Chapter 1
How long had it been since she
had seen him? Since she touched
him? Since he touched her…?
Keirah Shepherd swept the stray
strands of dark brown hair behind her left ear before grabbing her broom and
placing it into a white bucket. As she
cleaned the hall, she gritted her teeth, trying her damndest to forget him. It was the only reason why she agreed to
attend this New Year’s party with her sister.
Her mother would be out with her friends – Judy’s first social outing
since Keirah’s father left – and since Judy had kicked Andie out of the house,
she would otherwise be home alone, and that would be the worst. She needed to forget the way he looked at her
with those enigmatic golden eyes of his.
She needed to forget the way he could slap her across the face in one
moment, punishing her for something she didn’t realize she did wrong, and
caress her in that same moment, apologizing with his unspoken tenderness. She needed to forget that tenor voice that
could clip words in half or draw them out; it didn’t seem to matter what he did
to them. People listened to him anyways.
But that was probably because he
was Onyx City’s most notorious criminal mastermind, the very reason for deaths
of numerous innocent citizens. He captivated
people because they were afraid of him, and instead of being offended, he
decided not to let that fear go to waste.
Instead, he used it against them.
All of them. Even her. But in the time Keirah spent with him, she
felt her fear of anything, really, slip away.
It wasn’t as though she had numbed everything out, but she just didn’t
see the point of wasting time on an emotion that wasn’t going to help her, only
hinder her.
She really wasn’t sure about
anything now. It almost felt like waking
up from a dream she wasn’t quite sure about.
Was it a nightmare, or a fantasy?
Could dreams be a mixture of the two?
Life was.
“Are you going to talk today?” a
voice asked from behind her.
Keirah bit her bottom lip and managed
to refrain from rolling her brown eyes.
As usual, she didn’t respond to Chad’s inquiries. Before her initial capture by the villain,
she hadn’t really been social. Friendly,
yes, but not sociable. Now she didn’t
bother with people she didn’t like.
Sure, her classmates and colleagues at Abby Ward thought she was stuck
up, too quiet, or just plain weird,
but she didn’t care.
She didn’t care.
This, of course, did not mean
Keirah was ungrateful. After she had to
quit her internship at Dr. Hawkins’s renowned criminal psychologist practice
thanks to her entanglement with Noir, Commissioner Jarrett got her a
replacement internship at Abby Ward. She
knew he still felt guilty for what had happened to her, and even though many
citizens believed she was incahoots with Noir, Bonnie to his Clyde, Jarrett
still had this unwavering faith in her.
Which was why Keirah didn’t want
to think about how she had felt about
him. She considered her feelings to be
buried deep, hidden safely away from the world and herself. People – including both her mother and Andie
– believed she was plagued with Stockholm Syndrome. She scoffed at the idea. Keirah had studied Stolkholm Syndrome and was
a firm believer that she was not experiencing any delusions with the man (because,
he was, in fact, a man). Maybe it had
started out that way, but it grew into something deeper, something more. She loved him, as hard as that was to
believe.
She frowned at the thought,
annoyed with her heart for clenching together when musing about how she had felt, as in, past tense. She dropped the heavy mop back into the
bucket, accidentally spraying Chad and herself with water.
“Watch the uniform, Helen Keller,”
he told her with obvious distaste, casting her a dark glare before going back
to what he had been doing in the first place; staring at her ass while she
moved the mop back and forth across tile that never seemed to ever get clean.
Uniform. Right.
Keirah herself didn’t give a shit
about the uniform she had to wear. It
was one of those ugly, dark grey jumper suits that was way too big for her slim
frame. Her hair was always falling in
her face, even if she styled it for a half an hour before hand, but she had to
be careful when wiping the strands away.
Rubber gloves were a requirement, but she didn’t want the bacteria
collecting on them to somehow get into her eyes. On her feet were very worn Converses, and
though they were comfortable, they didn’t really offer her any arch support.
Keirah didn’t like her internship,
especially since it was janitorial work rather than criminological research,
but she was thankful for it. Despite
everything she had been through, Onyx High still required she get a passing
grade in her business class if she wanted to graduate in June. Commissioner Jarrett got her this internship,
even though Abby Ward didn’t offer them to high school students. She had free reign of the ward, except for
the fourth floor. Both he and the ward’s director, Caroline Abby, emphasized
that her presence on the fourth floor was strictly forbidden, but to this day,
Keirah didn’t know why.
The ward, like much of Onyx, was
a corrupt place, but Caroline Abby really was in this line of work in order to
rehabilitate those that were cast aside by society because of their wicked
deeds. She even offered jobs to those
deemed most likely to successfully reintegrate back into society.
For the past month, this was how
Keirah spent her days, cleaning the filth the inhabitants, the psychologists,
and the guards would leave behind.
Instead of speaking to the patients or socializing with her colleagues,
she spent her time daydreaming. It was a
pastime she had given up long ago in hopes that being more serious would help
her get a job being a psychologist.
