Hello, My Name is... (A Miss Hyde Novella Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Hello, My Name is…

  A Miss Hyde Novella Volume 1

  By

  Kindra Sowder

  Cowpens Pacolet Rd., Spartanburg, SC 29307

  This edition published in 2015 by Burning Willow Press, LLC (USA)

  Copyright © Kindra Sowder 2015

  Illustrations copyright © Loraine Van Tonder 2015

  Photo copyright © Bosse Erichson Photography 2015

  Model copyright © Salvaje 2015

  Painting© Dominique Divine

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Chapter One

  I awoke with a start, sweat running down my body and soaking the cool silk sheets that adorned my bed. I had just woken up from a nightmare, but I couldn’t remember what it was about. If only there wasn’t still a gray cloud of sleepiness fogging up the memory. Then I remembered something as I felt the heat of another human body next to me and realized I was stark nude. I pulled the sheet up to my chest and turned to look at my companion. A handsome man with the body of a god was lying next to me, alive and breathing. I let out a sigh of relief and then rose from the bed to walk to the bathroom, not even caring to take the sheet with me. The cool marble floor in the adjoining master bath sent a chill up my spine coming up from my toes and out to the tips of my fingers. I was headed to the bathroom sink and the cool water that would spout from it.

  The bathroom was very spacious, complete with his and hers sinks even though there was only a her occupying this extravagant apartment. The him in the bed was only temporary. The marble floors were black with gray-silver veins running through it that also stopped halfway up the wall, baby blue paint adorning the remaining portions of the walls that weren’t covered in the smooth stone. I liked the color. I found it calming. I made it to the sink and gripped the glass bowl of it, turning on the water the coldest it could get. I let it run for a few seconds, moving my head from side to side to crack my neck. There was a crick in it, and it was uncomfortable, and I knew instantly what had caused it. The man in my bed at felt it necessary to cuddle and, well, my head ended up using his arm as a pillow for a little while. I absolutely dreaded the men who wanted to cuddle after sex and I typically tried to push them away, but he insisted. Little did he know that as soon as he had fallen asleep I unwrapped his arms from around me and rolled him over to his respective side.

  I slid my index finger underneath the stream of water that ran from the faucet, and it was ice cold, just how I liked it. I pushed both hands into the water and shoveled it onto my face. My heart was still pounding, and I was still shaking a little bit from the adrenaline, but I was beginning to calm and as long as he didn’t wake up everything would be okay. Well, I hoped it would be. I turned the water off after doing this a few times and looked at myself in the mirror. My makeup was an absolute mess. My mascara was running slightly, and the eyeliner that had been rimming my deep brown eyes was smudged, and there was absolutely no hope for my hair. Dark auburn hair framed a beautiful face with pouty lips and almond shaped eyes. My pale skin was flawless except for the smudges of makeup smeared in odd places over it. No blemishes and no wrinkles. Of course, I wasn’t exactly old enough for wrinkles. At the young age of twenty-seven, I was physically flawless and statuesque, so I attracted men easily, but this was always as far as it went. No strings, no relationship. And that was just how I liked it.

  I didn’t have any parents to care about the lifestyle I chose. They had died when I was seventeen, leaving me to fend for myself, but I made do and even succeeded. I managed not to make it into the foster care system because I was able to find a job and take care of myself. Also, my parents had left me with a nicely sized trust fund. I sighed for the second time in five minutes and decided that a shower would be needed to rid myself of the sweat and cruddy makeup. The shower was spacious and lined with the same black marble that was on the floor with two sliding glass doors that were entirely clear. The shower head was one of those extremely large ones, and it just happened to be copper. I absolutely hated silver, and if I could help it, I didn’t have it. This kind of luxury was only one you could get in penthouse suite in New York City. I demanded only the finest because I had earned it. I worked my way from being an orphaned teenager to a successful business woman. I was a high-end art dealer, and I just happened to be superb at my job, earning substantial commissions on pieces that most art fiends would drool over.

  I slinked into the shower and plunged my entire body underneath the steaming spray. The water was hot, boiling even, but I preferred it. The hotter, the better and I dared anyone to disagree with me. Not only did the scalding water cleanse me, but it calmed me, and that was what I desperately needed at the moment. There was another part of me I was trying to hold at bay, mostly because I wanted the man in the other room to be able to make it home in the morning. That was if he was lucky. The darker half of me was something I had absolutely no control over so I did what I could to choke it down as best as possible. I made the shower as quick as possible. The sun wasn’t up so I could venture a guess that it was either extremely early or extremely late. I was betting on extremely late.

