The handle turns. Slowly. Then the door opens and Jackson steps in.
He fills the doorway like a shadow dragged into flesh. His frame is tall, broad, but it’s his face that makes my blood curdle. His hair is thick, dark, and curls messily around his temples. There’s a heaviness to his jaw, covered with a day’s stubble. His lips are cut into a mocking smile, but it’s his eyes—the same blue flames I saw before—that strip the breath from my lungs. They’re too bright, too alive, too cruel.
“Planning to set the mood, Summer?” His gaze drops to the candelabra trembling in my grip. He laughs. Not loud. Just low and amused, like I’m a child waving a stick at a wolf.
“Stay back,” I whisper. My voice cracks.
In one stride, he’s on me. His hand shoots out, snatching the candelabra from mine in a single motion. Metal scrapes as he tosses it across the room—it clatters against the floorboards, useless.
Then he turns me around so fast my breath bursts. His chest presses into my back, hot, suffocating. His mouth is at my ear. His breath fans against my skin, slow, deliberate.
“I don’t plan to rush this,” he murmurs, voice low enough to slide down my spine. “Do you know how many men would kill to have you? How much they’d pay just to touch you?”
He sniffs the side of my hair, taking his time to work his way around to my ear.
“Your father…. He crossed too many people. I could get millions for you… in less than five minutes. But no one will so much as get a whiff of you. You belong to me… and so help me God, I will enjoy every second of your company.”
My stomach heaves. My knees threaten to buckle. But something snaps inside me—I twist my heel down hard, stomping onto his foot.
He grunts, a deep sound that rumbles in my bones. In an instant, his hand shoves me forward. I stumble onto the bed, the mattress dipping beneath me.
Looming above me. Shoulders squared, head tilted slightly, lips curved in a cruel half-thought. His eyes—glacial blue—scorch into me, narrowing, dissecting. The muscle in his jaw ticks, the cords in his arms drawn tight as though one wrong breath from me will snap the restraint holding him back.
I go still. My pulse slams against my ribs, so loud I swear the room can hear it.
His stare lingers. Unblinking. Weighing. Measuring. For a heartbeat too long, I’m certain he’s deciding whether to break me here and now, to scatter me across the floorboards just to prove he can.
“So fucking beautiful,” he murmurs, his voice a low growl as he brushes a strand of hair away from my eyes.
Then, slowly, he eases upright. Shoulders roll back. His hands smooth the front of his shirt in deliberate, precise movements, as though I’m nothing but grit he brushed from his skin.
At the doorway he halts, one hand curling around the frame. His gaze slices back over me—brutal, knowing, a warning wrapped in silence.
“Dinner will be ready in thirty minutes.”
The slam of the door rattles the walls. The lock turns with a final, metallic click that echoes in my chest.
And then—nothing.
Just me. The four walls. The throb of my pulse filling the space where he’d been.
Alone.
I don’t want to eat. I can’t think of anything worse right now. My stomach twists with every heartbeat, nausea rising like bile. The thought of sitting at a table across from him—pretending this is some sort of dinner party instead of a nightmare—makes me want to claw my own skin off.
I search the room instead, bare feet whispering across the polished floorboards. My eyes scan everything, desperate, frantic. I pull open the closet. Dresses, blouses, skirts—rows of them, all my size. Neatly folded underwear in the drawers, some modest cotton, others lacey and obscene, meant for display, not comfort. My chest tightens.
The bathroom is the same—stocked like it’s been prepared for me. A toothbrush already unwrapped, moisturisers and expensive creams lined up like an offering. Even tampons, tucked neatly in a basket. The realization slams into me harder than any slap—this wasn’t improvised. This wasn’t chance. They’ve been waiting for me.
I drop to my knees, searching under the bed, running my hands over the floorboards, tugging at the edges of the rug. I fling open cupboards, rattle drawers, tap the walls—looking for hidden cameras, for wires, forsomething. But the room just stares back, pristine and suffocating.
Then—A knock at the door.
I freeze, breath lodged in my throat. My heart slams so hard against my ribs it hurts.
I don’t move.
The knock comes again, harder.
