Sandstorm {Discontinued}{Rewritten}

18. Cocktail Parties and Bounty Hunters

Kendra tried to steady her breathing, as she slowly roamed around the Nox living room, her tight black dress squeezing her form to the point of near suffocation. She could see Savage merely two feet away, chatting it up with some doctor from the Asylum. He almost looked like a normal man in this setting. Smiling. Laughing. Joking. It wasn't surprising that all these people could be fooled so easily.

But Kendra wasn't fooled. She knew better. He was a monster that could easily kill her without breaking a sweat. He'd done it enough times, anyway.

Being in the same room as him made her itchy, as if her skin was trying to peal away. Inside her stomach there was a knot the size of a golf ball slamming against her abdomen like a rabid animal.

Carter had slipped out of the room a few minutes ago to check out a mysterious door in the back of the house. Kendra was walking around the party, making sure Savage didn't notice that Carter was snooping through the psycho's things.

She couldn't help but to feel over exposed, her chest completely bare in the little death trap this time line called a dress. Normally she wouldn't complain. Low cut dresses made her feel sexy, but this time was different. She didn't feel nice here, because she wasn't. Here she was some sort of object, a toy, as was suggested by the many perverted eyes that wondered over her body. If they didn't see her as a thing, they saw her as some sort of criminal or servant. (Which she discovered when that ignorant blonde woman tried asking her to fill her glass of campaign.)

"Your husband must be a fool to leave a woman such as yourself alone."

Pins and needles prickled at her under her skin at the sound of his voice. It figured, the only one who thought she looked genuinely decent was the man who wanted to kill her. Vaguely, she thought the dress was beginning to cut off her circulation. Or maybe it was his voice that caused the prickling. Either way she made a mental note to have Mick burn the dress when she got back to the Waverider.

She turned to face him nonetheless, smiling even though the pins and needles made her whole body numb. "I'm tougher than I look," she told him, hoping her voice wasn't shaking too badly. "I can take care of myself."

Savage nodded slowly, moving closer to her. She took a, hopefully, nonchalant step back, rounding the snack table so that it stood between them. Kendra grabbed a strawberry from the fruit bowl, stuffing it in her mouth as though that had been her intentions all along. When Savage smiled, the rabid animal in her gut went crazy, slamming against her abdomen in a lame attempt of escape; she started scratching at her wrist, feeling as though there might've been bugs crawling on her.

He stepped around the table, only stopping when the two were inches apart. The animal snapped, desperately trying to break free of its prison cell; the itchy bugs crawled much more intensely across her skin, and the dress made her lungs collapse into her rib cage. His gaze made her feel exposed, naked, vulnerable.

"Do you believe in past lives?" he asked suddenly, his eyes briefly flicking over her bare chest. It was a small movement, but even that somehow made her feel sick. Wrong. Dirty. "Fate?"

Kendra folded her arms, like they could somehow shield her from him. Except she knew they wouldn't. They never did. "Fate is a prison," she somehow managed through the tightness in her throat. "When free will is gone, what's left?"

"Destiny." Savage smirked, and the pins and needles scattered throughout her arms, growing so intense she was forced to drop them again for fear of losing circulation. The animal in her gut had stopped trying to escape, choosing to coil up instead, twisting around her body, suffocating her right along with her dress. Kendra was frozen in her place, her bones chilling right to the core at the sound of his voice. She'd seen that look before. It was the same look he always had, right before he killed her and murdered Carter.