Page 67 of Prey

He catches it and sets it on the table without looking away from me.

So I go for him with my body instead.

I launch off the bed before my brain finishes the decision. Sheet forgotten. Naked and shaking with rage, going for his throat with both hands like I’m clawing my way out of a grave.

He catches me midair. One arm around my waist, the other locking both my wrists in a single grip that should be impossible. He pivots my momentum and pins me against the wall beside the door, my back to the concrete, his body a column of restraint against mine.

“Better,” he murmurs into my hair. “But you’re not going to win this one either.”

I bare my teeth at him. “I don’t need to win it. I just need you to know I’m still in this fight.”

“I never doubted it.”

He holds me there for a long beat, letting me feel how outmatched I am physically. Then he releases me carefully, like he’s handling something both precious and dangerous, and steps back.

“Sit down, Jenna.”

I don’t sit, but I don’t lunge again either. We’ve established what we needed to establish.

“You gave me one thing,” I say, my voice shaking with a fury that’s clean and welcome after the fog. “One. And you’re going to use it as a doorway to take ten more. Fine. Don’t you dare stand there and call it my compliance. Call it what it is. You’re going to try to break me, and I’m going to make you work for every inch.”

“You’re right,” he says.

“I know I’m right.”

“That doesn’t change what happens next.”

“It might,” I retort.

We hold the look for another beat. Then my legs remember they’ve been holding me up since I came off the wall, and the adrenaline crash hits like a dropped weight. I move back to the bed, not because he told me to, but because if I’m going to keepdoing this, I need to do it sitting down. I pull the sheet back around myself. Armor I can’t afford to pretend I don’t need.

He watches me settle and doesn’t comment. He’s giving me the small mercies because he knows the big ones aren’t coming.

I bark out a harsh laugh. “Not sure any buyer will want damaged goods if you’ve already bred me.”

His eyes narrow to slits. “You think that frightens me—you, round with my child.” Something dark moves behind his eyes. “It’s the opposite of a deterrent.”

“And if I’m not pregnant?”

“Then we keep trying until you are.”

“You’re insane if you think I’m going to cooperate with any of this.”

He moves to the foot of the bed. Even with the sheet, I feel exposed under his gaze.

“You don’t have a choice in whether you cooperate. You only get to choose how much you suffer in the process.” His voice drops, becoming almost gentle. “I remember how responsive you were before. How beautifully you submitted when you stopped fighting yourself.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

I don’t have an answer that doesn’t make me sound pathetic.

“It just was.”

“The conditioning will help with that confusion. Clear away all the unnecessary thoughts and feelings. Make everything simpler.”

“You mean it’ll turn me into a zombie.”