14. ‘K’
‘K’
Kennedy had finally figured it out.
Not everything, of course. Not the full scope. But enough to feel another major crack in her already tenuous sense of safety.
Right now, she was sitting cross-legged in the center of her bed, still bare from last night. Her laptop rested on the rumpled blanket, the screen displaying her account on the security company’s website. Except it wasn’t really her account. Not since I slipped inside.
I leaned closer to my monitor, watching her in real time through the very cameras that were there to protect her.
The irony was delicious. Her parents had gifted the security system to her after she spiraled into anxiety a few years ago; a well-meaning gesture to help her feel in control again.
Help her feel safer. But all it made her was vulnerable.
Because the second I found my way into the system, she stopped being alone. She just didn’t know it.
Not until this very moment.
Now she knew she’d never been alone. Never been safe. Not as long as she’d been on my radar.
Her reaction to my presence in the system hadn’t disappointed me. First came the confusion. The tilt of her head. The narrowed eyes. The slow lean-in and the drawn-out blinks, as if to check she wasn’t simply hallucinating.
Then came the fury-laced horror. Raw. Beautiful. Perfect.
She changed tabs and swiped through the different camera feeds with trembling fingers. Her brows were furrowed, lips parted slightly in disbelief. Obviously, she was still trying to make sense of it. Still clinging to the hope that there was something she could do to regain control of the system.
God, the desperation on her face was fucking adorable.
She muttered something under her breath and got up, pacing the hallway toward the tiny spare room she used for storage. I clicked through to the corresponding camera. Watched her rip open the door, shove aside boxes, and yank open drawers like she expected to find a monster hiding inside.
“Sweetheart, you already found one,” I muttered, lips curving in a smirk. “And you let him fuck you.”
She finally found a book in one of the drawers and pulled it out. I squinted to see the title as she cracked it open. Foundations of Human Behavior . A college textbook from Psych 101, an elective she’d taken with her friend Freya during their first year at Corwin Bay University.
I chuckled at her choice of reading material, shaking my head. Was she trying to understand me? Or herself?
Maybe she thought the knowledge could save her from me.
That if she could label the sickness, she could cure it.
Diagnose the monster and destroy him. But this wasn’t theory.
This was real, pulsing, inescapable. And the truth was, no textbook in the world could explain why she’d opened her legs for the very thing she should’ve run from.
She finally put the book down and headed to her bathroom.
She crouched to retrieve a new bottle of bodywash from the cupboard before turning to the shower, where she’d no doubt scrub herself raw over the next few minutes, as if that could remove the traces of my hands, my mouth, or the obsession that had already sunk beneath her skin.
I groaned as the memories of last night washed back in.
It had been pure perfection; the kind of night that burrowed into your bones and refused to leave. The kind that rewired something in you.
Kennedy hadn’t just given in to me. She’d surrendered entirely.
Not just her body, but her fear, her fury, her fight.
I’d seen it happen in real time; the exact moment that will of hers bent under the weight of want.
When her breath hitched and she let me take her apart, knowing I could slice her in two if I felt like it.
And she still chose to let me touch her. To mark her. There was something sacred about that.
Still… she didn’t understand what it all meant yet. That once you offered your soul to someone like me, you didn’t get it back.
Not ever.
She could scrub herself raw, cry herself hoarse, deny what happened. But I’d seen the truth in her eyes last night, right before she came apart in my hands. And no matter how hard she tried to escape it, she’d never be clean again.
She was mine now. Even if she hated me for it.
I leaned back in my chair, lacing my hands behind my head as I kept my gaze on my monitor. Steam billowed toward the camera lens, blurring the edges of the screen as the shower ran behind the frosted glass. Kennedy’s silhouette moved inside, slow and methodical.
By the time she stepped out, her skin was flushed and raw, wrapped in a towel that clung to her like a second skin. Her movements were slower now, more deliberate. She dried off, dressed in cotton shorts and a tank top, and padded back into her bedroom.
She reached for the psychology textbook again. Then she climbed onto her bed, sat cross-legged, and cracked it open.
I watched her read, chin tilted, her brows drawing together. After fifteen minutes, she closed the book and shifted her attention back to the laptop.
I leaned forward, narrowing my eyes to catch what she was doing, but the text was too small to make out. I could only see that she was typing, fast. Hesitating. Deleting. Then typing again.
A few more seconds passed, and her fingers hovered over the trackpad before moving back to the keyboard. Then she pressed enter.
A second later, my burner phone buzzed on the desk beside me, alerting me to a new email. I glanced at it, brows rising with surprise when I saw the sender’s name.
You have 1 new message from: Kennedy Campbell
Slowly, my lips curved.
Well, well.
This just got interesting.