Terror races up my spine when I realize the man would’ve answered my question even if I’d been able to voice it.
He doesn’t care about me. Doesn’t so much as ask why I’m crying or wonder if I’m okay.
He simply wipes the tears from my cheeks with an impersonal touch. It feels cold. Like he could kill me and not lose sleep over it.
I’d run, but…
Impossible.
My body is frozen. Even my fight-or-flight instincts are buried under the drug’s weight.
I’m at his mercy. Completely.
Oh no. Ohno.
Using his thumb, he seals my terrifying fate for good by closing one of my eyelids, then the other.
I can’t open them again.
Can’t stay awake.
I’m…
Gone.
6
DUNCAN
“I’ll always be broken. Damaged,” I say to an unconscious Elowyn, running my knuckles over her warm cheek. Resenting how good she feels. “Wrong.”
She’s lying on the bed in the guest room assigned to her, unmoving. As silent as she’s been over the past decade.
This time, not by choice.
This time, I was the one who stripped her of her agency by ordering Herbert to slip the sedative into her water.
Her days of turning away from me are over. She’s right where and how I want her.
Under my thumb and ready to be ruined.
“And by the end of our time together, you’ll be just like me.” My lip curls into a snarl. My body refuses to acknowledge the longing humming beneath my skin, the feelings still simmering there. “Broken. Damaged. Wrong. Then our debt will be settled.”
I stroke her cheek over and over as I hold up the Polaroid camera lens trained on her face, my grip nearly crushing it.
There’s no reason for this anger.
Not now, when I finally have Elowyn here, passed out and lying in a deliberately bare bedroom.
Cheap sheets stretch over a secondhand bed. The dresser is older than she is, the drawers empty. Even the shampoo, conditioner, and soap in the adjoining shower don’t smell like her. Like vanilla.
Every detail is a reminder, for her but mostly for me, that whatever power she once had over me is gone. Completely.
“I’m the one in control. Me.”
Enough talking. No more bullshit.
I haven’t drugged her so I could yap like a weak motherfucker.
