And that’s all the permission I require to continue.
I watch her blink slowly.
Just once.
Slow and measured.
Calculated.
Like she’s weighing how far she can push before something inside me snaps—and she wants it to snap, wants to see what happens when I lose control. She’s not afraid of me, not really, not in the way she should be. She’s afraid of what she’ll do when she stops fighting, what she’ll become.
That’s what makes her dangerous to herself.
That’s what makes her mine to claim.
I lean forward, still not touching her, maintaining the distance. I won’t touch her again—not until she begs with herteeth clenched and her pride shattered and my name raw on her tongue like it’s the only word she remembers how to say.
She shifts again, her knee brushing against the blanket with a whisper of sound. It’s slight. Almost nothing. But I hear it like a scream cutting through silence.
“You don’t sleep,” I murmur, letting the words drip slow and smooth like honey laced with arsenic. “Does that mean you’re thinking of me? Or just afraid I’ll come back in during the night?”
Her jaw tenses visibly, the muscles twitching under her skin.
Oh, there she is, the girl I know.
“You think you’re still fighting,” I say softly, conversationally, like we’re discussing art or wine or the weather. “But this isn’t a war, sweetheart. Wars end eventually, have victors and defeated. This is you. Becoming what you were always meant to be.”
Her breath stutters again—short, sharp, betraying her.
I stand slowly, then crouch beside her side of the bed, arm braced on the mattress, eyes level with hers so she can’t look away. She doesn’t move. Not away. Not closer. Just… frozen in place. Rage simmering beneath her skin like a scream locked in bone.
I smile, slow and deliberate.
“Do you know what obsession is, Tahlia?” I ask her, voice low enough it almost isn’t sound at all, almost becomes texture instead. “It’s worship with claws. Devotion with teeth. It’s what happens when love was never enough to satisfy, and pain was the only language left that meant anything.”
I reach out with deliberate slowness—and don’t touch her, stopping inches from contact. My hand hovers near her throat, near where her pulse beats visibly. From her pulse that’s hammering.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I lie, and we both know it’s a lie. “I want to own you completely.”
A beat of silence stretches between us, heavy with implication. Then I rise again, standing tall, smoothing out the sleeve of my black dress shirt like I didn’t just tell her the most honest thing I’ve said in years.
“Enjoy your evening,” I say, already walking away towards the door. “I’ve got something special planned for tomorrow. Wear something red.”
I don’t look back as I reach the door because I know her eyes are on me, burning holes in my back.
I know, even in her silence, she’s screaming inside where no one can hear and I’ve never slept better than I do when she does that, when she suffers in silence.
Part Two
The Breaking Point
She still thinks she has a choice.
She screams, fights, bleeds—and believes that means she’s winning.
But I don’t want her obedient.
I want her beautiful in her ruin.
