The padded walls seemed to press closer. The silence was so complete I could hear my own heartbeat, could hear the wet sound of my thighs shifting against each other.
He did all of this for me. No. He did all of this TO me. Is there a difference?
Another wave of heat rolled through me, stronger than before.
“O-oh. . .” I whimpered, my hips shifting restlessly against the pile of straitjackets, seeking friction that wasn't there.
Rook watched me with patient hunger. "Your heat is building. It will peak within the hour. Without relief, the cramping will start soon—your body punishing you for denying it what it needs."
"I don't—" I gasped as another clench of emptiness seized my core. "I don't need anything from you."
"Your body disagrees." He leaned closer, and his scent intensified, wrapping around me like a physical thing. "I can smell how wet you are, Beloved. I've been smelling it since you walked into my cell. Your slick, your arousal, your need—all of it calling to me."
In the muffled silence of the isolation cell, every breath sounded obscene. Every shift of my body against the canvas restraints was amplified. There was nowhere to hide, no ambient noise to mask my desperation.
Don't listen. Don't respond. Don't—
"I know you, Willow." His voice dropped lower, intimate, filling the white space completely. "I've read every word you've written. Every theory, every analysis, every footnote. You triedto understand me from a distance, tried to keep me contained in academic language and clinical frameworks. But you couldn't stay detached, could you?"
I didn't answer.
I couldn't.
"You dreamed about me." It wasn't a question. "Late at night, alone in your bed, you wondered what it would feel like to meet me. To have me look at you the way I'm looking at you now."
I trembled.
He licked his lips. "You told yourself it was professional curiosity. But we both know better."
Stop. Stop talking. Stop being right.
"I dreamed about you too." His thumb stroked my throat, and I arched into the touch despite myself. "Every night for two years. Your voice. Your scent—a scent I'd never smelled but somehow knew. And now you're here, and you smell exactly the way I imagined." He inhaled slowly, and his eyes fluttered closed for a moment. "Sweet. Warm.Mine."
My bottom lip quivered.
Mine.
My body responded with another rush of slick that soaked the straitjacket beneath me, and in the absolute silence of the cell, I could hear it.
Could hear my own arousal betraying me.
Rook heard it too. His nostrils flared. His pupils dilated until his green eyes were nearly black.
I had seen photographs of his crime scenes. I had catalogued the brutality with academic concentration—the severed limbs arranged with cruel intention, the bloodless calm of his staging, the way he turned human bodies into horrific messages.
That man should not be capable of this softness. And yet here he was, looking at me with this sacred gaze.
I didn’t know which version of him terrified me more.
"I should hate you." The words spilled out before I could stop them.
Rook's expression didn't change. "But do you?"
I opened my mouth to say yes. To say of course, you monster, you kidnapped me, you murdered people, you've been planning this for years.
But what came out was: "I've spent five years thinking about you."
He waited.
