Total pages in book: 31
Estimated words: 28916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 145(@200wpm)___ 116(@250wpm)___ 96(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 28916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 145(@200wpm)___ 116(@250wpm)___ 96(@300wpm)
She wouldn’t be able to stop me.
But if I distressed her, even for a millisecond, I would want to use this piano wire on myself. Why is she making me feel such…emotions? They almost anger me. I don’t want them, but they persist until I’m stepping closer, closer to the light.
Thea looks up suddenly, right at me.
I know she can’t possibly see me, but she senses something is off. Having her full attention turns my heart into a factory machine, pumping and stamping and sputtering. It’s an effort to stand still when usually I can do so for hours on end, waiting for my prey.
I’ve never used the word beautiful in my life, but…fuck.
Beautiful isn’t even an adequate word.
She blinks at the room from behind her glasses, slowly pushing them up her nose with a slender index finger. “Hello?” she whispers.
My jaw slackens, that single word from her mouth causing me to shudder.
She stands from her chair, coming around the side of the desk slowly and my nostrils flare, breath choking in my throat. Ah God. Yes, she’s at least eighteen or nineteen with those curvy little hips. Now that she is standing, however, I can see she is barely five feet tall. Her head wouldn’t even reach my shoulder. I would have to lift her. I would have to…hold her in my arms in order to look her in the eye.
Why do my back teeth grind down at the very idea of that? Holding Thea, looking her in the eye. It fucking rattles me. Sends a bead of sweat rolling down my spine.
She’s getting closer. What am I going to do?
Any other time, she would have to be killed as well. A witness.
The thought of harming a hair on her head makes me nauseous. Makes me want to howl in anger. No. No no no. I could never do it.
Does that mean I’m not a monster?
Or does this mean I’m…her monster?
“Hello?” she whispers again, making my dick pulse.
I could present myself. I could try and calm her down after she panics—and she would. I’m six feet eight inches of steel. I’m terror in the flesh. I’m a machine. Muscle and a mission—that is all I’ve ever consisted of. But now I would like very much to touch this sleepy angel. Thea. To run my scarred and calloused hands up and over her tits, smooth my palms on her throat and learn the delicate texture of her flesh. I’d like to rub her in my lap.
A sound escapes me. A gruff grunt of pure starvation.
And she stops in her tracks, searching the darkness. Inside her white button down shirt, her small breasts quiver with quickening breaths. She kicked off her flat shoes a minute ago, leaving her feet bare, and I salivate over the little berries of her toes, eager to suck on them, to slide my tongue in between them and nibble on the sweet arch of her foot.
For a breathless moment, we are looking right at each other, though she doesn’t know it. Her big, gray eyes are locked right on mine. I’m surprised to find that, instead of timidness, there is some bravery there. Even some recklessness in her young gaze. Like she wouldn’t be so averse to joining me in the darkness—
“Thea?”
The rusty boom of her uncle’s voice shatters the moment, tightening my fist around the wire until it starts to shake.
Right in front of my eyes, she pulls her shutters like a shop keeper, closing off the recklessness I glimpsed and trading it for stoicism. “Yes, uncle.”
“Oh. Good, good. You’re working.” He strides into the room in twisted pajamas, hair in disarray, a cane in his hand. “Just wanted to make sure you didn’t venture out. Just wanted to double and triple check.”
“Of course I didn’t venture out,” she says softly, turning away from me and going back to her desk, curling into her chair. “You’ve warned me of what’s outside. I keep to the gallery or upstairs in my room.”
“Very good, Thea. You’ve always been a smart girl,” her uncle remarks, exhaling. “Listening to your elders and learning from their knowledge instead of making your own mistakes, like so many your age.” He taps his cane. “This is where we are safe. Only here.”
“Yes, Uncle Gardner.”
Thea’s uncle, Gardner Wills, is a recluse.
His gallery is isolated by choice.
When I read his dossier, I glossed over the part about his niece being his caretaker, as well as his gallery curator, thinking the information inconsequential. Now I wonder how long she’s been kept here, inside these walls and iron gates. The possibility that she’s been here months or years without leaving makes my stomach turn over, even as I give an internal sigh of relief that she’s been safe. Still…this angel is meant to fly. To tumble in the sunshine. One look from those stormy gray eyes told me that. Has she been held here?