Table of Contents
Book #2 Sneak Peek Pretty When You Scream by Jas P. Dane exclusively here @ Dark Spice Mag
(Book 2 Sneak Peek below)
Spoiler Alert - Book #1 Review via Plot Twist & Tea:
Book #2 SNEAK PEEK
About Author
Jas P. Dane, author of dark & smutty contemporary mafia romance & erotic horror with dangerous MMCs and the objects of their obsession.
Authors Notes - Trigger Warnings
This is a dark, erotic horror romance.
Possible triggers include
- stalking
- abduction
- dubious consent
- bondage
- gore
- murder
- gun and knife violence
- knife play
Prologue
I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that's when I saw him in the act. Worse, he saw me, too.
His dark gaze burned into me from behind his white skull mask.
He's the reason I've been afraid to sleep at night. You could say I became obsessed with the killer. I couldn't get the image of him slashing that guy from my head—one of the town assholes, but to see him get sliced up like that? So much blood.
When I close my eyes, I see the mask. When I open my eyes, I see the mask—in the shadows, watching. Towering, broad-shouldered, and dressed in black. He is there and gone in an instant. Or is it just my imagination?
There are theories about who he could be, but the worst theory is mine. It's a dark secret, and I haven’t told a soul.
Around Halloween, I attended a costume party and did something I’d never done before: I had a one-night stand. The thing is, I never saw his face. His one condition when he stole me away into a dark room? That he kept on the white skull mask.
Bethany
I’m running in the dark toward screams that go suddenly, deadeningly quiet like the air was cut off from their mouths in an instant. The following silence is more terrifying than their cries, chilling me to the bone. A door suddenly slams shut, extinguishing the last rays of light, and I gasp, coming to a halt in the pitch black.
My heart pounding in my ears, I fumble with my phone before clumsily dropping it.
Stepping forward, the tip of my shoe hits something hard, and I teeter on the brink of face-planting on marble. Panicked and on my knees, I slide my hands across the floor in search of my lifeline wrapped in a flower-etched casing. My breathing hitches when I hear something. A shuffle? Footsteps?
I try to quiet my panting. But even with my mouth closed, my unsteady breath is too loud through my nose. Am I alone in the dark? Is somebody there?
My heartbeat thunders in my ears as I stand, backing away from something—a dark energy. Or is it just my imagination?
Sidestepping until I find the wall, I steady myself, trying to calm my breathing as I reach for a would-be weapon. I trace my fingertips along the ornate curve of a picture frame or mirror, in search of one of the heavy, valance candlesticks spaced throughout the long hallway. My hip rams into a wooden console table, forcing me around to the other side. Something glass falls off and breaks—fuck! I should have stayed on the ground and found my goddamn phone.
But there’s no time to panic.
It’s not me who is in danger.
It’s my friends. Albi. Mary.
This is what they get for driving up here from New York City to see me. I could have warned them, but I didn’t. Instead, I selfishly basked in the comfort of their familiar faces, and I flashed a fake smile that was masking a lie; a great, dark deception that has become my life.
To think that it all began with a masked man. With the spilling of blood at a party, while I was tucked away in a bedroom. He promised to distract me from the mahem, and I dizzily obliged. He tied me up. He filled me up. And I… I couldn’t get enough. Mind-blowing sex with a stranger while people were dying. I did that. So then, I deserve to suffer.
Then again, this wasn’t the kind of thing life prepares you for, and he wasn’t just any stranger. He was the most eligible bachelor, the heir born into the premier family of Sleepy Hollow, one with murderous secrets. He was all these things when he stole me away that fateful night.
“You’re pretty when you scream,” he whispered before leaving me on the street outside my place. Then came the stalking, the riddles, the notes in red ink.
Fast forward just a little, and look what I’ve become! Now, I’m the one hiding behind a mask of lies.
My searching fingers finally find the valance, and I tighten my grip with a yank until the candlestick breaks free. Hastily, I turn, backing to the wall, my eyes flooding with guilty tears as a whimpering sound escapes my lips.
