I was a contract. A line that still needed to be drawn.
When that line was finally drawn, I would become something worse. I would become irrelevant.
I slid out of my clothes, held my phone up to find the right angle of my breasts, and posted it.
The photo was shared only to my close friends, a list of one: Grim’s not-so-secret burner account.
But as far as he knew, I’d sent it to everyone.
I’d known Grim for over a decade. He might have me on his little puppet strings, but I knew how to make him dance too.
I put on a pair of soft cashmere pants, and waited.
I waited hours, watching the guard outside my door change. Lock had left, and by the shape of the shadow, the new one was Wraith. Sun was setting burnt orange on the horizon. I hadn’t left my room all day, hadn’t eaten anything, was ignoring the notifications on my phone.
He would come.
Before the faint smell of cannabis drifted through my window, before the balcony opened, I knew he was there.
That thing that connected us popped and sizzled, my skin suddenly too tight.
Then came his voice, rough like sandpaper on my skin. “Busy today?”
I stood off the bed, facing him.
“Maybe.” I stepped to him. “Why didn’t you come through the door? You know, say hello to your friends.”
His attention traveled above my shoulder and to the door, some inscrutable emotion shadowing his eyes, before settling back on me.
Feral.
He shoved me to the bed in one rough push. The dying light shrouded him in thick shadow. I couldn’t see his face, just the outline of him. Broad, strong shoulders swallowing all the space in the room.
He was like a monster out of an old horror movie.
My gut flipped. My breath caught.
He slammed his hands into the mattress on either side of me. Caging. A second stretched into forever, his shadowed features coming into clarity. Cheekbones like razor blades beneath his glare. Lips like bruised rose petals.
He sank deeper into me, swallowing any space, lips nearly touching.
He’s going to kiss me.
At the last moment he diverted, pressing his face into the side of my neck. He took a deep, unrestrained inhale. The power and need of it caused my insides to fizzle and carbonate.
A ridiculous, needy thought slipped into my mind.
Now. He’ll do it now.
“Reckless girl,” he said, face still pressed against my neck, hand sliding beneath the waist of my pants. “You think I won’t kill everyone who follows you? End the life of anyone who sees what’smine?”
The wordminedisappeared into a sound not quite human. I knew I should tell him to stop, but instead I arched, making it easier for him to dragmy pants off my body. He peeled away the cashmere with slow and torturous deliberation, landing on his knees between my thighs, pants discarded.
His thumbs dug into my thighs, pushing them so far apart the thin, thready muscles in my groin screamed. I was wet—embarrassingly so—dripping between the soft skin of my inner thighs.
Time stood still, held captive by his bruising thumbs, the starvation in his eyes.
“I can post whatever I want,” I breathed, trying to regain some control.