  Once I was dried off, I made my way back to the sink. I was going to brush the alcohol stink off of my breath since we weren’t exactly worried about brushing our teeth before falling asleep. I put a perfect pea-sized dollop of the paste on my toothbrush and made sure to brush for exactly three minutes, counting down the seconds meticulously in my head. This habit is what kept my pearly whites perfect. The smile was one thing I needed to make those large sales that kept me in this amazing penthouse, and I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. I turned the water in the sink back on and spit the paste out, rinsing my mouth as best as I could to make sure there wasn’t any residual. I stood back up to find the man who had been in my bed, whose name I didn’t remember, standing behind me and just as nude as I was. As I watched his eyes roam over my body, I knew what was going to happen next, and I felt the dark half of me begin to make itself known. As first it felt like warmth running through my body and followed my goose bumps and then tingling vibrations that ended abruptly. This change always ended badly, but there was never anything I could do to stop it.

  He pushed me up against the edge of the counter, my hips being ground into the marble countertop painfully, making me gasp. He took that to mean something else and reached up to cup one of my breasts in his large hand while grinding his considerable length against me. Then I felt it. The warmth was starting in my gut and spreading throughout my body, and it moved through the natural progression within the time it took for the man to beginning nibbling at my neck. I could see myself in the mirror and my eyes had turned from the sultry brown to a bright and un
natural green, the largest external signal of the change which no man had ever noticed before. They were too distracted by the beautiful woman in front of them to really notice eye color. A much darker and murderous feeling began to move through me, taking over each and every part until there was no semblance of me left and sometimes, only sometimes, I wished there was just only me in here. I turned around and gripped him in my hand, moving slowly. A groan escaped his throat.

  With that he leaned down, placing his lips net to my ear and whispering, “We should take this in the other room.” His voice was low and growling with a need I wholly understood.

  I couldn’t agree more with the statement. I felt sultry, and I felt dangerous, like a predator that was finally set free from its cage. Moving around him, I released him and let my hands glide over that perfect V shape his hips made, his head turning with me. I could see that look in his eyes that let you know you had him, and he watched me tiptoe away from him with hooded eyes and parted lips. His muscles sang with beautiful tension as he began to follow, moving slowly like he would scare me away if he moved to quickly. I wouldn’t have been able to keep my eyes off of him if it weren’t for the fact that I had one singular objective in mind, and it wasn’t going to end with a round two like he was hoping. I moved to the dresser, opening the top drawer and pulling out a long silk scarf. His eyes moved to the scarf as I backed away from him, slinking as best as I could on the marble floor and running the scarf through my fingers at the same time. His muscles rippled underneath perfectly tanned skin as he made his way towards me, a sly smile playing across his lips.

  “Let’s kink things up a little bit, shall we?” I said as I continued to back away. I felt the backs of my knees hit the mattress, the silk cool on my warmed skin. I hadn’t realized how close I was to the bed. This wasn’t where I needed to be. I needed him where I was to make this all work the way I needed it to. The sly grin got even wider as he slithered over to me and was in front of me within seconds. I placed my hands on his well-muscled stomach and walked around him, turning him, so his back was facing the bed instead. Yes, this was better, and with a small shove, he was lying on the bed and ready to be taken. That was only if I wanted to. Straddling him I took the scarf and put it over his eyes, tying it like a blindfold and I heard him give a little chuckle as he laid his head back down on the bed.

  “Where was this earlier?” he asked me while still laughing just a little bit; his Adam’s apple moving with each vocalization. I leaned down, kissing him passionately. The warmth spread through my belly once more, and the need was beginning to grow inside of me again.

  “You have no idea,” I whispered in his ear. He laughed again, and I knew this was my moment. I leaned over towards the side of the bed, reaching to the underside of the solid wood frame. I kept a small case velcroed to that part of the bed containing a small kit of things I would need. This included a small syringe, a vial of ketamine, and alcohol swabs. I cleaned the top of the vial with an alcohol swab and inserted the needed, drawing out the correct dose to keep him quiet just long enough for me to get things ready to do. I threw the vial on the bed and slid him inside of me to distract him from what I was about to do, even making a small moan to let him think I was enjoying myself.

  The needle slid into his thigh muscle quickly and he didn’t even notice the little prick of it. That was until he began to fall asleep and he was out like a light within sixty seconds, one reason I loved this drug so much. It was fast acting, and they weren’t out for too long, so I had an entire hour to set everything up just the way it needed to be. I felt him go soft and slid off of him, throwing on a robe from across the room. I took him by the wrists, not even bothering to take the blindfold off, and slid him across my shoulders in a fireman’s carry. I was a lot stronger than I looked, especially when the change took place. I walked over to the bookshelf in my bedroom and pulled one of the books just slightly, the entire wall sliding open. No one had any idea how much it took for me to get this room built and no one would.

  I carried him into the room with ease, the red walls matching my intentions perfectly, and threw him onto the table. The clasps were there for one purpose. To hold him to the slab so he couldn’t get away or at least try. They were the same straps that were used in hospitals and psych wards, so I knew they worked. Plus, I had used them many times before now, so I knew it for a fact. Once he was strapped to the table, I moved to the armoire I had placed in the room. It contained every single tool I had ever used to exact my plans, and some of those tools included ice picks, hammers of every kind, a hack saw, and even a pair of needle-nosed pliers, and there were more where that came from. I got out a few choice tools and closed the doors and then grabbed a silver tray on wheels and rolled it over to me so I could place them meticulously on the tray in the order I would be using them.

