Niko
by
Serena Simpson
Love Me Harder #2
Chapter One
He had tortured her. Not on the outside, she could have handled that. It wouldn’t have been the first time she had been hit or kicked or well other things.
No, he had messed with her mind. She had nightmares seeing his fangs hanging, feeling his hot breath on her neck. The more she bottled them up, the worse they became.
She was becoming scared that someone might commit her. That someone of course was Rena, her best friend. She tried to avoid her nowadays. It was better for both of them this way.
She flipped the covers off, getting up. The pretense of sleep was long gone. She slipped on her work clothes and went out. It was only four a.m., but she would spend the rest of the night walking around the dark streets.
After what she had been through, the streets no longer scared her. She knew that there were real monsters out there and they only looked like men.
She felt the hair on her neck vibrate. He was following her again. She knew if she looked over her shoulder, there would be no one there. There had been no one there for months, but he was there somewhere.
She refused to say his name, as if saying it would make him appear. SB it was, it was the local twenty-four hour coffee shop, and it was also her little slice of comfort complete with great coffee. If she was inside, he would protect her from the outside. If she chose to walk, he would be so close she could touch him, even though she couldn’t see him.
She shook her head. These were the things she couldn’t tell anyone. They sounded insane. She was scared to even tell Rena and she told Rena almost everything they had been best friends forever.
She walked into SB, smiling at the two familiar faces. They were there most nights when she came in. One was a writer she knew, because they had talked several times. She said she got some of her best writing done at night.
The other was a friendly, elderly gentleman. His wife had passed a couple of months ago and nights were the hardest for him. The bed was too empty he would say.
She went up and greeted Jim, the barista. He was a twenty something college student who was working his way through. He was smart and nice. She always enjoyed talking to him.
“What brings you back, Dee?”
He had called her Mam more than once when they first met. She had found it imperative to make him stop that. He was making her feel old. When had thirty-one become old? She had finally convinced him to call her Dee.
“I couldn’t sleep again.” She looked into his bright sky blue eyes. He made her feel like she was outside. His dirty blonde hair fell into his face. If she was five years younger with more patience she would be all over him.
Now all she thought about was a cup of coffee and sleep that didn’t scare her.
“The usual?”
“Yes. Wait. No. Give me a pastry too, that one, the chocolate one that looks like pure sin.”
She took her glorified coffee drink and her pastry and found a nice stuffed chair to sit in. She set the pastry down and looked at it.
She could almost see her mother’s disapproving face. ‘Dee.’ Her mother would say. ‘Remember, you have to keep your body slender. How else will you get a man?’
She would love to tell her mom about slender bodies and men, but her mom was no longer with her. She had learned the hard way that having a man wasn’t always what it was cracked up to be.
Dee picked up the pastry and sunk her teeth into it. Damn it was good. Maybe she would just eat and eat until the opposite sex never looked at her again. She was okay with being the local cat woman.
She turned to the window and licked her lips, taunting without remorse the imaginary male watching her.
When the pastry was gone and the coffee had warmed her insides, she slumped back in the chair. She wrapped the handle of the purse around her arm and then stuck the rest under her ass.
Yes, she was paranoid. She deserved to be after all that had happened to her. Then she closed her eyes, hoping she might cat nap for the next two hours.
She got some sleep, waking at the occasional noise. Once she swore her invisible body guard was standing over her. She felt a warm sensation. It made her tired and she slipped off to sleep.
When she woke, four hours had passed. It was the most sleep she had gotten since the kidnapping. She almost felt human. She got up and stretched. Jim was gone and the new day was in full swing.
She shivered as she thought of how she had been taken as bait to capture Rena. They had both made it out alive, but she would never be the same again.
She needed to go. She was already late. She worked for Aran’s Dare. They were a large security company with contracts all over the world. She had always wondered how a security company became that big.
She knew from her best friend, who happened to be living with the big guy himself, that they had government and military contracts. Wow, she had no idea when she got the job.