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I froze as soon as I stepped into the room, clutching the towel tighter around me as my heart hammered and stomach dropped. Fear clinging to my spine and sending a chill along my skin as I looked at the red neon watching me, head slanted ever so slightly, monstrously large wolfhound sitting stoically beside him.
“Bed.”
I thought my knees would give out right then because of a single word. Because of the implication behind it.
When I only managed to move my head in the faintest shakes, Lachlan said, “Your stitches need to dry before I rebandage them. Bed.”
“Where’s—”
“I was giving you time to recover and adjust to your new reality,” he said over me. “But you’ll find I’m a little possessive, and I prefer to be the one who takes care of my belongings.”
“I do not belong to you,” I said through gritted teeth.
The slant of his head deepened. “The mark on your back says otherwise.”
Confusion and denial swirled inside me, but even as a response gathered on my tongue, I shakily retreated into the bathroom. My heart hammering harder and harder as I worried over what I was about to see as I twisted to look at my back in the mirror, swallowing a hiss as the movement pulled at the cuts there.
But as I loosened my towel so it dipped down to the small of my back, my attention was drawn to those. To the two parallel cuts, running diagonally across the length of my back. One nearly intersected by a shorter, vertical one. All of which were stitched tightly together and would leave a permanent reminder of that night.
As if I could ever forget that night or any night Lachlan Keane intervened and destroyed my life.
Shards of glass caught in my throat as my heartache slammed to the surface with a force that was staggering. But just as I began readjusting my towel, my gaze caught on something else.
I hurried to clutch the towel in one hand and grabbed my hair with the other, moving where the wet clumps had fallen behind my shoulder as I’d inspected my back. A strangled sound leaving me as I took in the angry flesh there.
Xs for eyes. Upturned crescent for a nose. Stitched smile.
There’s a goddamn mask branded into my shoulder.
“As I said,” Lachlan murmured as he joined me in the bathroom, leaning casually against the wall with his arms folded over his chest. “You belong to me.”
“Why?” The question was little more than a wheeze, but it was all I could manage as I stared at my back in the mirror, silently begging for the image to change.
“Didn’t their queen tell you?” he asked, sounding surprised at the idea that she might not have. “People don’t usually survive us, but you got your second chance. Then—”
“I am no one,” I cried out as I faced him, gripping the towel tighter. “I am a person trying to move on from a life you destroyed. I am a teacher, and I love my job. I am a woman in love with a very frustrating man. I am not someone who can be claimed because you find the devastating circumstances of my life intriguing.”
Lachlan’s head moved in a bouncing sort of nod. His shoulders lifted before he said, “And yet...” That neon face locked on me again, his tone dropping to something colder. “Bed.”
“If you touch me, I’ll—”
“I have to touch you to bandage your back,” he said flatly, then pushed from the wall, taking careful steps toward me as he went on. “But for the sake of getting you on the bed, Ms. Bennett, you should know I have no intention of fucking you until you can handle me. As it stands, you’re not healed enough for what I plan to do to you.”
I felt nauseous.
Light-headed.
The thought alone made me want to do unthinkable things to prevent him from ever making good on his promise.
He didn’t stop until his hands were planted on the counter behind me, caging me there. Stealing the air around me and commanding attention when I never wanted to see another mask for the rest of my life.
“If you still wanna be a teacher, then you’ll be a teacher,” he began in a voice like sin. “Here. Where I can keep an eye on you. As for you being no one...I assure you, you’re the only one who sees you that way. And as for that Borello you think you’re in love with?” He glanced to the side, toward the open door, then focused on me again. “Three days and nothing?”
My heart faltered.
My soul cried out in denial at the confirmation of my time there.
“I would’ve never let you get away in the first place,” he went on.
