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I can’t help it; a quick smile tilts my lips. “I could do both, if that’s what I wanted. I don’t limit myself. But what’s interesting is how you stress my job—with such scorn.”
“Stop trying to analyze me,” she snaps.
“Easy,” I say, pulling on the end of the rope, slowly uncoiling it from her tight grasp. “I know you’re not really being judgmental. You feel trapped. You want to hate what I am, ultimately what you are…but you don’t. Not really. You’re just torn.” Unwinding the thread of rope, I begin to wrap it around my fingers, watching her gaze follow my movements. “Whoever hurt you, they must have hurt you bad. And now you’re confused. This”—I tighten the band of rope around my hand until my skin puckers from the restraint—“is all about give and take. And what happened to you, I’m assuming, wasn’t a choice. They took. And took.”
Her bottom lip trembles, and I’m desperate to capture it with my mouth. Feel her fear against me and breathe it in, taste her. But it’s too soon. She’s on the edge.
“Now you’re here, trying to unravel the mystery,” I continue. “Wanting to understand if it’s because of what happened to you that you crave the pain, or if it was there all along, but has now become warped. Misshapen.” Her breath stutters past her lips on a gasp. “If it’s distorted you.”
She pushes her wig out of her eyes, and God, do I want to strip her of that false identity. Reveal her beauty to her. “I’m a monster,” she says.
Her admission startles me for a second, but I refuse to let her believe this. “No,” I say, testing the space between us, moving an inch closer. Her eyes reach mine. “No, you’re a goddess.”
With her gaze steady on mine, her body still, waiting, anticipating, I lean in and carefully raise my index finger with the cord of rope wrapping it toward her. I brush my finger across her mouth, gently drag the rope over her lips.
I observe how she tries to control her breathing, forcefully restraining her trembling body to keep still. But she’s buzzing—her whole being humming so audibly it charges the air between us with a spark.
Roaming the rope along her jawline, I caress her the only way she’ll permit, and revel in the trance descending over us as she closes her eyes, trusting me.
“You just need to experience this on your own terms,” I whisper, guiding the rope lower, to her neck. “With someone who’s going to offer as much as they ask for in return.
I’ll go slow. I’ll test, and I’ll gauge, and I’ll never push you past your comfort zone. But I do want to help you loosen your bonds, Sadie.” Her eyes open at this. “To show you the other side, and to free you of the dungeon where you’re lost. Pain doesn’t have to mean suffering. Between us, it can be the ultimate pleasure and freedom.”
“I can’t,” she admits, and I stop my progression right above her collarbone. She pulls away so that my hand stays suspended between us. “That divider is the only thing saving me from truly becoming a monster. If you take that away, if I accept that it’s okay, then I might be lost forever.”
“I don’t understand.” I try again to reach for her, but she slips farther out of reach, putting a painful distance between us.
As she stands, she looks down at me. “My dungeon master opened my eyes long ago, Colton. I am who I am.”
“That’s not true. You had something taken, stripped away. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. It’s all about trust.” I hold her gaze, imploring her to trust me now. “Just give me one chance to prove that to you.”
And in this second, with her glassy eyes swallowing me, I feel her giving in. Hearing my words, and accepting us as inevitable. This has to happen. She didn’t find me by accident, and I didn’t just stumble upon my goddess.
An infuriating beep breaks the moment, and I lose her as she glances down at her bag. She pulls out her phone and taps the screen.
“Something important?”
Her features shift from the sultry, wanting woman to the cool and in control profiler I met in my apartment. “I have to go.” She turns to leave, but pauses and looks back at me. “Why red, Colton?”
A small smile twitches at my lips. Standing, I bring myself close to her and push her fake hair away from her face, loving how her sudden breath drags over her lips at the almost contact. “Because you’re my vision.”
And she is. I’ve marveled at her, studied her, imagining how I would bind and shape her. What patterns I’d create, how I could fashion this lovely, wounded creature into a masterpiece.
But she leaves without gifting me a response. Maybe I gave away too much. Maybe she saw the truth in my eyes just then. Maybe she now knows.
She will be mine.
7
Becoming
Sadie
The remembered bite of blade carving skin and bone has been a constant ache beneath my breastbone—but it’s a distant ache. Removed. Now, there is a clipped beat to my heart. The staccato pulse chases the hollowness in my chest, cutting anew, parting sharp pain in its wake.
Colton’s words ripped the scab away…and now I’m forced to see the wound that never scarred over.
You’re a lucky girl, Sadie. He missed.
