I scramble off the sofa, my bare feet hitting the stone floor. I run.
I do not know where I am going. There is nowhere to go. We are on a rock in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, four hundred miles from civilization. But the primal, biological instinct to flee the predator completely overrides all logic.
I sprint across the sprawling living room, bursting through the open glass doors and out onto the massive teakwood terrace. The humid, heavy tropical night air slams into me, suffocating and thick. I leap off the edge of the terrace, my bare feet hitting the soft, cool white sand of the beach.
The moon is hidden behind thick, dark clouds, plunging the island into absolute, terrifying darkness. The roar of the crashing waves entirely drowns out the sound of my ragged, sobbing breaths.
"Sybil!"
Thayer’s roar echoes from the villa, a demonic, terrifying sound of absolute fury and possessive panic. It is the roar of a king who has just realized his prized bird has broken out of her cage.
I run harder. My lungs burn, begging for oxygen. The sand is deep, grabbing at my ankles, completely slowing my frantic pace. I hike the oversized black shirt up to my thighs, pumping my arms, heading blindly down the shoreline toward the dense, impenetrable wall of the tropical jungle.
I am completely unhinged. I am a murderer who fell in love with the man who butchered her mother. The psychological weight of my own corrupted soul is crushing me into the sand.
I hear the heavy, rhythmic thud of his boots hitting the wood of the terrace. He is coming for me. He is bleeding, his muscle is torn, his fever is raging, but he is coming. The monster will never stop hunting.
I reach the edge of the water. The foamy, warm surf crashes against my shins. I turn sharply, trying to weave into the thick, sharp foliage of the palm trees to lose myself in the darkness.
But he is too fast.
The sheer, terrifying apex predator within him entirely eclipses his physical injuries.
Before I can take three steps into the jungle, a massive, unyielding weight crashes into my back.
I scream as we both go down.
We slam into the wet, packed sand at the edge of the surf. The impact knocks the remaining breath completely out of my lungs. I taste saltwater, grit, and fear.
Thayer doesn't let me scramble away. His massive right arm wraps entirely around my waist, flipping me violently onto my back. He straddles my hips, completely pinning my lower body to the wet sand. The warm ocean water washes over us, soaking the black shirt I am wearing, plastering his dark, ruined trousers to his heavy thighs.
"Get off me!" I shriek, completely feral, entirely abandoning the submissive compliance he had carefully cultivated.
I fight him. I fight him with every single ounce of desperate, terrified strength I possess. My hands fly up, my fingernails violently clawing at his chest, his arms, his face. I strike the thick white bandages wrapping his left shoulder, completely indifferent to his agony. I want him to hurt. I want him to bleed. I want him to feel a fraction of the catastrophic pain he has inflicted upon my soul.
Thayer grunts, a sharp, ragged sound of pain as my nails drag across his torn muscle, but he does not retreat. He absorbs the physical abuse with a dark, terrifying resilience.
His right hand shoots out, his massive fingers wrapping brutally around both of my wrists. He slams my hands down into the wet sand above my head, entirely immobilizing my upper body with a single, one-handed grip.
"Stop fighting me!" he roars, his face hovering mere inches from mine.
The clouds shift, a sliver of pale moonlight finally illuminating his face. He is a terrifying, devastating vision. His pale gray eyes are completely black, entirely consumed by a manic, obsessive frenzy. The dark stubble on his jaw is coated in wet sand. His chest heaves violently, fresh, dark blood rapidly seeping through his bandages and washing away in the ocean surf.
"You killed her!" I sob, my voice cracking, my body writhing uselessly beneath his crushing weight. "You murdered my mother! I hate you! I hate you so much!"
"Hate me," he snarls, entirely embracing the venom. He leans down, his hot breath mixing with the salt spray. "Hate me with every single drop of blood in your veins, Sybil. Despise me. Let it burn you alive. But do not ever think for a single, miserable second that it changes anything. You are mine."
"I am nothing to you but a pet!" I cry, twisting my wrists against his iron grip until the skin burns.
"You are my entire fucking universe!" he screams back, the absolute, unadulterated desperation in his voice completely shattering the roar of the ocean. "I murdered my father for you! I slaughtered your mother to keep you! I burned my entire empire to the ground and put a target on my own back just so I could drag you to this island! There is absolutely nothing in this world I will not destroy to ensure you stay by my side!"
The sheer, psychotic magnitude of his confession completely paralyzes me.
He isn't lying. He doesn't feel guilt. He views the mountain of corpses he has built around us as a grand, romantic monument to his devotion. He is completely, irredeemably insane.
And the most terrifying, disgusting truth of all? My body is entirely betraying my mind.
Even as I scream my hatred, even as I weep for my murdered mother, the crushing, dominant weight of his body pressing me into the sand is igniting a dark, heavy heat in the center of my core. The absolute, uncompromising possessiveness in his black eyes is a psychological drug that completely overrides my morality.
