Chapter 11 #2
This was supposed to be simple. Get the files, learn her secrets, gain leverage. Instead, I’d hit a wall of black bars that might as well have been middle fingers pointed directly at me.
A notification flashed across my screen. The Syndicate’s logo pulsing an urgent red that instantly triggered a migraine. Fucking great. Exactly what I needed to complete this stellar morning.
I swiped the notification open. It was a fucking rematch request from Baron Ash. It wasn’t exactly unexpected after our run-in at the Opener, but I wasn’t in the fucking mood to think about him.
I drummed my fingers against the workbench. Ash was a sadistic fuck who clearly wanted revenge for our last match while the cameras were on. He hated that I “relied” on technology. The idiot didn’t realize the suit he despised was for his benefit.
It wasn’t even armor; it was a cage. Its dampeners strangled my real output, forcing me to play at the level of a serum-based Super just to stay hidden. If I ever took the kid gloves off, if I let the cameras see what I really was, Ash wouldn’t survive the first round.
Fuck him.
I typed a single word: Accepted.
I hit send. The violence of the keystroke felt good but it didn’t solve the real problem.
Annie.
I moved to my main desk where I’d placed the knife she had used on me at dinner. The blade caught the light as I picked it up.
Annie was an unknown variable. That was a fact, not a crisis.
I ran my thumb along the flat of the blade, pressing until the skin turned white. Most women trembled in my presence. Annie had looked at the monster and decided to bite back.
I wanted her defiance as much as I wanted her submission. I wanted to feel that sharp, dangerous edge of hers pressed against my throat, just so I could show her how little it mattered.
But if I went to her now, full force, I’d scare her off. I’d shatter the game before it began. I had to be a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.
Slowly, I reminded myself. Break her defenses slowly.
I began tossing the knife from hand to hand. Catch. Flip. Catch.
I needed to fix the mess I’d made with her last night. The variables were fucked up, but the objective was clear. I needed access to Annie to get her secrets. I couldn’t get access if she hated me.
I ran the scenarios. I could apologize but that was unfamiliar territory for me and the success rate uncertain.
I could seduce her—
My hand froze. The blade pressed against my palm, biting into the skin.
The solution was so obvious.
Sex.
She was a creature of rules and repression. I saw it in the way she stood, the way she held her breath. She was a dam waiting to burst.
I’d give her the release she was too scared to ask for, and I’d make her addicted to it. Once I had her hooked on the sensation, the secrets would follow. She’d give me everything just to keep the high.
I set the knife down with a decisive click against the desk.
I told myself that this was just strategy. A move to bypass the black bars hiding her from me and unearth whatever secrets she had. Sex was merely the tool I would use to slip past her defenses.
But deep down, in the cold, pitch-black void where the monster truly lived, I knew that was a lie.
I wanted to own Annie Bishop.
The craving hadn’t started last night, or even when she pressed that knife to my stomach. It had taken root the very first time I noticed her standing in Havoc’s towering shadow, that fragile, rule-bound Keeper who looked too soft for our violent world, yet she never flinched.
My logic was just a convenient excuse for my depravity. I wanted to strip away her pristine Keeper persona. I wanted to claim her soft flesh until she forgot her rules, the Alliance, and her precious Havoc. Until she only knew me.
Six hours, fourteen minutes, and thirty-two seconds since I had last seen her.
I grimaced. The tally had been running in the background of my thoughts.
Fuck.
This was how it started. The obsession, the hyper-fixation. The same mental patterns that led me to create breakthrough technologies and solve impossible equations were now trained on Annie.
I’d obsessed over many things before, projects that kept me awake for days, problems that consumed my thoughts until I cracked them open. But never a person. Never a woman.
Why her?
The question circled my mind for the thousandth time. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman I’d encountered, though she was beautiful. She wasn’t the most brilliant, even if she was intelligent. She was certainly not the most convenient, given her Alliance connections and rule-following nature.
Yet here I was, counting the seconds since I’d seen her, replaying our interactions on an endless loop, analyzing her expressions, her words, her body language.
Six hours, fifteen minutes, and seven seconds.
I dragged my hands down my face, pressing my fingers against my closed eyes until I saw stars. This wasn’t sustainable. This wasn’t me.
Except it was.
The knife still gleamed mockingly at me. My lab suddenly felt too sterile, too quiet, the low hum of equipment that usually faded into background noise now grated against my nerves.
Six hours, sixteen minutes, and twenty-one seconds.
The numbers clicked over in my head relentlessly.
I dropped into my chair, my fingers hovering over the main console. I hesitated for a fraction of a second, then I stopped fighting it.
I pulled up the security feed expecting Annie’s office at the Tower to fill the screen, but the active camera was the one trained on Annie’s bedroom window. She should have been at work hours ago. Instead, she was pacing back and forth in her bedroom.
She had a tablet in hand, her expression pinched. I watched as she scrolled through something, then tossed the device onto her bed with an obvious huff before running both hands through her hair.
I zoomed in.
She wasn’t dressed for work. Instead, she wore loose gray sweatpants and a tank top with a faded logo.
She picked up her phone. Stared at it. Set it down. She sat on the edge of the bed and buried her face in her hands.
I traced the curve of her spine on the screen as I watched the rise and fall of her breathing. I was the ghost in the machine, the invisible current in the air.
I owned this moment. I owned the sight of her unraveled and messy and real. But it wasn’t enough.
Seeing her unguarded just made the itch worse. I refused to be a spectator in her life. It was time to be the main event.
I closed the feed and stood, decision made. Six hours, twenty-three minutes, and forty seconds since I’d last seen her. Time to reset that fucking counter.