After the first month, it was easy to ignore the ribs and innuendos
coming from both the patients and the
guards. Now, they reminded her of flies;
they were annoying, but they didn’t make too much noise, and most of the time,
could be ignored.
She had no idea where she was
going nowadays. She didn’t seem to have
any long-term goals, and this bothered her because even when she was with the
man, she all but oozed ambition. Keirah
wasn’t sure if she wanted to start dating, if she wanted to get married, have
kids. She didn’t even know if she could
get a job that might lead to some sort of career because she didn’t know if she
wanted to be a criminal psychologist anymore.
Hell, she didn’t know if she wanted to go to college, which was just
silly. She had wanted to go to the
University of Onyx since she was seven, when she and her father watched one of
the football games together one Saturday afternoon. Andie had been out shopping with Mom so it
was just the two of them. But now…
“Hey,” Chad said, reaching out
and pushing Keirah’s elbow in order to catch her attention. She was so consumed in her thoughts that his
simple touch caused her to under extend the mop and nearly slip on the wet
tile. Chad seemed amused by this because
he chuckled, causing her to grumble silently under her breath. But he wanted her attention for a reason, so
when he stopped laughing, he said, “We gotta get up to the fourth floor,
pronto.”
Keirah gave him an annoyed
look. “Why?” she asked, placing the mop
in the bucket before placing her hand on her hip and leaning slightly on the
wooden stick.
“She speaks!” Chad exclaimed in
mock-surprise. Suddenly, his pudgy face
became dry once again before explaining.
“Fred called in sick and the orderlies want you to do the fourth floor
before you leave tonight.”
Keirah said nothing, but began to
push the bucket towards the elevators with Chad following, muttering something
about how she was being quiet now all of a sudden. Like that was a surprise.
It was probably her fault that
she didn’t remember Jarrett’s warning of not going up to the fourth floor. Maybe she should have sensed a bout of
foreboding, but she didn’t. In fact,
Keirah treated it like any other floor.
When the elevators released the
two, Chad slipped in his identification card and then typed in a unique code
that pertained to each patient.
13225. Not that she was paying
attention or anything, but Chad wasn’t exactly trying to hide it. One advantage for being deemed a mute: people
seemed to underestimate her.
Keirah’s fatal mistake, however,
was looking into the cell before pulling her equipment in. Standing there, arms handcuffed to his
bedpost and staring at the door was a familiar set of gold eyes that still
managed to make her feel as though she was nothing more than transparent. She swallowed and immediately looked away, her
focus on the bucket of dirty water.
The man smiled at this before
smacking his lips together in his usual fashion. “Well, well, well-ah,” he drawled in his normal dark velvet voice, keeping his
eyes firmly on the back of the young woman in front of him. “Look who
we have herrre…”
Keirah could feel her whole body
freeze at his words, and the hair that encompassed her body stood erect on
their own accord. She clenched her
teeth, realizing she should have prepared herself better, even though she
wasn’t quite sure whether or not those rumors about him being here were
true. She knew she should have been
aware that she might encounter her former lover one way or another, especially
now that she knew that he was locked in the very place that she worked. Immediately, she scolded herself silently for
allowing her defenses to be dropped at such an inopportune time. But more importantly, she hated the way her
body responded merely to the sound of his voice.
The dark velvet that broke
through the silence and caused spark-filled tension to consume the atmosphere
between them did not go unnoticed by the young woman. How her body longed to be consumed by that
voice, that mouth, those hands that were handcuffed to his bedpost. Just the sound of his voice caused a soft
ache to penetrate her pelvis, and she could already feel herself get wet. If she looked at him again, she knew she
would be doomed.
Instead, she forced her attention
on her task at hand: cleaning up the patient’s cell. Because that was all he was to her, just
another patient.
You
know that’s not true,
another voice taunted from the back of her mind. Any
other patient couldn’t make you tremble with need and ooze desire the way he
does and you know it.
If Keirah’s teeth weren’t clamped
together, she no doubt would have told herself to shut up. However, they were, and instead, she let out
her frustration with herself with a heavy sigh from her long, upturned nose,
and lifted the heavy mop out of the bucket with the intent on getting her job
done as quickly as possible.
“Aw,” he continued, his gold eyes
penetrating through her body and to the essence of her very soul. To be honest, he was quite amused at how she
was trying to ignore him, but he could tell her attempt was useless. Commendable, maybe, but useless all the
same. “Don’t pretend like you don’t um… know
me, sweet-tart,” he
continued. His scar crinkled around his
left eye, and his chapped lips curled up into a predatorial smile, his teeth
still stained a dull yellow. “After all-ah we’ve been through…” He let his voice trail off, trying to get
some sort of reaction from her. He
frowned when he failed to do so, and instead, refocused his eyes on her body,
simultaneously trying to gauge its reaction to him while scoping out what he
had been missing the past eight months.
