Bear My Heart: A Small Town Paranormal Romance Read Online Free

in his body language
or tone. He wasn't smug or smarmy, and he was just chatting with
her, not trying to chat her up.
    Troy frowned slightly as he
stared deep into her eyes. It felt as though he was looking right
into her heart.
    Could he see all her secrets
and terrors? Would she ever be free of the evil that was determined
to follow her?
    Dot gripped the edge of her
seat tightly as the tormenting images swirled in her mind. The diner
and all the light around her began to dim and recede from her.
    She was in that dark place
once again.
    Twelve years. It was twelve
years ago, but she was still trapped. In that dark cabin that reeked
of fear...and him .
    She was alive, but she hadn't
escaped after all.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

    With a groan, the Artist
stood up and pulled off the condom. He always wore a condom and
latex gloves when he took her.
    She clung on desperately
to that last sliver of hope.
    If he was taking care not
to leave his semen and fingerprints, that meant that he wasn't
intending to kill her, right? Maybe he would let her go after he
grew tired of her.
    She had never seen his
face. So she couldn't identify him. She had tried to ask him his
name, but he only told her that he was the Artist.
    The Artist threw the used
condom and gloves into a plastic bag. But he didn't remove his hood.
She could only see his eyes through the hood. His eyes were like
chips of ice, greenish-blue, flinty and cold.
    She sagged against the
wall, tugging at the collar around her neck with trembling fingers.
She closed her eyes and tried to stem the nausea. She always felt
like throwing up after he touched her.
    The Artist settled in a
creaky wooden chair and picked up his pencil and sketch pad. He
gestured with the pencil and said, “Kneel, Daniella. On your
hands and knees. And spread your legs, the way you spread them for
me just now.”
    Shivering, she obeyed.
    The slightest sign of
disobedience and defiance would be punished. She didn't mind the
slaps, beatings and cigarette burns. She was almost numb to the pain
and humiliation by now.
    No. He punished her by
depriving her of food.
    He would starve her for
days, until she was so weak from hunger. Then he would take her
unresisting body on the floor.
    Without food, she wouldn't
have enough strength to escape. And she was going to escape. She
wasn't going to die here. She would escape, or die trying.
    She knew his routine by
now. She had lost count of the days, but she knew that a few months
had passed.
    And no one had come
looking for her.
    She had no family who
would miss her. No one who cared enough to search for her.
    She was just another
missing person, and the police wouldn't pay much attention to her
case.
    Her foster family would
just have assumed that she had run away. They would have thrown away
all her things by now. No one would remember her.
    The Artist began to draw.
    His pencil moved swiftly
over the paper, making soft, scratching sounds.
    “Look at me,
Daniella,” he said. “I want to capture your expression.”
    She raised her head,
muting the hatred and hostility in her eyes.
    The Artist made an
appreciative sound. “You're so beautiful, Daniella.”
    He leaned forward and ran
the sharpened tip of his pencil down her naked body. Deliberately,
he dragged the pencil up the inside of her thigh and toyed with her.
    She forced herself not to
shudder, not to make a sound.
    He laughed.
    “I won't hurt you,
Daniella.” His voice was quiet and menacing. The threat and
warning was clear.
    He could hurt her very
badly indeed. And she would be in agony for days before he would
allow her to die.
    “Daniella, my muse,”
the Artist declared proudly as he returned to his drawing.
    The walls of the cabin
were covered with his sick, twisted drawings. And all the drawings
were of her.

CHAPTER
NINE

    Dot tried to suppress the
sudden, violent shudders as she fought those dark, screaming images
back into the deep, buried recesses of her mind.
    “No,” she
whispered angrily. She