“Just that. I want your obedience, Starling.”
Yeah. I know. “So… what? You’ll tell me something to do and it only counts if I do it?”
“Something like that,” Patrick says, his elbows on the table, fingers braided together as he continues to watch me with that same hungry stare. He finished his plate, but that doesn’t matter.
Not when all he wants is me.
Obedience… “It has to be bad. Do I… will I have to kill someone?”
He snorts softly. “We’ll leave that part of the life to me, Noelle. So, no. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
I should’ve known better. “Fine. Then do I have to fuck you?”
His lips purse slightly at how bluntly I put it. His dark eyes almost sparkle as his retort nearly matches mine for no restraint. “You mean, will I make you take my cock? Will I prepare your pussy for me, get you hot and wet and keening for me before I fill you up so completely, you’ll forget anyone who’s ever fucked youbefore while knowing that no one will ever come after me?”
I don’t know how to respond to that. My cheeks flame, my gut tightens, and my dinner almost threatens to make a reappearance.
Well, Patrick. Tell me how you really feel.
Because I can’t find the words, I simply nod.
“Not yet,” he grates out, arousal suddenly thick in his voice, “but by the time I’m done with you, you’ll bebeggingme for it.”
I scoff, hiding how much his words affected me before I lie to him: “That’ll never happen.”
“Is that so?”
I nod again. “Yeah.”
Without another word, Patrick rises up from the table. Stalking gracefully toward the door, he unlocks it, then pulls it in. The snow is blowing lightly. The sky is dark, the moon heavy and full, and the temptation to just run right outside, fleeing this stranger’s expectations for me is almost impossible to resist.
He knows it, too.
“You know what I want from you, Noelle,” he says, voice carrying back to the kitchen to me. “Unless you’d rather take your chances out there.”
TWELVE
OBEDIENCE
NOELLE
It’s a trap. I’m not so much of a brainless idiot not to realize that.
Does that stop me, though?
Later, I’ll wonder if I really thought I could get away, or if I got up and dashed past him because I wanted to see what he would do. Deep down, I think I already knew that we were both bluffing. Me, pretending I wasn’t at least partly enjoying his attention. Patrick acting as though he didn’t care if I ended this before he had claimed ‘payment’ for the lives he took for me. He wasn’t done, and it wasn’t until after I had rushed outside, grateful I’d put my boots on following our shower, that I realized that thiswasa trap—and one I’d runright into it.
Still, I tried my best. One moment, I was sitting in the chalet, wrapped in Patrick’s sweater, trying to convince myself that I still understood the rules of my own life as he opened that door to freedom. The next? I was running right out into what should’ve been a magical Christmas Eve night.
Itisgorgeous out here. The cold air on the mountaintop steals my breath immediately, each lungful of air almost freezing my insides.
Snow drifts down in lazy flurries, soft and deceptively gentle. The wind has died, leaving the mountain eerily quiet, like it’s watching to see what I do next.
My boots crunch against packed snow as I push myself forward. I’m no athlete. I do cardio maybe twice a month, if that. Running? I haven’t run since high school, but once I realize I won’t slip and fall on the ice, there I go. My lungs burning, heart hammering, I take off into the trees surrounding the chalet. I don’t know where I think I’m going. Down the mountain, maybe, since I can’t use my car, and the layer of fresh snow would’ve made it difficult regardless.
Right now? I’m just going anywhere that isn’thim—but, just like I should’ve known, he didn’t let me get that far away.
I’ve seen Patrick North’s naked body. For a guy twelve years older than me, he’s in way better shape than I am. He tracks me easily, only letting me knowthat he’s followed by calling out his nickname for me: “Starling.”
