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If he was going to kill me, I’d take the death, but rather than be left abandoned, I wanted him to whisk my body away as he did the guards he killed, leaving nary a spot of blood to mourn their passing.
Some stupid romantic notion I possessed.
Between my father and my obsessor, I remained a broken, twisted thing. The only light I kept in my room this time was a small white Christmas tree that glowed with a pale, uncolored white light in one corner, to celebrate the season’s passing.
Possibly one of ours.
Maybe something else.
But I wouldn’t make either path easy, nor would I give in to my own desire to let whatever happened just...happen. To relinquish control entirely, by choice for the first time.
Forcing my eyes shut, I listened, trying not to wriggle in my sheets or reach for the knife. My fingers clenched around the bolt in my hand, digging my nails into its deadly ridges. My life or his. That was tonight’s bargain. Wasn’t it? I swallowed and tried to settle, but it was too early for sleep to blanket me when I had a habit of not drifting until after midnight most nights, watching the city in its seasonal frenzy.
While he watched me in an intimate, silent conversation that became all encompassing. The only thing that allowed me to forget his nearly constant presence was my art.
Unable to cure my restlessness, I padded to the kitchenette, sucking down too much water and hoping I didn’t earn myself a need to pee at the wrong moment before I returned to my bed. Smoothing my soft cotton nightie over my body, I clutched at the bolt as a lifeline, one I could cut his with, should the need arise.
Doubt ofeverythingset in as I took a physical inventory of myself for the first time, my father’s cage too tight to allow menial things such as boys or dating Art was my only outlet and I didn't see myself as I suspected my father’s men would.
My body wasn’t feminine, with hardly any curves as I often forgot to eat in the studio. I crossed my ankles, rubbing one foot over the other. Rest had to come. I could meditate, something. Forcing myself still, I painted the insides of my eyelids, creating patterns while I let my mind wander into the depths of the swirls I created.
A massive mistake, the potentially life-ending sort.
Because when a noise that shouldn’t be there woke me from my drifting unconsciousness, and he appeared in my window, I knew his game was so much more complex than mine.
I sat up suddenly, and my wrists snared on a limit they shouldn’t have. Worse, my hands were empty.
And my stalker, the man as obsessed with me as I had become with him, that man crouched on my windowsill, one arm swaying gently as he leaped into the room, a blade glinting at thigh level.
I couldn’t run to him or from him; I couldn’t do anything. My hands were tied to a short rope connected to my bed head, separate from each other, a full three feet apart. My mouth opened, but nothing emerged. Not a single sound, though my vocal cords strained to the point of splitting. I choked on my panic as he stalked across the carpet to my bed, closing the short distance between us with sure steps that brought him to my side where I half-arched from my mattress.
The room swam behind him, and my throat thickened, swelling enough to allow the plaintive sound that managed to emerge while my breath, though thin, managed to fill my lungs.
“You drank the water,” he murmured, continuing our one-sided conversation as I mewled pathetically. “Don’t worry, they won't hear you.” He nodded toward the door where the guard’s shadows were noticeably absent in the slim strip of light from the hallway outside. “They won’t hear anything anymore.”
You killed them. I mouthed the words rather than trying to speak, recognising he stripped that avenue of communication from me.
He nodded, a smile spreading across arched, almost aristocratic bow-shaped lips. His brow was heavy but the rest of his features were fair; blond hair swung over his face in jagged edges and a long scar decorated the cheek I could see. His eyes were fathomless pools of obsidian, the hard line of his nose creating an unyielding face that was more than handsome. In all, he was so good looking it was painful.
Everything he wore was black. From the tactical looking jersey strapped with a black holster to the black combat pants and boots on his feet. His body filled the clothing out as though it was painted to his skin.
But his eyes, those never left me, his expression one of darkest delight pursuing a tender morsel he wanted to devour.
All the nothingness I imagined...he was nothing like any of that at all.
I had grossly underestimated the man my father paid, because this man wasn’t a pawn at all. Not like the others who had been sent for me over the past seven years. For the first time, I thought I might lose my bargain with myself. To fight and not die. Suddenly, those odds seemed insurmountable.
Poisoned?I gasped, drawing in quick, sharp breaths that didn’t do enough to fill my lungs. A soft laugh left his lips as I studied him, and he leaned down to whisper a breath across my parched lips.
“Only for a short time. I wanted to be able to ruin you, fuck you without your screams waking the building. A little whisper of a scream is enough for me. Will you give me that?” he asked so politely, as though requesting an afternoon stroll.
My room?I mouthed, blinking rapidly at him as my lungs stalled.
His fingers brushed my forehead, and he perched on the edge of my bed. “Breathe, Wintergreen,” he murmured, stroking my cheeks. His hand pinched my chin when I didn’t answer him. “Breathe,” he demanded, holding my face up so I strained against the ropes at my wrists, their cruel knots softer than I expected them to be. “Slowly. If you stop breathing it will be by my hand, not because you devolved into a fucking panic attack,” he snarled.
Closing my eyes I nodded, inhaling a long breath through my nose, and out. Another breath eased the tightness locking my body rigid as his grip eased and he caressed my face intimately, like a lover.
Are we not?
