Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 98819 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98819 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
She’s pulling away. Earlier in the bedroom, she wasn’t feeling shy and nervous; she was putting up her walls. Does she need evidence of how good we are together? Because I have plenty of that. “Last night—”
“Last night, I needed comfort. A place to land. I’ll always be grateful, Rex, but—”
“You belong to me.” It comes out too harsh, and I know it’s a blunder. I’m being a clumsy negotiator, but dammit, she surrendered herself to me, and I’m never letting her go.
She shakes her head, and the light catches her collar, negating her refusal. “I belong to myself.”
“You gave yourself to me.”
“You want the truth?” Her chest rises and falls as if she’s bringing out the big guns but is reluctant to use them. Sometimes in our arguments, I sense that she’s being careful, almost reluctant to hurt me, as if she intuits that she’s one of the few people who could.
I get control of myself. There’s a panicked part of me screaming that I need to beg her to stay, but I refuse to act so needy. So pathetic. “Tell me.”
“I came here to trap you. To see if I could gather evidence of your crimes.”
It’s adorable, her thinking she can entrap me. “I know. You see yourself first as a detective. You’d like to only be a detective instead of what you are.”
“And what am I?”
“Mine.”
She shakes her head as if dizzy.
I enjoy seeing her overcome by me, but I know it’s not a fair fight because her desires side with me. “Has it occurred to you that I used your single-minded focus on justice to trap you?”
“Yes.” She closes her eyes briefly. “I thought I could resist you. I told myself I would get close to you, give you what you wanted, and see if you’d make a mistake. Give me something I could use to nail you to the wall.”
“So that’s why you were snooping around.” She’d found my childhood bedroom, my journals, and evidence of my search for her. And then she found my underground headquarters. “You found more than you bargained for.”
She gives me her hard-edge detective glare, but the effect is diminished because she’s still wearing my collar.
“Whatever you told yourself, it’s time to admit it was an excuse. You manufactured all sorts of reasons to put yourself in my clutches. But whatever reason you gave yourself was quickly eclipsed by your desire.” I pause to give her a chance to protest, but she doesn’t. “You were fooling yourself.”
“You’re right. I was fooling myself. And now I’m not.”
She’s trying so hard to pull away. “I get it.” I let my voice soften. “You’re afraid of this, of us. It’s new—”
“It’s not that. I need to focus. You’re not the priority anymore.”
She’s talking about me like I am only a target, not her dom. “Why are you denying what we have together?”
“Because it’s not right. It’s twisted.” She swirls her finger against the outside of her water glass, collecting condensation. I want to put her in a posture collar and force her to look at me. “Maybe it’s just who we are.”
“And what is that?”
“We’re broken. Both of us. I don’t know if what we can have together would be right.”
I get a flash of the inadequate feeling I felt earlier when I faced my parent’s portrait. “We are right,” I insist. “We make sense together. Inara”—I push back my chair to face her fully, with nothing between us—“you’re the only thing that makes sense.”
“Rex.” She’s looking at me with sorrow and pity. “Two broken people don’t make a whole. There are things you’ve done, that I’ve done–”
“What have you done?”
She presses her lips together, and my anger flares. She’s holding back. Again.
I knew I should’ve shattered her when I had the chance. Broken her into so many pieces that only I could put her back together.
There’s still time.
If she thinks I’m a monster, I can prove her right.
I want all of her. I need her mind and body under my possession, and if I don’t get it, I’ll go mad. And then the monster will truly be unleashed.
I grapple with my intense feelings and force myself to speak softly. “You’re saying this because you’re terrified. You’ve always been afraid—and with good reason.” I think of the terror she went through as a child. “But you know me. You’ve trusted me with your body.” If I stripped her naked, she’d be covered in my marks, proof of our compatibility written on her skin. “You can trust me to keep you safe.”
I’m appealing to what drew her to me in the first place. It’s ruthless, but I’ll use any weapon I have to keep her at my side.
And she looks tempted, her face filled with yearning when I murmur, “Let me be your safe place to land.”