Sophia
The clock above the mantel ticks too loudly. I placed it there yesterday, small in its simplicity.
I’ve been pacing the same length of carpet for what feels like hours, but it’s only been minutes. Every step matches the rhythm of my pulse, heavy and off-beat. My skin feels too tight, too small for whatever is clawing underneath it.
I press my palms against my ribs as if I can calm what’s moving inside me, but the more I try, the more it spreads.
A wild heat of want that I don’t understand.
My heartbeat fills my ears, a thick swoosh-swoosh that drowns out everything else.
I can’t stop replaying what happened downstairs, his voice, ravaged by arousal.
When he told me to run, I did. He let me go, and somehow that’s what’s haunting me now. That control. That restraint. Then the sound of it breaking outside of my bedroom door.
The room is too warm. The fire in the hearth is only embers now, but it’s enough to turn the air heavy. I open the window an inch and the cold rushes in, biting at my flushed face. It doesn’t help. My skin still burns with knowing what he did.
I cross to the bed, sit, stand again. My legs won’t stay still. Every breath feels thick with him. The scent of his cologne still clings to the sweater I borrowed, and when I pull it to my face, my knees nearly buckle.
He told me to lock the door. He told me not to open it. He told me he couldn’t control himself around me.
Then he said it would be safe now.
Every part of me want to test his restraint because this thing inside me wants him to be lying.
I lean against the wall and close my eyes, trying to breathe through it. But all I can see is the way his pupils expanded when he looked at me, the way his breath hitched when his fingers brushed my throat. The way he brought himself pleasure right outside my room.
I shouldn’t have watched him. God, I shouldn’t have. But I did. And now I can’t unsee what I saw. The power, the hunger, the way my name sounded like prayer in his mouth.
The air hums against my skin. I can’t sit still any longer. The house feels like it’s vibrating around me, the walls pulsing with the same maddening rhythm in my veins.
I move toward the door before I’ve even decided to. My fingertips graze the handle. It’s cool, smooth, real. The only thing that feels solid right now.
My breath catches. My legs are trembling. I should walk away. I should crawl back into bed and wait for morning.
Instead, I slide the key in and turn it.
The faint click sounds louder than thunder.
For a moment, I just stand there, listening. Nothing. The house is quiet. But the quiet feels like it’s holding its breath.
I open the door.
The corridor stretches ahead of me, dimly lit, golden pools of light spilling over the floorboards. His door is at the end, open.
My pulse roars in my ears again, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, like a warning and a dare all at once.
I step from the silence of the carpet onto the floorboards on the landing. My breaths come short and fast, my heartbeat dictating my movements.
Light spills from his room, but it’s quiet in there. Suddenly I wonder what I’ll find. A madman? A monster? A demon?
I lick my lips, my mouth unexpectedly dry. Then I’m at his door.
He is sitting in a chair in the opposite corner, his sweater removed, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar and the sleeves rolled up. He is holding a glass of something dark, letting it hang there suspended between the floor and his fingertips.
“Sophia,” he says, voice drenched with a darkness I’m desperate to know. His eyes are so black they don’t look human. “If you step into this room, I will breed you until it takes. Tread wisely.”
The swooshing in my ears threatens to suffocate me as it fills my throat and floods my body.
I know I should say something, but I can’t make the words. I swallow, lick my lips again.
Then I step inside.