Chapter 1:

Chapter 1:

Get up, get dressed, use the toilet, make myself decent, grab a yogurt shake, grab my purse, get out the door, work, get on the bus, go back home, sleep, then do it all over again. For the last year, with little variation, that has been the extent of my life. Of course, I still write, still try to publish my romance fiction novels, still hope for that raise at McDonalds. Maybe go out for a night on the town with the girls. That's about it, though. And that's what I did today. Minus the night on the town.

After work, I walked down the dirty sidewalk in the dark, sat down on the bench at the bus stop. I smelled the scents that only New York City could produce. I glanced at my watch. 9:48. Just late enough for the normal to be asleep, but not late enough for the night-owls to be out clubbing, so the bus would have the nice seats empty.

About five minutes later, the bus squealed to a stop in front of me. I pushed myself to my feet and entered it. Nodded a polite hello to the driver, with whom I empathize. Same job, same routine, every day. I fell down into a seat about halfway back, angling my arm to rest my head against the window. I was tired so I closed my eyes.

There were several other stops along the way. Ten minutes into the ride, the bus stopped again, making a particularly abrupt halt. I opened my eyes, glancing around. A man walked onto the bus and took the seat behind the one next to me. I didn't pay much attention to that until the hairs on the back of my neck prickled and the feeling that someone's watching me crept down my spine.

I sat up straight and smoothed back my hair with a sigh. I didn't turn around to check and make sure it's right. I knew it was. I knew I could depend on that feeling. That sixth sense. It's extra special for me.

I trained myself. For what, you ask? God knows for what. All I knew was that I had this incredible urge to be able to defend myself against anyone, to be able to protect myself from this big, bad world. This started when I was about eight years old. It was basically this feeling I had about getting sick of all the stories about the women being saved and swept off her feet by the guy. Rapunzel. Snow White. Cinderella. Basically every Hollywood movie ever created. Hell if I was going to play damsel in distress too.

I'm not sure what my mother would have thought of it. My dad left when I was born and she died when I was two, so I hopped around foster homes. I still practice and exercise. Keep my strength up. Go to the dojo and spar a couple times a week. Just in case. I have to say that it's nice to be a twenty-year-old who could walk down a New York City road feeling relatively safer than the next girl.

I've only gotten this feeling a few other times. Not that paranoid feeling, the one where you feel oh-geez-someone-wants-to-sell-me-something. The real feeling. The one where you think, "Oh God, I've seen this movie, and I die." When I had been forced to take a shift after dark, something that I do my best to avoid, and I was followed to my car. Got that feeling I was talking about. Took a block for him to attack me. The guy wanted to take my money or worse, I was assuming.

I punched him in the nose, kneed him in the groin, and kicked him in the stomach. Taught him what happens when you go after a helpless-looking woman.

So right now, I got that feeling. I narrowed my eyes, pissed. I really didn't need this. Why doesn't anyone just worry about their own life? Don't bug me about it. I got my own problems to deal with.

I reached into my purse and subtly took out some blush that came with a mirror. Angling it nicely, I pointed it back at the guy who'd just come on and sat next to me. He was looking the other way, but I still brought it back and forth between me and him, taking out the pad and patting it systematically on my cheeks and nose just in case he could guess what I was doing.

Dark hair, jean jacket, dark pants, blue shirt. Not particularly attractive. Thin, gold link chain around his neck. Worn in sneakers. Sunglasses. Legs crossed. I'm-here-but-not-really look. Annoyingly normal. Trying too hard to look like he wasn't trying. With the flick of my wrist, I closed the blush and slipped it back into my purse.

It was only three more blocks to my apartment, so I decided to ditch him. The bus stopped and I stood up, accustomed to its predictable lurching. Normal-guy them was one of them. Great.

Walking quickly down the aisle, I went down the steps and exited smoothly onto the sidewalk. I didn't hear footsteps behind me, but normal-boy had suddenly bumped into my shoulder and was walking next to me. Right before I grabbed his hand, twisted it around, sending him to his knees, and made him beg to let him go, he grabbed the back of my neck.

I reached for his wrist over my shoulder and prepared to hook my other arm under his to flip him, but within a split second I knew I was in trouble. He had maneuvered himself behind me, out of my reach, and spun me around, pulling me against him securely. He knew what he was doing.

I gnashed my teeth together in determination and grabbed the arm to pull it away, at the same time moving my left leg forward and right back to swing him around and off of me. But was suddenly a cloth covering my nose and my mouth. And at that moment, I knew this wasn't a mugging.

"Don't make this hard, Dominique," he whispered.

My heart skipped a beat. He knows my name. The man slid his right leg around mine in a mirror position to block my counter-attack. I struggled against him, trying to fight back before I had to breathe, but he was impossibly strong, and eventually I had to take a breath. My vision blurred, my muscles relaxed, and I slipped into oblivion.