Tag: suspense

What was an appropriate punishment?

Judah wasn’t sure.

Running wasn’t acceptable behaviour and Piper already knew that. She had chosen to break the rules knowing it would make him angry and that he would have no choice but to punish her, and it would have to be a severe enough punishment that she didn’t try something like this again.

They were a couple.

Couples lived together.

It wasn’t like he was asking Piper to do anything crazy.

He really didn’t understand what was wrong with her. He gave her everything she wanted, he was completely and utterly devoted to her.

Why couldn’t she see that?

Why couldn’t she see that she was his whole world?

Suddenly, overwhelming stillness pervaded the night.

Piper had been crying ever since he’d found her trying to squeeze out the bathroom window. He’d dragged her back inside, then through the house and upstairs to their bedroom where he had tossed her onto the bed.

Now she had fallen quiet.

Was something wrong with her?

Panic spiked through him.

Those months without her had been the worst of his life, he wasn’t going through that again.

His belt was in his hands as he’d been contemplating using it in her punishment, but he dropped it as he rushed to the bed to check on Piper.

She was lying perfectly still but her eyes were open, and they widened with fear as she saw him get closer.

Fear?

Why was she afraid of him?

“Piper?” He reached out and brushed the back of his knuckles across her cheek. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t hurt me, please. I’m sorry. I won’t be bad again,” she whimpered. She still wasn’t moving and she held her body stiffly, as though bracing for the impact of whatever blow was coming.

Instead of hitting her he scooped her up and sat on the bed with her cradled on his lap. Her body was still tense, as though she suspected this was some sort of trick.

“I love you, Piper. Everything I’ve done to you in the past and everything that I’m going to do to you in the future is because I love you. You’re my gorgeous, hot, sexy, sweet princess, my world revolves around you.” He touched his lips to her temple, tilted her face up to drop a kiss to her lips, then he tucked her head under his chin and just held her.

Bit by bit Piper relaxed against him. “I love you too, Judah,” she whispered.

She had to get out of here.

She had to.

It was the only thing in the world she cared about right now.

Not the raging headache hammering at her temples like a drill gone into overdrive.

Not the horrible nausea swimming in constant circles in her stomach.

Not the overwhelming sense of dizziness that made it fee like she was walking on a carousel on which someone had turned the speed up to high.

She didn’t care about any of that.

Her only focus was on leaving this house.

“Piper,” Judah called out her name in a sing-song fashion as though they were kids playing hide and go seek.

But this wasn’t a game.

She was fighting for her life.

She loved Judah, she probably always would, but he was crazy and if she didn’t get out of here he would end up killing her.

Of that she was certain.

Carefully easing the window open, terrified that she might make a noise and alert him to where she was, Piper crawled out the very small bathroom window.

And got stuck.

Her head and one arm were through, out in the warm night air, so close to freedom they could feel it. The rest of her was stuck in the bathroom, in the prison that would soon become her tomb.

She struggled, she wriggled, she pushed and she pulled.

None of it did any good.

The only thing she achieved was wearing out her already weak body.

“Found you,” Judah sounded excited and not angry, at least that was something.

“I-I’m s-sorry,” she stammered hoping to appease him.

“I know you are.” His hand rested on her backside, caressing it softly. Then he slapped it, hard, hard enough to make her yelp in pain. “But you must be punished all the same.”

Piper wondered what the love of her life, her husband, the father of her child, had in store for her. Whatever it was she knew it wouldn’t be good.

Finally his life was back to normal.

Back to being perfect.

Judah hummed happily as he stirred the soup on the stove. He was cooking homemade pumpkin soup because it was Piper’s favorite, it was a sort of welcome home meal. Although she had been with him for almost a week now all of that time she had been burning up with a raging fever and slipping in and out of consciousness, delirious whenever she was awake.

But now she truly back with him, and this time she was never leaving.

Didn’t she know he couldn’t live without her? Didn’t she know that she was his oxygen and that without her he would shrivel up and die?

He wanted to pick her up and take her to bed to ravish that beautiful body of hers but he was trying hard to be a gentleman. This had all been a shock to her and she had been sick, a combination of the wound he’d given her when he’d gotten her back getting infected and the flu he believed, she needed time to adjust. But once she had all bets were off.

Right now though he wanted to do something special for her, something to celebrate them reuniting. Something that showed her how much he loved her and how glad he was to have her back home again.

Leaving the soup on the stove he went to check on her. “Piper, I was cooking trying to come up with something and . . .” he trailed off as he stepped into the living room.

It was empty.

Piper was gone.

Where could she be? He had the place locked up tight, he had no intention of letting her get away again. She had to be hiding around here somewhere and when he found her he was going to have to punish her.

He was done being a gentleman, it was time to claim what was rightfully his.

She was being thrown through the air, and then caught, and thrown again.

There were other things flying around beside her.

Balls.

Bright, colourful balls.

Someone was juggling her along with the balls.

A clown.

A funny looking clown with a big red nose, crazy blue hair, and a green and yellow striped suit. He was dancing as he juggled her and she laughed at the antics of the wayward clown.

As she watched him he began to change.

Those eyes, those lips, that mop of curly hair, the dimples. She knew them all.

It was him.

The man she loved and the man she hated.

The man who would never let her go.

Piper felt hot. Too hot. Like there was a fire inside her. She moaned, and moved restlessly on the bed trying to escape the stifling heat.

“Piper?”

His voice was like a cool balm on her flushed skin. It shouldn’t be. His voice should fill her with unimaginable terror.

“Are you with me?”

Unfortunately she was but she didn’t think that was what he meant. Piper was having a little trouble concentrating because of a raging headache.

“You have a fever,” he was telling her. “Your wound got infected, you’ve been floating in and out for the last four days.”

Her wound?

Right, he had hit her over the head back at her apartment when he had grabbed her.

“Where are we?” she croaked, she needed to know how bad things were for her.

“Home,” Judah replied, picking up her hand and kissing it.

She had fought tooth and nail and almost died escaping from Judah’s home last time, now she was back and the chances of her ever getting free again were virtually zero.

Piper couldn’t deal with this right now, so she closed her eyes and let sleep wash her away.

Piper gasped and dropped her kindle as the lights suddenly went out.

Power outage or something more sinister?

That was the first thought that jumped into her mind. She was what most people would call a pessimist but she liked to think of herself as a realist. It wasn’t being paranoid if you were right.

And unfortunately she was right more often than not about things like this.

Leaving her kindle discarded on the floor where it had landed she slowly stood up. Despite her natural inclination to believe the worst she tried to convince herself that she was wrong. She had chosen this apartment for a reason. It had a doorman and a great security system. It was huge with hundreds of apartments, safety in numbers and all that.

This had to be a power outage.

It had to be.

They’d been going through a huge hot spell, day after day of sweltering heat. The nights were almost worse, they were stifling, they felt like they were smothering you, without the sun it should cool down a little but it didn’t. And the constant running of everyone’s air conditioning had already knocked the power out several tines.

That was all that had happened now.

Piper crept through her apartment, trying to remember where she had left her phone so she could call down to the front desk and find out when the power would be coming back on.

The shadows danced but she couldn’t tell if it was because there was actually something there or if it was just her imagination.

A few seconds later she got her answer.

Pain exploded in her skull as something slammed into the back of her head.

She tried to turn, tried to see who her attacker was, but she was already tumbling quickly towards unconsciousness.

It didn’t matter anyway.

She already knew who he was.

He had found her.

Again.