CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
The Warden freezes. His mouth pulls back sharply, cutting the air between us like a blade. If I could see his eyes, I know they’d be flashing with something cold and venomous—something that silences without a word.
“I’m in a mood, Starling,” he growls, voice tight with a fury barely contained, every syllable laced with warning. “I urge you to apologize for calling me by another man’s name.”
The room hums with tension—sharp, electric—waiting for my next move.
“I apologize, sir,” I whisper, voice trembling but desperate. “I don’t know what came over me. Please…please continue. I need you. I want you. Just—please.”
My words spill out in a frantic rush, raw and pleading, hoping to breach the wall I see tightening around him.
He freezes, eyes narrowing, the barest flicker of disdain flashing across his face.
“I don’t like girls who beg,” he says, voice low, controlled, and sharp as a whip. “Pleasure is earned, Starling. Not handed out to those who grovel.”
Before I can catch my breath, he pushes me away—gentle, but firm—breaking the charged closeness that had held me captive.
“You will call me Warden. Or don’t speak at all,” he commands, voice cold, unyielding.
“Yes, sir,” I choke out, swallowing hard, every inch of me trembling.
He pulls back, but the weight of his control presses down like a stone in my chest, crushing yet compelling.
“Tonight,” he says, softer now, but with iron resolve, “you will go unsatisfied.”
No more words. No mercy offered.
Just his steady breath—thick, heavy, absolute—filling the space between us, a silent verdict I cannot escape.
And eventually, I fall into restless sleep again—this time curled into the heat of him, hating how my body fits so easily there.
I dream of voices.
Men in suits. Cigars. Blood under their fingernails.
Names I’m not supposed to know echo in the dark, faces I’m not supposed to see. Their smiles. Their touch. I see a man, bound to a chair, bloody.
It’s Shoomaker.
No—it’s not him.
It’s the shape my fear has taken—twisted by the memory that haunts me.
The last man who tried to save me…died in front of me, torn apart by the darkness I still run from.
Now I’m certain Shoomaker will be next.
Because the darkness doesn’t forget.
And neither do I.
I wake drenched in sweat, heart racing, skin hot with fevered memory.
But the space beside me is cold.
The Warden’s gone.
I rise slowly from his bed, the ache in my thighs not from passion—but from tension, from restraint. I don’t let myself think about his hand on my hip, his breath at my neck, or the way my body betrayed me and curled into him like a dog returning to its cage.
I step into the hall without shoes or robe. I should cover myself, but he’s already seen everything. Touched everything. Claimed everything.
I turn toward my own room, but he’s waiting.
Leaning in the dark like he never left.
His voice is soft. “Leaving my chambers so soon?”
I don’t answer at first. Then: “I thought without you there, sir, it was best to retreat back to my own room. I also had a bad dream.”
He nods. “Dreams are just memories that serve as reminders.”
I fold my arms. “I didn’t ask for the nightmares.”
“You asked for this. All of it.”
His voice is maddeningly calm—like we’re discussing the weather instead of my unraveling.
“How long are you going to keep saying that?” I snap, voice taut with fury.
“Until you remember who begged to be broken.”
“I never asked for this, sir.”
“No,” he says, tilting his head just slightly, like he's studying a puzzle that’s almost solved. “But you asked to be chosen. You asked to be taken somewhere you’d finally be wanted.”
He steps closer.
“And now you are.”
His words slice through me.
Before I can recoil, he turns, gesturing down the hallway.
“Come.”
My feet hesitate—but don’t disobey. That part of me he’s retraining already listens before I decide.
He leads me to a steel door I’ve never seen open.
What waits inside is not a bedroom.
The cold hits me instantly.
A living, biting cold. The kind that finds its way into bone. The kind that erases thought, feeling and will.
I step back on instinct.
He holds out a thin black blanket.
A blanket. That’s generous.
It looks like something you’d lay across a hospital gurney. Not protection—a prop.
“What is this?”
He doesn’t answer.
Just waits.
“Sir,” I say, hesitating. “Why…?”
He meets my gaze. “Because you still think you’re in control.”
“I’m not asking for control.”
“No. You’re clinging to the illusion of it. And illusions will get you killed.”
“I won’t go in there.”
“Yes, you will,” he says calmly.
Not the same man who pushed me away last night—no sharpness, no fracture in his control, nothing that hints at uncertainty or conflict. Just that steady, even tone, as if whatever changed between us has already been decided and put back into place.
I don’t move. I want to—my feet burn from the cold already—but I stay in place.
“I’ll scream,” I whisper.
His voice lowers.
“You’ll freeze first.”
His voice is low, steady—deceptively calm. Not a threat. Not even a command. Just a fact, delivered with the same certainty as sunrise. And that’s what makes it worse.
I grit my teeth, jaw tight, refusing to meet his eyes. The blanket slips a little from where he holds it out, still offering, still waiting. But it’s not kindness. It’s a silent challenge, laced with the knowledge that my defiance will break long before his patience does.
Because this isn’t a man on the edge.
This is a man who knows he’s already won.
And he’s just giving me time to realize it.
My pride itches beneath my skin, clawing for some small act of rebellion. I want to spit at his feet. To turn my back on the blanket and the warmth it promises. To suffer just to prove I can.
But my skin is already shrinking from the cold, goosebumps rising in a wave I can’t will away. My fingers are numb. My breath fogs in front of me.
And the air?