Wendy
Idon’t move. Not when the music shifts into a low, predatory thrum that vibrates the ice in my empty glass. Not when the lights dim until the red glow of the club looks like a fresh wound. Not even when someone laughs too loud across the room and the sound ricochets inside my skull like a warning shot I’m too stubborn to heed.
The air in the booth is different now. It’s stagnant. Pressurised. It smells of the expensive, charred tobacco he favours and the raw, heavy scent of a man who thrives in the dark—a man who smells like he just got finished breaking someone.
Peter doesn’t move either. He just leans back into the seat like he has all the time in the world, his broad shoulders eating the space, his presence a gravity well I can’t escape. He looks like he can wait me out forever. Maybe he can. Maybe he already has.
“You’re staring again,” he says, his voice a low,tectonic rumble that bypasses my ears and settles straight into my body.
“I’m not?—”
“Yes, you are.” His smirk is lazy, cruel—a slow-motion car crash of a smile. Those blue eyes, the colour of a frozen lake with a body trapped beneath the surface, cut through me like glass. “You always do, right before you lie. Your pupils blow wide and your throat hitches. You’re a transparent little thing, aren’t you?”
Heat crawls up my throat, a frantic, burning tide. I shift, crossing my arms like I can shield myself from him, from the way his presence devours air, reason, choice.
From the way he makes me feel like I’m already naked and bleeding.
“You can’t keep doing this,” I whisper.
His laugh is soft, humourless—the sound of a blade being drawn over a whetstone. “Darling, I’ve barely started. I haven’t even scratched the surface of how I’m going to fuck your life up.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” He leans forward, his movement fluid and terrifying, elbows hitting the table. He clasps his hands, knuckles scarred and white, like he’s praying to something ugly and ancient.
“You think you can keep running, hiding, pretending? You’re here. In the dark. With me. Again. That’s not an accident. That’s instinct. You’re a dog returning to the only hand that knows how to hurt you right.”
My chest tightens until my ribs feel like they’re going to snap. “I’m not yours.”
“Then leave.”
The words snap sharp between us, a guillotine bladedropping. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t look away. He just sits there, an immovable mountain of muscle and malice, daring me to stand up. Daring me to prove him wrong.
My hand grips the edge of the table, my nails digging into the scarred, sticky wood until they ache. I want to shove back. I want to rise, storm out, and never look over my shoulder again. But my legs don’t move. My throat locks.
My heart betrays me, pounding against my chest so violently I swear the vibration is traveling through the leather and into his skin.
“See?” His smile is sharp, triumphant, a predator watching the life drain out of his prey. “You can’t even make it to the door. You’re already paralysed.”
“I don’t owe you shit,” I snap.
“You owe me everything.” His tone dips darker, silk laced with a violence that makes my skin shiver. “Every fucking time you come back to find me, you owe me more. Every time you look at me and don’t scream, the debt grows.”
The words steal my breath. My nails bite into my palm, drawing a tiny, sharp sting of reality.
“Why me?” I whisper, hating how small it sounds.
Peter tilts his head, studies me like he’s peeling back layers only he has the right to touch. “Because you look at me like no one else does. Because you don’t see a saviour, or a saint, or her perfect, golden-boy brother. You see the monster. And you don’t look away. You crave the teeth, don’t you? You want to be bitten.”
My pulse skips. My mouth goes dry as ash.
He leans in, close enough that the world is nothingbut the smell of smoke, whiskey, and the sharp, clean scent of the rain clinging to his jacket.
His breath ghosts my cheek, and for one suspended second, the universe collapses until it’s just the two of us in a red-lit vacuum.
“You’ll keep coming back,” he murmurs. “Until you stop pretending it’s a choice. Until you admit you’re addicted to the way I fuck with your head.”
My body betrays me, heat sparking low in my belly, a dangerous, hungry flame that blurs my anger into something much darker. I want to slap him. I want to kiss him until we both bleed. I want him gone.
