“No,” I tell him.“Not yet.”
Not until she knows.Not until she chooses.
The thought costs me.Physically.Like peeling skin from bone.But beneath the pain is something steadier than hunger.
A promise.
I won’t cage her.I won’t lie to her.I won’t let the monsters who touched her keep breathing once I find them.But I won’t become the next thing she has to survive.
I push away from the wall and head for the stairs.Each step away from her feels wrong.Each step is necessary.By the time I reach my apartment, my blood has dried sticky on my skin, and my beast has gone quiet in the worst possible way.
Not asleep.Waiting.
I strip off the ruined bandage and stare at Briana’s careful wrapping before dropping it in the trash.Her touch is gone, but the memory is not.
In the shower, water runs red at my feet.Claw marks knit slowly across my chest.My knuckles close.My jaw aches.I brace both hands against the tile and let the water pound against the back of my neck.
I fist my cock under scalding water, eyes slammed shut, picturing her on her knees in my stall, wet hair plastered to her back, mouth already open for me.My strokes are brutal, possessive, every pump a claim.
I imagine shoving between those plush lips, watching her choke and take it because she’s mine, because I trained her throat to accept me.My free hand slaps tile, bracing while I rut into my fist, imagining her watering eyes fixed on mine, the way she’d whimper around my length when I grip her hair and force her deeper.
The water pounds my shoulders, but I’m burning, cock throbbing, balls tight, picturing her submitting completely beneath me, owned, crying as she swallows everything I give her.
My hips snap forward, hand working viciously, and I growl her name into the steam, coming hard with the image of her pretty mouth dripping with me, marked by me, ruined for anyone else.
By the time I climb into bed, dawn is bleeding gray at the edges of the curtains.
I don’t sleep.I listen.To the building.To the city.To the heartbeat two floors above mine.And when Briana finally stops pacing, when her breathing evens into something close to rest, my beast settles for the first time all night.
Not because she is mine.Because, for now, she is safe.For now, that has to be enough.
Chapter Three
The Mark of Monsters
Briana
