She wants to believe I can protect her from this.
She doesn’t know I’m the one who dragged her here in the first place.
She doesn’t know I tightened the locks because I don’t trust myself to open them.
She doesn’t know I’m slipping, inch by inch, into something darker.
I hook my finger under her chin.
She breathes shallow when I do that.
I like that.
I live in that breath—the moment it catches, the moment her body tilts between running and folding.
I graze my thumb along her bottom lip.
She’s soft there.
She opens for me—slow, obedient, instinctive.
But I don’t kiss her.
I press my forehead to hers, closing my eyes for a moment that stretches long and quiet. I let the silence pull me under. I let the weight of everything creeping closer drown in the smell of her skin, the heat of her pulse, the tremble of her fingers curled in the leather of my belt like she doesn’t know whether she’s grounding me or herself.
“You’re not leaving this apartment without me,” I say quietly.
A command.
A cage.
A law she won’t break.
I feel her nod against my mouth.
“And when we go out,” I continue, dragging my thumb across her lip until she shivers, “you’ll stay where I tell you to stay. You’ll speak when I tell you to speak. You’ll walk when I tell you to walk.”
Her breath hitches, sharp and delicate, that perfect edge of almost-fear.
“Say it,” I whisper against her lips.
She trembles.
“I’ll stay,” she says.
“Louder.”
“I’ll stay.”
“Say it like you mean it.”
“I’ll stay,” she bites out, voice shaking now—angry, desperate, cracked open by the part of her that hates me and can’t fucking leave me.
I bite her lip—hard enough to make her gasp—pulling it between my teeth before letting it go.
“I know you will.”
I drag her backwards by her jaw, slow and deliberate, guiding her until her knees hit the edge of the couch and she drops, breath knocking out of her in a sharp exhale.
