Lights Out (Into Darkness, #1)

by Navessa Allen

If I’m the cat, what does that make you? I asked. The mouse? “I’m a mother fucking wolf,” Aly said,

kept hitting him until his head looked like a pulped pumpkin.

Say it, goddamn it. Just fucking tell him to stop like the mentally healthy, rational person you used to be before his videos took over your social media feed.

My entire life was devoted to caring for others. I wanted someone to take care of me for once. I wanted someone to want me. No, need me. I wanted a man so obsessed that he hacked into cameras to watch me when he couldn't sleep.

I didn’t want him morally grey. I wanted someone with a soul as black as night. Someone who would burn the world down for me and not lose a single minute of sleep over it.

She turned the knife over and ran the blade up my side, so close she probably shaved off some peach fuzz. “I won’t do it if you don’t promise to be a good boy,” she crooned. Praise kink: unlocked.

Please, God. Don’t let her have a fisting kink, I thought. Being used like a puppet was not something I wanted to experience.

Have you ever heard of the word boundaries? I texted the Faceless Man. Doesn’t sound familiar, he wrote back. Can you use it in a sentence? Goddamn it, this wasn’t funny. Not at all. My cheeks hurt because they were cold, not because of how wide I was grinning. Did you do any other nefarious things besides shovel and stock my fridge that I should know about? I asked. Watched me while I slept? Placed more hidden cameras?

Hot damn. Dom Josh could get it.

I shot up in bed, and for a second, I couldn’t see anything. Fear punched through me. Had the contacts rolled into the back of my eyes while I slept and severed my optic nerves? Was that even possible? Aly groaned somewhere nearby. “What is that sound?” “I don’t know. I’ve gone blind,” I said, voice laced with panic. Fuck, that was the second time I’d forgotten to disguise it. “What?” she yelped, and the mattress shifted with her movement. “Help me,” I whimpered, Batman-style, and yes, it was just as pathetic as it sounds. “Oh my god,” she said with a shaky laugh. “You’re not blind. Your dumb baklava slid sideways.”

The woman was down for kinky sex, knew how I liked my coffee, and was more than willing to aid in the murder of a rapist. What had I done to get so lucky?

“Are you saying that the couple who commits homicide together, stays together?” He snorted. “Too wordy. I prefer the couple who slays together, stays together.”

“Aly? Do you want to be my girlfriend? The position comes with snacks and orgasms and maybe a little light stalking.”

waiting for two hours in a cold autobody shop while my boyfriend’s car was repeatedly deep cleaned by a middle-aged black man named Lucius would do that to a woman. And no, Lucius did not appreciate being asked about his time in Azkaban.

He stood in a fluid motion. The red light must have been set on the floor somewhere near the foot of my bed because he bisected the beam, his massive form outlined on my far wall like some kind of kinky bat signal. Turn it on, and he will come – pun intended.