Or else.
Which means I need to commit to a seduction attempt.
Which means…I need to…not let my spirit exit my body at the mere idea of a seduction attempt.
Alas, the foolish thing slips free, tethered to me via a single, fraying string.
As a result, my spiraling brain shuts down.
Unbidden, Malcolm moves to sit beside me on my couch. My skin prickles in response to the foot of space between us.
He reaches, securing a lock of my hair and bringing it toward him. “What do you think of me?” he asks.
What…do I think…of a man who knowingly torments me every chance he gets just for the high? What does hemean? Ihatehim. Of course I hate him. Who wouldn’t hate him?
Oh dear.
There’s a wrench in the seduction attempt already, because hemustknow I hate him. It’s not like he’s done a single thing that would make me feel differently. He’s bullied me nearly every day for a full two years. There’s no way he’s oblivious to my rather potently negative feelings for him. I bet they make his twisted game of tormenting me all the more sweeter. His abuse stinks of the unhealthy compulsion to control. He must love knowing Ihatehim but obey him anyway. He mustloveknowing I would gladly shove him off a building but still watch my tongue for the sake of business professionalism.
For the sake of business professionalism now, I say, “I…don’t think I understand the question.”
Holding my gaze, he kisses my hair. “Just say whatever comes to mind.”
Staring dead at my…kissed hair…I whisper, “I…don’t believe what’s coming to mind is…work appropriate. Sir.” The second the words are out of my mouth, I freeze, because I forgot that I really, quite desperately, need to seduce and cleanly kill this man, for the sake of not ending up in prison. And, here we are,inexplicably on a couch together while he’s touching me like a male lead in one of my dating sim games.
If there were any opportunity to pretend I don’t loathe him and have secretly been harboring anything other than abject abhorrence for him, this would be the perfect moment. Yet I immediately went and botched it.
Nevertheless, he whispers a curse and says, “I feel the same way.”
“Huh?” I breathe.
What?
He feels the same way?
What does thatmean?
Healsowants me dead?
He wishes it were possible for him to toss me in a basement and torture me for months until I’m a shell of what I once was and begging for a mercy I already know he’s not capable of possessing?
He’d get up early on a Thursday morning and sit out front as the trash people come round, purely so he could listen to the bones of my severed and bagged limbs crack in the compressor?
He hates me so vehemently that the emotion vibrates beneath his flesh—poised to destroy everything around him—whenever he’s not monitoring it and shoving it deep down into the pit of his toes?
If that’s the case…why in the world hasn’t he fired me yet?
Don’t tell me. Does he hate me in amake her sufferway, too, not aget her away from meone? If that’s the case, it makes so much of the past two years make sense.
Hating me would explain everything. Except for what I’ve done to deserve the hatred.
I’ve always strived to do my very best at my job. I’ve always come on time. I’ve never taken a minute over my breaks. Does he just hate me for the way I am? The things I can’t help? The waymy brain tortures me? Can he hear my thoughts? Does he know how pathetic I am?
Does he hate me because I gave in to the rules instead of exhausting myself in a fruitless battle against them?
Maybe he thinks I’m weak.
And maybe he also hates that weakness.