  I heard him groan. He was beginning to wake up, and I was more than ready to do this. I removed the robe and put on a white lab coat and a black apron to make sure no blood made its way onto my clothes. So far it had always worked, so I didn’t see any reason to change it. I pulled a pair of blue nitrile gloves from a box on the tray and snapped them into my hands while looking down at him. He was beginning to stir.

  Hello, my name is Blythe McAlister, and I’m a killer with a secret. Remember the story of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde? Well, they only got the story half right.

  Chapter Two

  The sound of morning traffic was all I could hear; even overshadowing the pounding of my heart and my black Louboutins with the signature red bottoms on the asphalt. I could feel the scrape of them on the ground, but the noise was silent. There was a small wind blowing, causing my hair to whip back and into my face; my sunglasses shielding my eyes from its effect. Even then I was still squinting past the sun. I was looking straight at my target. The Agora Gallery, where I had grown my career as a high-end art consultant and would continue to do so. I had found so many budding artists in my time here that I didn’t see it ever changing, and the money was worth the man hours. Plus, I loved the art.

  Art was a form of expression and not only did I sell it, I was also an artist. It helped me to keep my other half at bay as well as another proven remedy I discovered once my parents had spoken to me about what I was and what I would become. At this moment, though, I was focused on the Agora Gallery, which was just within my line of sight and the excitement of doing something I loved was building inside of me again. I made my way across the street, moving at a slow jog to make it across without getting hit by an impatient motorist. This was the norm in New York, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The cotton of my knee-length pencil skirt was rubbing my skin in the wrong way. They definitely weren’t made for running, and neither were my shoes. I slowed my pace to a brisk walk and finally made it to the glass and metal doors, swinging one open. The cold air of the air conditioning was like an invisible wall, and I sighed in relief as I let my body revel in it for just a moment as I let my body adjust to the change right inside the doors.

  “Blythe, darling.” My boss, a slender woman with kind brown eyes and a broad smile, came around the corner with arms outstretched. I tried to remain professional, but she couldn’t help but give me a hug once I entered the doors and I couldn’t turn her down. “I am so happy to see you.” She took me in her embrace, and I returned it, not wanting to offend her in any way. She pulled away from me, hands on my shoulders, and took in my appearance. I was hoping my crisply pressed white button down was up to her standards. When she smiled warmly at me, I knew I had her.

  “Hello, Hannah. How was last night’s exhibition?” We had recently booked a brand new artist, and his work was fresh and imaginative. Well, as imaginative as abstract art could get. You had to really want to see it to understand it, which is why I truly loved his work, but unfortunately, I could not make the presentation.

  She took my hand and led me upstairs where the artwork was still hanging on the vividly white walls, and all I wanted to do was put down the large ar
t portfolio hanging off of my shoulder. I was coming in to work, but more so I wanted to speak to Hannah about my own work. She had said to me before that once I had any work that I felt could not only make a killing at the gallery but could earn me more money than I could ever dream of. As a consultant and dealer you could earn quite a lot, but you had potential for so much more as an artist, and that was my ultimate goal. If only I could work at the gallery and be an artist, then the dream would be realized.

  One thing I noticed about all of the paintings hanging on the wall were the tags marking them as sold, and they were on each and every one of them. I could feel the smile spreading goofily over my face and even reaching my eyes. Hannah had the same expression on her face as she let go of my hand, walked to the middle of the room, and raised her arms to show the hard work that had taken place.

  “As you can tell, my dear, it went swimmingly. As you knew it would.” She stared at me with admiration and adoration, both mixing together into this magical cocktail of a smile with bright eyes. She knew I had an eye for the craft of the sale, but she didn’t know to what extent until now. “Come with me, Blythe. I have something for you.” She headed in the direction of her office, which I had been in plenty of times, but my hands were sweating with anticipation of what would happen in that office. I whipped the shades from my eyes, the natural light filtering in through the glass was an assault on my eyes and followed closely behind her.

  We walked to her office in silence, and I could feel the grain of the bright wood underneath my heels, scraping because of my unwillingness to pick up my feet when I walked. One thing my mother always hounded me about was that, but it never seemed to change. It was a part of who I was, just like my need to kill. The chill from the air conditioning was creeping its way underneath my skin, and my body gave a slight shiver in response when I crossed the threshold. The door had been shut, so the air was trapped and was nearly chilling me to the point of goosebumps. I rubbed my arms and sat in the plush red chair opposite hers on the other side of the desk, and she took her seat. Her chair was black leather and looked like it had fantastic lumbar support. It left me wishing I had one of those on this side instead. The velvet was slightly itchy and the horse hair it was stuffed with poked me in places, so I pushed my hand underneath myself to try to smooth them down. After a few tries, I gave up on it, crossing my legs and folding my hands in my lap. The portfolio was placed on the side of the chair, leaning like it could fall at any moment.