Arrogant Monster

Chapter 3 Episode 3

I gasp when the first wail sings through the air. I turn my gaze out towards the empty road behind us. “Ambulance,” I guess.

He shakes his head. “No. Police.”

He nods once, crisply as if reaching a decision, then opens the passenger side door and gestures for me to get in.

“Time to go,” he says casually.

I look at the passenger seat and then back at him. “You’re driving?”

“Yes. You’re in no fit state to drive, and I’m not interested in taking another plunge into the next river we find. But if you’d like to stay, be my guest.”

There’s plenty in there that I could argue with. Plenty in there that I should argue with. But I make the mistake of looking at his cobalt blue eyes, and that’s what seals the deal.

I get into the car, and we drive.

It’s been fourteen months since I’ve seen a woman.

This one was worth the wait.

She’s slumped limply against her seat, skin ghostly, stare vacant. She looks almost lifeless. A china doll who would move anywhere I put her. Her hair is plastered down the sides of her face and water droplets still sparkle across the tops of her breasts. She’s soaking the seat through, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

She turns, looking through me more than at me. “Huh?”

I lean over to grab the seatbelt and put it on for her. She smells of lilacs and champagne, and my d**k stiffens in my pants almost instantaneously.

It’d be easy to say that this would happen for any female I saw today. Over a year of captivity reduces a man to his most animalistic instincts. But I know in my marrow that that’s not true.

It isn’t because she’s a woman.

It’s because she’s this one.

Pink lips, soft as a cloud. Blushing cheeks. Pale green eyes like the highest leaf on a tree right when the dawn begins to break.

The latch of the belt clicks into place. My hand brushes her chest as I withdraw it. She’s cinched up in too many layers of lace and fabric for it to be s****l in the least, but something about that faint contact makes me shiver regardless.

The whole time, she just watches me blankly.

I’m lucky to have found her in this state. Panicked, vulnerable, broken. She’s as much on the run as I am, albeit in very, very different ways. I have to capitalize on this moment as much as I can before she starts waking up.

Before she starts fighting back.

So I pull the car out and resume driving, heading in the same direction she’d been going in. The vehicle groans and shudders at first, but it evens out as we pick up speed. The sirens grow louder.

It takes a few miles, but the girl slowly regains her senses. She sees my eyes flitting between the rearview mirror and the road ahead, and eventually, she makes the connection.

“Are those sirens for you?” she asks quietly. The only other sound is the hum of the highway.

I keep my eyes forward. “Yes.”

I can feel her looking at me. Not the way she did when we first met, in that stunned, cautiously hopeful way that a sleeping person looks around at the contents of their dream. This time, her eyes are sharp and critical. Cynical, even. They’ve seen things that broke her, and now, they’re always primed and ready to see more of the same.

“What did you do?” she asks. Softer this time. More cautious.

“I disobeyed a man who didn’t like being disobeyed.”

Behind us, I see the first flickers of red and blue lights casting up against the canopy. They’re a long way back, but closing in fast. The sirens get louder and louder with every passing second. I have to make a move. Quickly.

I slow the car down, I’m searching, I’m searching—perfect.

A barely-there little offshoot of dirt-packed path leads into the woods. The mouth of the path, marked by two oaks as thick around as my waist, is just wide enough to let this beaten-to-death car through.

I whip the wheel smoothly to the right. Kinsley screams, but I ignore it. I’m perfectly in control. One tire bumps off the road, then two, three, four, then we’re bumping along and leaving the lights of the highway behind us. The forest swallows us up.

I get us about a quarter-mile in, hopefully deep enough that no passing headlights will reflect off the car. I kill the engine and sit in silence. I can hear Kinsley swallow.

“What are we doing?” she gulps.

“Be quiet.” I look up again at the rearview mirror. Just barely visible through row after row of looming pines, I see a caravan of cop cars scream past. When they’re gone, it’s silent again.

I feel Kinsley’s eyes on me and I turn to regard her. In the moonlight filtering down through the treetops, she’s ethereally beautiful. Her eyes glow and the soft whisper of her breathing is erotic in a way I didn’t know such a thing could be.

What’s strangest of all is that she isn’t as terrified as I expected. Or maybe she is, but she just doesn’t have the capacity to feel that level of fear anymore. Rest your hand on a hot stove for too long and you’ll lose all sensation in it. I get the feeling that she’s fleeing serious pain.

“What do they want with you?” she asks.

“They want to put me back in a cell.”

The green in her eyes shimmers. I’m half-tempted to reach out and clean the scabbed blood from the corner of her lip, but I keep my hands tucked in my lap.

“You… you mean… you were in prison?”

“I was. Not anymore. And I’m not going back.”

She looks down at my clothes. Dark, crusted, and anonymous, they’ve seen better days, though to call them “mine” is a stretch. They were in the duffel bag that was waiting for me at the first contact point after I broke out. I had just enough time to unearth it before that plan went to s**t and I ended up tromping through the woods in search of a new way to freedom.

Fucking Petro. My best friend could’ve picked out a change of clothes that looked a little less like a potato sack. I’m sure he thought it was hilarious.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” I tell Kinsley. “You just have to cooperate.”

The blunted fear in her face recedes for a moment before it’s replaced with indignation. “Meaning what?” she asks. “If I don’t cooperate, then I have every reason to be afraid of you? That’s a threat, not a reassurance.”

She stiffens and leans away from me. I’m not sure what she was expecting—she got in the car with a man from the woods twice her size. She’s lucky she’s still breathing.

Her eyes flicker to the handle of the door where the lock is.

“I wouldn’t run if I were you,” I advise her.

“Because you’d come after me?”

“I’m better at running than you realize,” she snaps.

“I think that’s truer than even you realize, princess.”

Her mouth clasps shut. The black makeup rimming her eyes has run into angry streaks down her face. It’s beautiful in its own way. I’ve always been drawn to broken things.

“All I need is to get to my next pickup point,” I explain. “Once I get there, you won’t have to see or hear from me ever again.”

“Why do you need me at all?” she asks.

“You’re going to be my alibi.”

Our heads snap in unison to her phone. I hadn’t even noticed it underneath all that wet fabric. She reaches for it, but I grab it before she can.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you answer that.”

I see a dark flame light up her eyes. She’d seemed docile when she’d first gotten into the car. But then again, she was still bathing in the after-effects of shock.

So maybe she’s not as tame as I’d thought. Which only makes my aching c**k harder to ignore.

She stares at me, her lips parting ever-so-slightly. Is she doing that on purpose? Does she know how distracting that is? My d**k twitches erratically, like a starving man smelling meat for the first time in fourteen endless months.

“They’ll be looking for me,” she says in a small voice. “The search will lead them right to you. Let me answer.”

“So you can give me away? I think not.”

“So I can throw them off.”

“I’ll be long gone before then,” I assure her. “But if it means that much to you, fine—I’ll let you take the call.”

I press “ACCEPT” and put it on speaker, then place the phone on the dashboard between us.

A man’s voice fills the car. “Kinsley?” he screeches. “Kinsley!”

“Tom,” she replies softly. “I’m here.”

“Here?” he repeats. “No, you are not. You’re clearly not f*****g here.”

“Where the f**k are you?” he demands.

She throws a tentative glance my way. “I just needed… some space.”

“So you took the fuckin’ wedding car and ran? What the hell were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking!” she snaps. Strangely enough, I’m glad to hear her voice rise in her own defense. “I was scared, Tom.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. It was a little goddamn spat. It happens all the time. You’re just being overdramatic, as per usual.”