I’m a fucking monster. But a rapist?
No.
It takes every ounce of strength I have to walk back to the table and sit, to hide the storm clawing at my insides and let the room think I’m calm.
“I’m waiting for you baby,” I mutter under my breath.
The song ends and he finally takes his greasy fucking hands off her.
I want to stomp on his fucking throat—but I won’t. I’ll play the long game. I’ll find out everything there is to know about that son of a bitch.
She heads back over. Eyes down at the ground. She knows. She fucking knows.She has the audacity to sit there like nothing happened. Like she didn’t just look at another man like he could save her. Like he could take her home and fuck her into forgetting I ever existed.
I saw it—that flicker. That spark she thought she could hide. She wanted him to look at her, to see her. To know she was interested. And now she sits there, all wide eyes and trembling lips, pretending she’s innocent?
No.
“Had fun with your boyfriend?” The words come out smooth, almost playful, but they taste like rust on my tongue.
What I really want to do is drag her out by the hair and make her confess how far she would’ve let him go if I wasn’t here.
She chokes on her drink, stammers, shakes her head. I see the flicker in her eyes—the lie. She hated herself for enjoying it. Good. She should.
“It was just a dance,” she blurts, too fast, too brittle.
My jaw ticks. That familiar muscle jumping—the one she knows too well. The one that always comes before I become the monster. And fuck, I want to hurt her. I want to carve the memory of him out of her skin.
“And you think some greasy wannabe has the right to paw at my girl? To touch you? To look at you like dessert laid out for the taking?”
Her fingers clamp the glass until it squeaks. A weak attempt at defiance. For a second I hope she throws it at me, just so I’ll have the excuse to put her in cuffs, take her home and fuck any other man out of her brain. She looks at me with disgust in her eyes. As though she can read my mind.
“Not everyone wants to swoop in and kidnap me, Jacob. Not everyone is as fucked up as you.”
My laugh scrapes out, jagged enough to cut. I reach under the table and clamp my hand around her thigh. She flinches—barely a twitch— but it's not enough. Not nearly enough to satisfy the storm inside me. I squeeze harder, my fingers digging in with brutal intent—until I know she'll bruise. But she still doesn’t make a sound.
She keeps her eyes forward, drink in hand, playing the part of the obedient good girl. But I know it hurts. I know.
I wonder—how much pressure would it take to make her scream? Not just a gasp, not a flinch, but a real, visceral scream. Would she still suppress it if I dragged her into the next room and claimed her for every second she dared to stare at another man like that? It's the fire in her, that silent, stubborn refusal to show pain. That's what makes me want to shatter her. Not because I hate it, but because I crave it. Because I want to be the one to obliterate it, to strip the fight from her inch by inch. To own the moment she ceases to pretend she can endure me.
“Summer,” I whisper into her ear, threat dripping from every word. “If you ever dance with another man again, I'll break his fucking legs and make you watch. Never. A. Fucking. Gain.”
Haywood and his wife return to the table, she mutters something to Summer about her dance moves—it makes me want to throw thetable. Haywood makes a comment about me letting my hair down. Fucking idiot.
It's my turn for the round. I take a second to gather myself, to let my erection die down. That fucking girl has no clue the chaos she ignites within me. No idea how perilous it is to look at me like that, to breathe the same air as me like that, to exist—wrapped in skin too tender for a world this vicious. She thinks she's playing a game. But she doesn't know the rules. Doesn't grasp what I'm capable of when I unravel. And baby, I'm unravelling.
I buy the round. They all thank me, as if I give a fuck. I don't know why I didn't just call it a night, take her home, and remind her with punishing clarity who the fuck she belongs to.
The locals won’t shut the fuck up, their chatter drilling into my skull. Haywood’s droning on about his goddamn roof, while his wife spews meaningless crap. I nod at the right moments, a mechanical grin plastered on my face, enough to blend in. But my focus is elsewhere. Her chair stands empty.
A frigid weight lodges in my chest, icy and suffocating. She's gone. Without a word. Without permission.
And he’s gone, too. Benny. That fucking guitar-playing ghost with dirt on his collar and a smirk full of poetry. My vision narrows to a pinprick, pulse pounding in my wrists like war drums.
“She duck out?” Haywood asks, oblivious.
“She’ll be back,” I say, my voice a slick, emotionless veneer, masking the violent images of dragging her back by the hair and slamming the door shut behind us.
Because shewillreturn. She knows the consequences if she doesn’t. She’s not stupid. She’s mine. And I will make damn sure she remembers.
