar, I stared into the red eye of the nearest security camera as I shouted in Pierre’s ear, “I have a room at the Ritz.”

“Let’s go,” he replied.

I stood, already feeling like I was going to regret this decision.

Lisa pulled away from her own pair of French lips. Her hair was already a mess, lipstick smeared. She looked debauched. And ready for more.

“We’re heading back to the hotel,” I told her.

“Have fun you two.” She wiggled her fingertips at me and blew me a parting kiss.

But my smile was already sliding off my face.

I sent another message on the way out of the bar.

Me: Last chance. Or I’m going to fuck Frenchie’s brains out.

No response.

I slipped my phone into my tiny Chanel clutch, my heart cracking in two.

Pierre went to hail a cab.

I tugged him back from the curb. “Let’s walk.”

“It’s too far.”

I forced a smile. “Perfect to build up an appetite.”

He wrapped his arm around me and settled his hand against my ass, guiding me down the sidewalk. “I know a shortcut.”

I didn’t want to admit it, but I was giving my stalker yet another chance to stop me.

Pierre’s “shortcut” cut through the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery.

A row of mausoleums wound ahead on the gravel path and the darkness within each cobwebbed doorway was blacker than the last.

As Pierre tugged me along beside him, I wasn’t sure this was a good idea anymore.

I wasn’t even sure that we were still going in the right direction.

Towering trees cast shifting shadows in the dim light of poorly dispersed lamps.

The farther we walked, the more I doubted that the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery should even be open at this time of night.

There was certainly not a single soul in sight. At least not one living.

“Are you sure this is the way?” I asked, tugging against his iron grip.

Pierre smirked at me. “Of course. I am local, no?”

Pierre turned me down a side lane between a pale stone angel with a blackened face and an obelisk consumed by dark climbing vines.

I’d hoped to see the welcome sight of a wrought-iron gate and beyond it a busy street, a well-lit café filled with Parisians too tired to go home.

But as my eyes adjusted to even less light, I saw tangles of roots over a dead leaf-riddled path where the tombstones crowded in even more tightly, as if together they could protect themselves against the decay which had already seized them.

“There’s nothing down here,” I said lightly.

I wanted to give Pierre the benefit of the doubt that he’d gotten turned around, made a mistake. No pride had to be wounded .

We could just turn back.

We could laugh; wasn’t that usually how shortcuts went?

But when I pulled gently on Pierre’s arm, he patted my hand with a laugh and then left it there. My heart rate quickened when he tightened his grip over my fingers.

“Nothing down here?” he said incredulously. His accent was still charming, but when he smiled down at me, I couldn’t remember what I’d found so attractive about his eyes.

Perhaps it was just the night, but there was not the spark of life I remembered.

“You are quite mistaken, mon cherie. Victor Noir’s grave is this way.”

He urged me along faster and I resisted after a few stumbling steps.

“It’s getting late,” I said, trying to remain polite. “I’m tired now, so—”

“Too tired for the famous journalist with the infamous ‘bulge’?” Pierre’s tone was playful, joking. But he was holding on to me so hard it was starting to hurt.

“I’d like to go back,” I said as the shadows swallowed us.

I was no longer sure whether it was the low-hanging tree branches which grabbed at my dress or whether it was Pierre.

Claustrophobia brought a cold sweat to my skin and I shivered in the slight breeze which carried with it a damp, rotting odor. I no longer wanted to be touched.

But Pierre slung his arm over me and laughed. “What kind of journalism major doesn’t go two seconds out of her way to see the grave of Victor Noir? ”

A chill crept up my spine. Had I told Pierre that I was studying journalism?

I couldn’t remember bringing it up.

I tried to think rationally, but panic was taking over. I shook my head as if this was just a bad dream I could force myself out of.

My vision was playing tricks on me. Tree, tombstone, man, shadow—I couldn’t tell them apart. They were all coming for me.

Pierre shoved me forward, his fingers pinching painfully on my shoulder. “Come on, come on.”

His eyes, so dark and sunken into his face in the shadows, were fixed somewhere ahead in the mire of roots and stone.

He noticed me staring and seeing what was surely fear in my own wide eyes, he smiled, his teeth flashing bone white in the dark.

“It’ll be fun,” Pierre said with that horrific smile.

When I didn’t move, paralyzed in place with fear, he yanked at me. I resisted, heels digging into the pebbles along the path.

“No,” I said. “I don’t want to go with you.”

I wanted to be far away from here. I didn’t want this man’s hands on me; I’d never really wanted his hands on me.

I’d only wanted to make him jealous, to draw my shadow back to me.

It was his arms I sought, his breath on my neck I went out into the night to have. It was him.

But Pierre wasn’t going to let me go.

“Stubborn bitch,” he hissed under his breath .

He was dragging me against my will away from where anyone would hear me cry out for help and my stalker was nowhere to be seen.

My body was going to be used by another man, a plaything soiled by filthy hands, and he was not going to stop it.

He was gone. He’d called my bluff.

I was alone.

This I understood.

Pierre twisted a handful of my hair at the nape of my neck until pain flared and I gasped.

He hissed in my ear before he shoved me forward, “Stop fighting me, Ava.”

His accent dropped. Pierre wasn’t Pierre. He wasn’t even French.

And he knew my name.

My real name.

From his pocket he pulled something out. A blade flipped out and glinted despite the dark.

“You shouldn’t have gone digging.”

He had been sent to kill me.