Read Online Reaper I: The Beginning by Amanda Holt - Free Book Online Page A

with feline grace making me think that he must have been an athlete of some sort.
    He too was leering, a missing tooth in his smile.
    The youngest one couldn’t have been much older than me.  He was as pale a ghastly white as the moon overhead.
    He smiled at me, but there was no humor in his smile, only a cruel hunger.
    In hindsight, I realize that it was at the sight of those corrupt smiles that I probably should have run.
    Run as far and as fast away from those men as my slender young legs could have carried me.
    I was only fifteen—and even though they looked like a rough Motley Crew of men, I didn’t immediately have the sense that they were going to act on their obscene words.
    On the other hand, I should have known that my youth wasn’t something that would have swayed them from their perverted thoughts, their sick and twisted cause.
    If society’s warnings were anything to go by, my tender age would only have encouraged them to act out their lascivious ideas.
    Sick perverts loved young girls, isn’t that what every mother—especially mine—liked to warn?
    It turned out, my mother was right.
    Hindsight being what it is, I know now that I should never have cut through the park after dark.
    Not even in this nice part of town.
    Certainly not at night.
    Not that night.
    But instead, there I was in my pink polyester Bo’s Ice Cream Parlor uniform, my nametag, Samantha B . flashing in the late October moonlight like a beacon that could draw the men nearer.
    The heavyset man in the middle of the group continued to leer at me as he twisted the hairs of his long goatee with a plump tattooed hand.
    “Hey, girly – you look lonely.” His stare was unmistakably set on me. The callousness of his words assured me he meant me. “Maybe you’re bored?”
    “Maybe you’d like to play tonight?” The young one asked.
    “Maybe you need a little company.” The dark-skinned one drawled.
    There was no longer any doubt in my mind – they were talking about me.
    My heart began to pound more quickly in my chest.
    Adrenaline began to course through my body, making me tremble.
    The fat one laughed. “What, cat got your tongue?”
    “Maybe she’s deaf,” the young one supposed out loud.
    The tall dark one smiled even wider. “She’s cute, for a mute.”
    “Cute enough to fuck, though?” The young one asked.
    “Aren’t they always?” The tattooed one began to advance toward me. “Come on boys. Time to do what we do best.”
    I was frozen in place.
    I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t even think.
    Were they really going to do what I thought they were going to do?
    “Yup, time to fuck her and cut her.” The young one followed the fat one.
    Oh shit.
    It was even worse than it had seemed.
    Fuck and cut? Fuck and cut?
    Fuck what?
    Cut where?
    “Same as the others,” the dark one agreed, joining his fellows.
    It was then that I began to feel a strange crawling sensation under my skin, a tingling that started out subtle and barely noticed, but quickly became painful, almost burning.
    It started in my chest near where my heart had begun to pound.
    It was unlike anything I had ever felt before.
    I felt as though something inside of me was about to catch fire.
    Is this what it is like to be terrified?
    “What, you don’t talk to strangers, is that it?” The stained teeth in the fat one’s smile glistened at me in the darkness.
    “I’m…I’m close to home now,” I managed to croak, trying to make it sound like a warning.
    “Is that so?” If his proximity was anything to go by, the fat one was their leader. “You saying you don’t want to play with us? Because I sure would like to play with you.”
    “Baby Boy, you wanna play with her too?” The dark skinned man asked his other companion.
    “I like this one, Jason.” The youngest of the three, as pale as a phantom from a nightmare, seemed intrigued by what he saw in me  There was no mistaking the violence in his every move. “Looks like a