Hook
She thinks I’m not in the room.
She thinks the cameras are cold glass and not the extension of my eyes, not the way I see into her soul.
She thinks she’s winning.
And fuck, maybe she is.
I’m standing in front of the monitor like a man who hasn’t moved in hours—because I haven’t.
Because I can’t. Because if I so much as blink, I might miss the moment her mask cracks a little deeper, the moment her pride bleeds into pleasure, the moment she forgets herself in the middle of a war she’s already lost.
She’s not touching herself anymore.
But I saw it.
I saw the way her fingers hovered just long enough to mock me, the way her thighs shifted against silk, the way her mouth parted like a fucking prayer to a god who doesn’t deserve her devotion.
And then she stopped. Just like that.
Just to punish me.
It’s infuriating.
It’s intoxicating.
It’s mine.
Every filthy second of it.
My hand grips the edge of the desk so tight the wood creaks in protest. My knuckles are white. My jaw’s locked hard enough to crack teeth. There’s a pulse in my temple that won’t quit, hammering in rhythm with the beat between her legs I should be owning right now.
She’s baiting me.
And fuck, I want to bite.
I want to tear the door off its fucking hinges and drag her out by the throat, press her into the mattress she’s defiled with her scent and make her beg with every broken, breathless inch of her. I want to ruin the rebellion simmering in her eyes. But I don’t move.
Watching her deny herself is the cruellest kind of art—and I’m a man who appreciates masterpieces, who collects them.
She doesn’t realise this is foreplay.
That the longer she resists, the worse it’s going to be.
She doesn’t realise I’m not watching like a man.
I’m watching like a monster.
A collector.
A god.
And when I finally go to her, when I finally take what’s already mine, there won’t be an inch of her that doesn’t remember how I watched her unravel, how I let her play her little game until the strings snapped and all that was left was obedience.
But not yet.
No, not yet.
She wanted an audience?
She got one.
And I hope she burns under the weight of it.
I don’t go to her.
I don’t even move.
I just stand there, frozen in this twisted tableau of want and restraint, watching her unravel herself inch by inch, unaware that every breath she exhales is another nail in the coffin of my sanity.
The monitor crackles softly in the dark.
The room is silent—except for her. Her sighs. Her muttered curses. The rustle of sheets. The way she tosses herself across the bed like she’s trying to shake me off her skin, like my presence still haunts the fabric.
She doesn’t know I’m already under it.
Inside her.
Threaded through every crack she tries to seal.
And she’s starting to realise it too.
It’s in the way she clenches her fists. The way she looks at the ceiling like she wants to scream and the sound gets lodged in her throat. The way she grips the edge of the pillow like it’s a throat she wants to squeeze.
Mine.
Always mine.
Her rage is starting to look like grief.
And that is what unravels me.
Not the moans. Not the way she teased herself. Not even the bruises she left on her own neck out of sheer spite.
It’s the moment her bottom lip trembles. The moment she curls in on herself like the sheets can save her. The moment she looks small. Breakable. Not because I made her—but because she’s letting herself feel the cost of surviving me.
And still, I don’t go to her.
I know if I do, I’ll cross a line I can’t uncross.
If I touch her now, I won’t stop.
There’s a part of me that wants to see just how far she’ll fall before she begs me to catch her. Wants to see if she’ll crawl to the camera and ask me why I’m not there. Wants to see her whisper my name into the dark and pretend it’s not a prayer.
So I stay still.
A statue.
A storm coiled in silence.
But inside?
Inside, I’m nothing but hunger.
I want her tears.
I want her screams.
I want her broken in the shape of my obsession.
And I’ll wait.
Because monsters know patience.
Because the longer the prey runs, the sweeter it tastes when it finally stops fighting.
Let her rage.
Let her cry.
Let her wish she could forget my name.
She’s already mine.
She just hasn’t bled the truth of it yet.
She doesn’t know I’m watching again.
The screens glow like embers in the dark, every flicker of movement from her burnt into my retinas like they were stitched there with wire.
I should turn away. Should leave her to whatever it is she thinks she’s doing—pacing in circles like a caged little thing, dragging her fingers across the walls like she’s searching for a weakness, pressing her forehead to the glass to peer out into a world she no longer belongs to.
I don’t leave.
I study her.
Every movement, every sharp breath, every rage-filled glance aimed at the ceiling—at me, even if she doesn’t know it.
The anger in her hasn’t dulled. If anything, it’s crystallising into something dangerous.
Not the kind of fear I can manipulate. Not the soft obedience I can bend beneath my hands.
No. She’s something else entirely. Something that makes me want to ruin her even more.
She’s a sickness beneath my skin, a fever I don’t want cured. I thought taking her would be enough—that the containment of her, the ownership, would satisfy the rot blooming behind my ribs.
But it hasn’t. It never will.
My hands curl around the edge of the desk until my knuckles crack, jaw ticking as she does it again—tilts her head like she’s listening. To what, exactly? Herself? The silence? Me?
She doesn’t cry anymore. Not since the last time.
Not since I broke her open and left her sobbing, ruined, and furious in the sheets I bled her onto.
She should hate me. I’ve made sure of it.
And yet—something’s changing. In her. In me.
That’s the part I can’t tolerate. That flicker in her eyes that isn’t just loathing anymore. That tremor in my chest when she presses her palms to the mirror and looks straight ahead, as if she knows I’m there. Watching. Breathing. Wanting.
Needing.
I grind my teeth and force myself to stand, walking away from the monitors like it takes everything I have not to crawl through the screen and into her.
I won’t go to her tonight.
I won’t go to her tonight.
I say it again, like a prayer or a curse. A lie I’m trying to make true.
But I can still smell her—clinging to the air like sin. I can still feel her breath on my neck, the ghost of her voice in the cracks of my bones.
She’s in everything now.
And if I go to her, I won’t leave without carving that truth into her skin.
I should walk away.
The rational part of me—the one that speaks in the voice of men I’ve long since buried—whispers that this isn’t strategy anymore. That this isn’t control. That this isn’t anything resembling a game.
But my hands don’t stop shaking.
Not from fear. No. Hook has never feared a thing that bleeds.
But from the bone-deep ache that coils in my stomach like a sickness, a hunger that has nothing to do with flesh and everything to do with her.
With the way she screamed at me and then cried into the floor.
With the way she hurled that necklace like a curse.
With the way she’s quiet now—too quiet—and I’ve memorised the patterns of her stillness like I’ve memorised the scars on my hands.
I’m not watching her.
Not anymore.
And yet, I still see her. Every time I blink. She lives behind my eyelids now, stitched into the darkness with threads made of ash and gold and violence. She is the bruise blooming behind my ribs, the itch I can’t scratch without drawing blood.
And God help me, I want to bleed.
I want to shatter that door, take her face in my hand, and make her look at me. Make her see the man she’s unravelling thread by thread. Make her say my name like it means nothing. And then ruin her until it means everything.
But I don’t move.
Because she hasn’t earned my touch today.
She’s pushed. And I want to push back. I want to destroy her without laying a single finger on her—want to starve her of everything until she begs for the poison only I can give.
My smile, when it comes, is sharp and wrong.
“Little fairy,” I murmur to no one. “You’re going to wish you’d broken the mirror with your face instead.”
Then I turn and walk away from her door, not because I’m finished—but because I’m not.