An Excerpt From: HEALING WOUNDS

**By reading further you affirm that you are at least 18 years of age.**Then he was gone. She didn’t feel relief with his departure. In the quiet dark, her chest s= hook with silent sobs as she lay waiting, unsure of what to expect. The only external stimulus came from the rough strips of sheet biting into her flesh= . It wasn’t enough to keep her imagination from torturing her. Would the vampires or Morgan kill her? Her stomach violently threw butterflies at the inside of her chest. If it wasn’t for the gag lodged in her mouth, she’d throw up.

A shrill scream broke the sil= ence and stilled Delores’ breath. An eternity seemed to pass before the ne= xt sound. A crash, closer than the scream, came from downstairs. Another crash= and then a scream…The eerie silence followed.

Her heart pounded, filling the void of sound until something clicked in the room. It was a soft tap of met= al on metal, like a door handle turned very slowly.

Delores tried to shrink deeper into the bed as if she could hide. The restraints dug into her flesh and tu= gged on her limbs.

The f= loor creaked. There was someone in the room.

It could be Morgan, a small p= art of her hoped for the lesser of the two evils but she couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t smell his cologne but her sense of smell was ruined from crying. She couldn’t see, couldn’t move and couldn’t spea= k. Whoever or whatever it was, she was defenseless to him.

Slowly, the comforter slid fr= om her. Anxiety grew to throbbing thuds in her head. Cold air stole her heat a= nd forced small spurts of breath to escape her in shivers. A hand touched her = calf softly and slid up her leg with the same torturous slowness. At her hip, the touch disappeared. It reappeared on her cheek. Fingertips caressed her skin= .

It had to be Morgan, her brain assured her. The tingling sensations of the touches felt almost good, ignor= ing the fear.

Palms pressed against her neck and pushed down her collar before roughly tearing open her pajama top. Butt= ons popped against the walls and skittered across the floor. Delores sucked in = air with surprise. Would Morgan be so rough? He had tied her to the bed and gag= ged her.

Her nipples beaded and her breasts firmed. She shouldn’t want this.<= /o:p>

Another scream sounded in the distance but it was the hands on her chest that held Delores’ attenti= on. A cold palm lifted the side of one breast as if readying it for a mouth. Her body arched up, expecting a warm tongue. Instead, a single fingertip tapped against the soft flesh. It was a cold, methodic touch, like when a nurse prepares to draw blood from the crook of an arm.