The Predator (Dark Verse #1)

by RuNyx

Tristan 'The Predator' Caine. They called him the predator. His reputation preceded him. He rarely went on the hunt but when he did, it was over. When he did, he went straight for the jugular. No distractions. No playing around. For all his unruffled attitude, the man was more lethal than the knife cutting into her thigh. He was also the reason she had come to the party. She was going to kill Tristan Caine. ***

"This spot, right here," he spoke quietly, pressing the tip of the knife against a spot right under her jaw on her tilted neck. "It's an easy spot. I nick you here, and you die before you can blink."

"This spot. You die but it won't be clean."

He moved the knife again to a spot near the base of her neck. "And this… You know what happens if I cut you here?"

"You'll feel pain," he continued, undaunted. "Bleeding to death. You will feel every drop of blood that leaves your body.” His voice rolled over her skin. “Death will come, but much, much later. And the pain will be excruciating."

She remembered the disbelief she had felt hitching a ride back to the hotel. Disbelief at her own guts. Disbelief at her failed attempt. Disbelief at how close she'd come. Disbelief at him.

"Death isn't the main course, sweetheart. It's the dessert."

Why did all men around her behave like nominees for Asshole of the Year?

"Fearless, as I said. It can be a dangerous thing."

Her father was a shark and she could not bleed. Not a single drop. But in learning not to bleed, she'd also learned how to draw blood.

"She stays here," he growled. Growled.

And wasn't that her life. Longing for things she couldn't reach, things that tried to reach her and came up against a wall. A glass wall. Where she could see everything, know exactly what she was missing, drown in her awareness even as the glass couldn't break.

Because just as it did now, breaking the glass meant death.

"You are safe and comfortable here," he told her in an equally quiet voice, the words heavy with meaning. "For tonight." "For tonight."

In that moment, the enemy had done what no one had ever even tried to do for her. He had made her feel a little less lonely.

"We've been honest so far, Ms. Vitalio," he murmured. "I'll be honest now. I despise you but I want you. Fuck it, I do. And I want you out of my system."

Tristan Caine: Apparently, you're not out of my system, Ms. Vitalio.

She didn't know where to go. She had no friends, no people who cared about her, not one place she could go to when she needed to stay. She could go to a hotel but with the battered clothes and bruised skin, the police might become involved and that couldn't happen. She couldn't go anywhere public. Not even a hospital.

She cried for the lost hopes she'd been clinging to, for the lost dreams of maybes. She cried because she had no one to give her a shoulder and hold her as she cried because she had to wrap her arms around herself and hold herself together, in the basement of her enemy. She cried.

Me: I'm leaving the city. I have a friend I've spoken to. Tristan Caine: Unspeak to your friend. If I'm not leaving this city, you sure as hell aren't.

Swallowing, she spoke. "Look, I just need my car and I'll be out of your hair—" "She's not leaving," Tristan Caine interrupted quietly. Too quietly.

"Don't you know not to run away from predators, sweetheart? We like the hunt."

"Unless you want me to lay you out right on that bloody car of yours and fuck you, stop moving."

"Doesn't matter. I get my mouth on you, and you'll never be the same."

Tristan Caine terrified her, but it wasn't because of the death he was bringing her slowly, the death he would bring her one day, the death he raised in her. No. It was the life.

Me: Planning to make me go somewhere, Mr. Caine? Tristan Caine: On the contrary, I’m planning to make you come somewhere, Ms. Vitalio. 5 minutes.

“Next time, I’m going to see how loud you can scream, Ms. Vitalio. I’m going to make you so sore you won’t know if it’s from the screaming or the fucking.”

“I don’t know whether to snap your neck or fuck the life out of you,” that voice washed over her senses, so low it made her want to roll her eyes back into her head and wantonly lay back on the counter.

“This body belongs to me, Ms. Vitalio,” he murmured in a low voice, the whiskey and sin combining to make her head tip back over his broad shoulder as her stomach clenched.

“I’m a territorial man. And this has been mine since the moment you locked that bathroom door.” “That was one time,” she informed him, even as she knew there was no stopping them now. “Then let’s make it a second, shall we?”

His father had always told him to remember faces.

His mother had always told him to read eyes. Eyes, she’d said, were windows to the soul.

‘You ever put a leash on me, I’ll fucking strangle you with it.’ ”