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My breath catches in my throat. I promised myself earlier that I wouldn’t let him see how much being his prisoner affected me. He’s looking for a reaction. I refused to give him one—until now.
“You wouldn’t…”
That’s all I can get out before the emotions get to be too much. I choke, my hands trembling. I try to cover it up by clutching my jeans, digging my nails into the denim. No use. He sees it.
He sees fuckingeverything.
Burns lays his calloused palm over the top of my right hand.
“I won’t force you. When I take you… when I make you mine, Angela, you’ll be begging me to fuck you.”
I stare at the top of his hand. His knuckles are thick knobs, a few thin scars crisscrossing on the flat part of his skin. “You keep saying that.”
“What?”
“That I’m yours.”
“Because I mean it.”
Daring a look up at him, I scoff. “Until you get bored with me. What happens then?”
“Nothing because that’ll never happen. I love you, angel.”
Impossible. “You can’t. You don’t know me. Not really.”
“Oh?” Instead of looking annoyed, he seems amused. “You sleep with a knife under your pillow. You did that before the robbery so I know you have past trauma. You make sure your doors are locked, but you forget about the window sometimes. Lucky for me, or I’d have a harder time getting inside your apartment.”
I blink. “You’ve never been in my apartment.”
“Oh?” Burns raises his eyebrow. “Let me prove it.” Using his pointer finger, he draws a square in the air in front of him. “Your bedroom. Bed’s on this side. You’ve got a desk over here, and an old chair that’s missing one of its wheels. It doesn’t wobble that much for you because you rarely sit in it… you prefer to journal in your bed… but I brought oil with me one night so I didn’t wake you up when it squeaked. See, I weigh more than you, angel, and as much as I don’t mind standing over you to watch you sleep, I’m on my feet all day. A man’s gotta sit sometimes.”
Most of everything he says to me is white noise. Background fodder. I’m barely listening from the moment he mentions my journal.
My heart lodges in my throat. “How do you know about my journal?” Terror wells up, replacing the panic. “Did you read it?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
He takes my chin gingerly in his hand. “Get used to disappointment. When you’re prepared to be honest with me, I’ll be honest with you. Until then, accept that I know more about you than you’d ever guess—and I still want you.”
If he read my journal, he wouldn’t.
I jerk my chin out of his hand. Burns’s eyes flash angrily. I expect him to grab me again, to prove that there’s nothing of mine he won’t take from me if he wants to, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he rises up from the cot.
“You don’t believe me.”
I shrug. It’s all I can do right now.
“Fine. I’ll just have to prove that, too.” Burns reaches into his pocket, pulling out a small, black box. “You’re mine now, but you’ll be mine forever. My lover. My angel.” He pops the lid on it, revealing a shiny gold band. “My wife.”
What?
Who walks around with a wedding band in their pocket? Who takes a woman hostage, propositions her for sex while she’s cuffed and chained to a bed, then casually mentions that she’ll be his wife one day? Who boasts about breaking into her apartment while she sleeps?
No one sane, of course.