Thanks to me, two innocent young women have been sucked into this deadly game. I should have told them to leave. But I wanted to believe that everything would be okay. After all, didn’t I sacrifice my freedom for a good cause? To keep myself and loved ones from certain death?
God, their faces when I told them. Me, of all people. I’m the lucky girl who married the billionaire atop Skull Hill.
If only they knew he wasn’t the man they remembered from high school. Not Mr. Gorgeous and Ivy League-bound, who made all the girls drool. No, it was not the rightful Greylinn heir—not the man but the twin monster—whom I was forced to marry. He may look the same as they remember, but I know more than anybody that looks can be so utterly deceiving. It’s the scars beneath the mask that would give him away to anyone suspicious. But nobody is looking up here to solve the murder spree happening down in town.
Nobody but me, isolated in my forbidden knowledge.
When another door slams shut, I stumble, falling into a cold, stone statue—goddam, I need my phone. Stupid, girl. Okay, breathe. Think. I…know this statue. It must be the one at the end of the hall, just before the corner to Landon Greylinn’s secret room. Skull’s secret room. The real Landon Greylin is dead and gone. Replaced by his secret other. The child given away at birth, the forgotten one, the scarred one, the vengeful one, the psycho.
I hate how part of me has sympathy for him and knows he isn’t all bad. I felt his humanity. I felt it when he gave me the key to the warehouse adjoining my bookstore. He seemed to know it would make me happy. On some level, he even seemed to want me to be happy. And I felt it when he gave me the necklace, which he said was for protection. His tone was heavy and earnest when he said it was even meant to protect me from himself.
Edging the corner of the wall, my stomach drops hard at a strange hissing sound—what…?
“You dropped your phone,” comes the sharp whisper of a male voice.
“Landon?” I cry out, partly relieved.
“Your voice is shaky,” he rasps, stepping close enough that I can feel his breath. I can also smell the blood on him. “Who have you killed?” I gulp.
“You sound scared. You know that fucking turns me on,” he says in a husky voice.
“My friends!” I cry as his hand slips into my hair. He offers no consolation, only the tight squeeze of his fist on my scalp as he forces me down on my knees.
Regardless of how I feel about the situation, the sound of his zipper and his deepening breath make my mouth salivate for what’s coming next. Within seconds, his big, fat cock is pushing between my lips, and my mouth widens to accommodate his still-hardening girth. My panties getting wet as I suck him off isn’t something I can control. “Oh… fuck, yeah,” he exhales, sliding his shaft back and forth over my tongue. His breathing grows heavy, his thrusts more urgent, and he swells so big in my mouth that I can barely contain him without choking.
When he groans, it resonates in my ears, reverberating through me. When he comes down my throat, I swallow hard. And when he pulls out, my hand drops between my thighs, wishing my pussy didn’t burn for reciprocation.
But I can tell by his fading steps in the pitch-black hall that he isn’t feeling generous. He’s teasing me. Making me wait.
“Where’s my phone?” I whine.
“Right in front of you,” he says, calmly.
“Where’s Albi and Mary?”
“They’re fine.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He says nothing.
“Stop the games!”
“Life is a game, Bethany,” he chuckles. “Then you die.”
“Turn on a light!” I snap, the sound of his footsteps receding down the hall.
I reach out along the floor, and there it is. He wasn’t lying. God, that’s a relief. Quickly, I raise my phone to my face, fingers pressing along the edge to get some light. I’ve got no bars, and the battery is almost dead. I shine the flashlight around the corner of the cold, marble hall. Where did that asshole go?
The slam of the door makes me jump, and tears well in my eyes. He gets off on my fear, so… Was that the mission? Were his cronies told to chase my friends, just to scare the shit out of me? At least I could have gotten something out of the deal. But, no.
I hit dial with a livid huff. “Turn on the lights!” I scream when he answers. “Power is out,” he says simply. “Sure, it is. Call your men off my girls!” I shout.
What kind of horror show am I living in when I must beg the town slasher for help? This nightmare only makes sense for one. Twisted. Reason.
Because that slasher is my husband.
Till bloody death do us part.
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Trigger Warnings
- stalking
- abduction
- dubious consent
- bondage
- gore
- murder
- gun and knife violence
- knife play
