“You belonged to my sister first,” I gasp out against his lips, his thrusts rocking the bed.
He pulls back only to drive himself in to the hilt.“I never belonged to her. Didn’t even touch her once.”
“But they don’t know that. The whole world… they’ll judge me…”
Graham fucks me even deeper.“They don’t need to know a goddamn thing. Only we do. I’m going to spill myself so deep inside this tight hole that you won’t even remember who you were before I claimed you.”
My thighs wrap around his waist, my back arching off the mattress to absorb his thrusts. I am accepting it. I am accepting the sin, the shame, and the cage.
“But you’re not capable of loving me,” I whisper, a final plea as a climax begins to ripple through me.“You don’t have a normal heart, Graham…”
He freezes, bottoming out inside my womb as he gives me his seed.“I’ll give you something infinitely better than love, Maya. I’ll give you obsession. Need. Love lets people walk away. My obsession means I will never, ever let you leave.”
23
Maya
And just like that, I got sucked right back into his universe.
A universe where I am made to feel like a goddess. I still get the burning stares whenever we venture out to places where the elites of Graham’s circle gather, but my skin has grown thicker.
I definitely wouldn’t call our life a fairytale. We still fight sometimes—when his possessiveness gets to be too much. But those fights always end with a fucking that makes me forget the fight. He is still obsessed, still fixated on me, his eyes never straying for even a second. I love it. It makes me feel safe. It makes me feel wanted. I know he isn’t anything resembling safe, but I guess my subconscious doesn’t understand the difference. He appears to be a psychopath, after all, so I highly doubt he will ever be able to love me in a traditional sense. But maybe this is my divine punishment for who I gave my heart to, and for the fact that I actively live for his obsession.
Today, he’s at work. He manages a multi-million-dollar empire, a fact I sometimes genuinely forget because of how much time he spends clinging to me. He is needy, possessive, and entirely codependent. And I love it. At my core, the insecure little girl I used to be still hasn’t healed, and she hasn’t left. That broken little girl thrives on the toxic security of all this. It makes her feel safe knowing that Graham can’t breathe without me. Itmakes her feel secure knowing that no matter what happens, he will never let me go.
I grab my coffee cup and stand by the massive floor-to-ceiling window of our bedroom, watching the endless acres of land full of vibrant flowers and towering trees. It is insane to think that just a few months ago, I was terrified I wouldn’t have a roof over my head. Now, all of this is mine. Literally. He signed the entire mansion over in my name.
I take a slow sip of the coffee, humming softly to myself. It’s still incredibly hard to forgive myself for the things I’ve done, whether they were intentional or not. But I guess Graham is rubbing off on me; I’m slowly learning to live with my sins. Learning to accept the fact that I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
A movement down by the service entrance catches my attention. A head of chaotic brown hair mixed with bleached locks is moving quickly across the gravel. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before, but she’s wearing the standard uniform our house staff usually wears. In her hand is a jug full of a yellowish liquid.
I watch through the glass as she takes advantage of the estate gardener walking into the mansion to collect his weekly payment. She slips in behind him. As she ducks her head, her hair slips from her face.
Valeria.
My coffee cup falls to the floor as I bolt downstairs.“Sasha! Call security! Call the guards right now!”
But it’s already too late.
I watch in horror as Valeria pours gasoline all over the wooden furniture in the foyer. The chemical stench hits my nose.
“Valeria, stop!” I scream.
The gardener attempts to tackle her to the ground, but she has the strength of a lunatic. They crash into the floor, andValeria wrenches herself on top of him. She uncaps the rest of the jug, pouring gasoline all over.
A demonic smirk breaks across her cracked lips as she hisses,“I told you I’d get my revenge, little sister.”
Before anyone can stop her, she strikes a match.
Orange and black fire erupts. The gardener screams in agony as his leg catches fire. I curse loudly, coughing through the smoke, and force my legs to scramble back up the stairs.
I need my bag. It holds the only pieces of my old life I have left—photographs of my sister and me when we used to play together as children, and a gold locket that used to belong to my mother.
“Maya!” Valeria screams from somewhere beneath the smoke.“You aren’t escaping this!”
I will my legs to go faster, the heat licking at my heels. I burst into the bedroom, snatching my bag and throwing it over my shoulder. But before I can turn around, Valeria slams into my back.
She yanks back my hair, spinning my body around the room in circles. Her hold on me is so tight it literally feels like my scalp is being ripped cleanly from my skull. Blinded by pain and the choking smoke, my hand searches the surface of my vanity mid-circle. Without thinking, I smash my handheld mirror backward against her head.
