Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
PETER
S he looked tired tonight.
She hadn’t been sleeping well, I knew.
“Hello, beautiful,” I said, kissing the top of her head. She glanced up at me, her dark hair falling into her eyes.
“Hey, handsome,” she said, her voice hoarse.
“You sound sleepy.”
“I wish you’d bring me to bed with you,” she cooed.
“I wish I could do that.”
She smiled, wiggling her shoulders playfully. As best she could, anyway. “You could, you know. You could take me inside right now. Have your way with me.” She winked.
“Don’t tempt me.”
“Come here.” She lifted her chin, beckoning me to her.
I stood, crossing the room and touching her chin. She no longer smelled like soap, but only of me. She was dressed in my clothes, her lips had been claimed by me. Her body. Her thoughts.
I was all she wanted .
All she could think of.
I pressed our mouths together, biting her lower lip until she cried out. The metallic tinge of blood rested on my tongue.
“Take me inside, Peter. Let’s go. Let’s be together.”
“You know I can’t, Joanna,” I told her, slipping the sleeve of my shirt from her shoulder. She had purple and green bruises from my last visit, and I placed my mouth in a clear space, biting down once more. When I was finished with her, her body would be a canvas of purples, greens, and yellows.
My little masterpiece.
“When will you let me out?” she whimpered.
Once so full of life, she’d become a shell of herself. It always happened that way. This was how it always went.
This room changed them.
These walls.
They’d fight in the beginning, or in Joanna’s case, they’d try to play along, try to outsmart me, to pretend to want to be with me. From the moment I’d brought her here, the day she’d figured out fencing wasn’t fencing, she’d begun to change. She’d been everything I wanted in the beginning, saying everything I wanted to hear, but in the end, just like all the others, this was what I was left with.
A sniveling, whining, shadow of the woman I’d chosen in the first place.
The woman I’d deemed special.
“You’re safe in here,” I told her, gesturing around the secret room. “Safe from her. ”
“She won’t hurt me. You’ll protect me. We can take care of her.”
She didn’t know my wife at all, but it was fun to amuse her. I stood, running my thumb across her cheekbone. It stuck out more now than it once had. “We will someday. I’ve told you, we have to be smart. You want to be with me, don’t you?”
“More than anything,” she swore, brushing her cheek across my stomach. “That’s all I want.”
She was teasing me, but it wouldn’t work. In this room, I had all the self-restraint in the world.
I was a god here.
The whole world.
I had all the time I needed.
She was at my beck and call.
Whenever I finally took her, it would be everything I wanted it to be.
For that, we still had to wait.
Just a bit longer. The waiting was the fun part here.
Time stood still.
I drug out our time together because I knew, soon enough, it would be over.
Soon enough, I’d go back to my regular life and Joanna… Joanna would have to go to the woods.