“Shut up.” Chad spat from the doorway, narrowing his
brown eyes at the prisoner. “There is no
way that you could possibly know Elen, not even in your fucking imagination.”
Noir threw his head back and
laughed at that, causing Keirah to jump slightly. She had yet to get used to it, and some
nights, it would be the last thing she heard before slipping into slumber.
How amusing this was to him. He couldn’t have asked for a better show.
“Is that what they’re hum… calling you
now… Keirah?”
The sound of her name on his lips
caused her pelvis to squeeze involuntarily and she masked a whimper with a
cough. However, she couldn’t stop the
telling flush as it started to invade her cheeks, and despite her adamant
orders to herself not to, she glanced over her shoulder and locked eyes with
Onyx’s most notorious criminal. Upon
seeing those brown orbs of hers, he smiled lazily, and then slicked his tongue
over his lips.
Chad wasn’t exactly the brightest
crayon in the box, but in his time at Underwood Mental Institution, he had
learned to read body language. Maybe he
wasn’t an expert at it or anything, but he could definitely see that the two
shared something that he wasn’t all aware of. His eyes snapped over to Keirah, and narrowed
dangerously in her direction.
“It was you?” he asked, suddenly
recognizing her. She had always come off
as familiar to him, and now he knew why.
She was Noir’s accomplice. “You
were his little partner in crime? You were that, that slut who stood by his
side despite everything he’s done?”
From the corner of her eye,
Keirah noticed Noir’s eyes snap over at Chad when he heard the guard call her a
slut, and they bronzed as they took in the sight of him yelling at her. A guttural growl emitted itself in the bowels
of his throat, and he pulled his lips back to bare his teeth in an animal-like
threat, scowling threateningly at the man.
“You cold-hearted bitch!” Chad continued to say,
completely ignoring Noir’s warning, his anger increasing with every word he
said. “You should be locked up in here with the rest of them, not free,
out on the streets.” He gritted his
teeth together, his brown eyes molding into black as he looked at Keirah. “You think you’ve seen pain? I’ll show you pain!”
Before Keirah or Noir could act,
Chad stalked over to the young woman and grabbed her head into his hands. Without warning, he slammed her head into the
tile wall, causing pain to shoot through every fiber of her being. She let out a pained yelp, but collapsed to
the ground, overcome with dizziness.
Blinking a couple of times, Keirah tried to push herself up, doing her
best to ignore just how badly she felt at that moment. She had to get out of there before Chad did
something with his uncontrollable temper he would later regret.
Chad, however, was not exactly
finished with the woman. Before she could
get herself to stand, he reached down and yanked her up with her hair, causing
another yelp to slide past her lips.
Though she was still dizzy and her head was still throbbing in pain, Keirah
lifted her knee, and with as much strength as she possibly could, threw it into
Chad’s groin area. He cried out,
immediately releasing his grip on her to aid his ailing nether region.
“Get under the bed hum… Now,” Noir ordered, his dangerous gaze
still focused on the guard that could barely stand.
Keirah didn’t have to be told
twice. Noir was obviously the lesser of
two evils at present and Chad seemed intent on continuing to hurt her, so as
best as she could, managed to slide her body underneath the bunk bed that
belonged to a sociopath.
“Get out here, Elen,” Chad said,
his pale face now red due to Keirah’s infraction on his body. He didn’t look, nor did he sound, too pleased
with the young woman before him. “Come
on, you bitch, get up. Crawl back out
from underneath that bed and get up.”
His breath was ragged, and his hands were on his knees as he struggled
to catch his breath.
“Don’t you uh, well don’t you worry, princess,” Noir drawled, tensing
his body as though he was some sort of animal, preparing to attack his
prey. “If he wants you, he’ll uh… get you.”
The next moment still left Keirah
thinking about what could have happened if Chad’s patience was still intact, if
he wasn’t in so much pain, and if he wasn’t dangerously mad at her. But he was all of those things. In fact, Chad probably wasn’t thinking as
rationally as he normally would because if he had been, he wouldn’t have placed
himself in such a fatal position.
Because of this, Chad did what any other enraged man would have done in
his position, and that was to lunge for her, currently curled up underneath the
bed.
Noir smiled, knowing exactly what
Chad was planning to do, and though an amused glint shimmered in his eyes, the
smile itself did not quite meet them. He
reached up, coiling his fingers around the metal bed post, preparing himself for
what he had known would come. Just as
Chad threw himself across the floor in order to get to Keirah, Noir gripped the
metal and locked onto Chad’s neck with his long, strong legs.
“No one touches herrrrr,” Noir growled in a rough voice. He grinned as he heard a satisfying crunch,
snapping Chad’s neck fatally between his legs.
When was the last time he had killed anyways? It felt so… good to have done it this time.
He didn’t even look at the slain guard as he released the body onto the
floor.
“You can um come out, now,” he, before he smacked his lips
together. The sound echoed off of the
walls. “Yanno, it is such a hum… pleasure to… see you again.”
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