“How is that any different than what I am to you now?” I grit out through closed teeth.
He continues, ignoring my fight, “Hearing you down there, crying out for me. Your voice is hoarse from screaming my name. Stripped of the grand luxuries you take for granted that have built you into the spoiled brat you are.”
He catches how my body leans in closer to him from his words. His smirk says he was waiting for it.
“You like that idea, don’t you?” he murmurs, eyes locked on mine. “Of course you do, my darling is too spoiled for even her to bear.”
I open my mouth to deny it, but he kisses me again, swallowing the lie before I can even speak it.
Chapter fourteen
Hayden Herron
She’s a mess beneath me. Smudged lipstick. Swollen lips. Hair tangled from my hands. Her chest rises and falls in sharp, uneven breaths, skin flushed, pupils blown wide. And yet despite everything, I catch that look in her eyes.
Defiant and unapologetic. A liar denying she’s afraid of me, it’s obvious she still thinks she has some kind of power here.
I look down at her, moaning slightly, captivated by how she doesn’t understand how close she is to being ruined. And fuck, she should be afraid. I’m terrified of the things I want to do to her. Seeing the way her eyes lit up at the idea of being devoid of all the luxuries I provide her, desperate for only me to come to save her from my basement, had me only moments away from losing control.
Depriving her of basic necessities, the company of her own cries as she begs me to let her out.
The horrible desires are barely lidded inside of me. Creeping out with every breathy moan that leaves her plush lips. I’m being too rough with her, and yet she enjoys it. She’s a little monster, just like me. The greater problem at hand is that she wasn’t supposed to be.
I’ve hated her for what she represents for so long, watching from her windows, in her bedroom some nights. Collecting pieces of her to feed my obsession. Hoping that when I finally met her, she wouldn’t live up to the idea I’d created in my nights of devotion to all of her movements.
I had planned to hate her, use her, toss her aside. Fuck her and leave her for someone else to clean up.
But instead, I found something else within her I never anticipated. Something darker and more dangerous than want. It matches the one that coils low in my gut, tight and hot, clawing at the inside of my ribs. I don’t even have a name for it, I just know I don’t want it there.
Because it makes me reckless, it’s made her so naive, so trusting of me, when we both know she shouldn’t be.
Because when I look at her like this, so vulnerable, so damn stubborn, I don’t think about control. I think about destruction. I think about what I’d do if someone else ever touched her like this. I would end their life without a second thought.
And I know, with terrifying clarity, that if anything in this world tried to hurt her, I wouldn’t just stop it. I’d rip it apart with my bare hands. Burn it to ash and smile while I watch it turn to nothing.
That feeling is unacceptable. I have to kill it.
So I tighten my grip, watching the way her pupils dilate, the sharp inhale she tries to control as a bit of fear takes over. Good. Fear is better. Fear is predictable. Fear is what I wanted as I squeeze her throat just a bit too tight.
I lean in, my mouth brushing her ear as I murmur, low and lethal, "Go ahead, Martine. Test me. Make me show you just how serious I am."
She shivers. I feel it. The betrayal of her own body, the way her breath stutters despite her defiance. It almost makes me smirk. Almost.
I want to break her.
No.
I want to strip her down to the bone, peel away the layers of composure, the sharp tongue, the feigned indifference. I want her bare. Vulnerable. I want her to understand that she doesn’t get to fight me on this.
She’s mine.
No. She’s not. She’s nothing more to me than a headache-inducing property.
I don’t know what she is, I’m too conflicted—confused between her panting in front of me and the turmoil in my own gut. I want her. I hate her.
But above all, I refuse to let her go.
I reach down, gripping her wrist, dragging her hand up until her fingers hover over the pen resting beside the crumpled contracts beneath her thighs.
