Chapter Four #2
She’s talking to herself behind the door, voice low, frantic, berating herself. She has no idea how loud she is. No idea how easily I can hear every word. No idea how much it thrills me that she’s rattled.
I open the door.
Her back is to me. “Jace, I swear to god it wasn’t—”
She turns, stops breathing, good.
I lean against the doorframe, arms crossed, letting the silence stretch just long enough to make her squirm.
“Oh, by all means,” I say softly. “Explain to me how that wasn’t what it looked like. Tell me how you weren’t trying to get a reaction out of me. Trying to push me. Trying to see what I’d do.”
I take a step forward. She takes one back, bumping into the desk.
“Tell me you don’t feel it,” I murmur. “The pull. The gravity. The way we keep orbiting the same point no matter how hard we pretend we’re not.”
Her throat works. Her fingers curl around the edge of the desk. She’s trying so hard not to show it.
I move closer, slow, deliberate, giving her time to stop me. She doesn’t.
“You think you’re subtle,” I continue, voice low, almost gentle. “You think I don’t see the way you react. The way you freeze. The way you look at me like you’re trying to decide whether to run or step closer.”
Her breath stutters. She hates that I hear it.
“Tell me you don’t think about me,” I say. “Tell me I haven’t been in your head. Tell me you haven’t replayed every moment we’ve had.”
She doesn’t speak.
She can’t.
“Tell me you don’t want this connection,” I say, stepping close enough that she feels the heat of me. “And I’ll walk out that door.”
The room goes still. Her pulse is visible in her throat. Her eyes flicker. Fear, confusion, something deep rooted and slowly twisting into something she doesn’t, no, refuses to recognize.
She doesn’t say a word. And that silence is the most honest thing she has ever given me.
I take another step, slow enough for her to feel every inch of it. The room tightens around us, the air thickening until it feels difficult to breathe. She presses back against the desk, shoulders rigid, eyes locked on me with a mixture of dread and something she refuses to name.
Good. She should feel cornered. She should feel seen.
“You think silence saves you,” I say, voice low, steady, too calm for the storm tearing through me. “You think if you don’t answer, you can pretend this isn’t happening.”
Her breath trembles. She hates that I hear it.
“But silence is still a choice,” I continue. “It tells me everything you’re too afraid to say.”
I move closer, close enough that she can’t pretend she doesn’t feel the shift in the air, close enough that she knows I’m done pretending to be reasonable.
“You want me gone,” I say. “You want me here. You want both. You want neither. You don’t even know what you want.”
Her throat tightens. She still doesn’t speak.
“You think I’m guessing,” I say. “I’m not. I’ve watched you long enough to know exactly what you’re feeling.”
Another step. Her fingers dig into the desk. She’s shaking now, barely, but I see it.
“You think I’m dangerous,” I say. “You’re right. You think I’m unstable. You’re right. You think I’m obsessed.”
I stop in front of her, close enough that she can feel the weight of my attention, the intensity of it, the way it burns through every inch of space between us.
“You’re right.”
Her breath catches. Her eyes dart to the door, then back to me, a trapped animal calculating escape routes that don’t exist.
“You think you can outrun this,” I say. “You can’t. You think you can ignore it. You can’t. You think you can pretend you don’t feel the same pull I do.”
I lower my voice, calm in a way that should terrify her.
“You can’t.”
Mara
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The silence between us thickens until it feels solid, a wall pressing against my ribs.
He stands there, too close, too calm, too certain, and something inside me finally stops pretending.
The fear I’ve been trying to rationalize, the tension I’ve been trying to name, the pull I’ve been trying to deny it all snaps into brutal clarity.
He isn’t just obsessed.
He isn’t just intense.
He isn’t just dangerous.
He is unstable.
The real kind. The kind you read about in case studies and warning signs. The kind who believes his own narrative so completely that reality bends around it.
My pulse hammers in my throat. He watches it. He studies it. He tracks it with the same focus a predator gives a wounded animal. His eyes don’t waver. His breathing doesn’t change. His posture doesn’t shift. He is terrifyingly still, as if the only thing in the room worth reacting to is me.
He isn’t waiting for my answer. He’s waiting for confirmation of the answer he already decided I would give.
That’s when it hits me. He isn’t responding to me. He isn’t reacting to what I do. He isn’t reading the moment.
He is following a script he wrote long before I ever stepped into this room.
A script where I am already his, where my silence is consent, where my fear is proof. A script where my hesitation is devotion.
My stomach drops. My knees weaken. My fingers claw at the desk behind me because I suddenly don’t trust my body to hold me upright.
He steps closer, slow and deliberate, and the air shifts around him. The temperature changes. The room shrinks. My vision narrows. Every instinct in me screams to run, to scream, to fight, to do something, anything, but my body refuses to move.
He is too calm. Too controlled. Too certain.
“You understand now,” he says.
And I do. God, I do.
I understand that he has built an entire world in his head where I belong to him. I understand that he has rewritten every interaction we’ve had into evidence. I understand that he has been waiting for this moment, this silence, this breath, this exact second where I finally see him clearly.
He is not a man who lost control. He is a man who never intended to let me have any.
My chest tightens. My vision blurs at the edges. My breath comes too fast, too shallow, too loud.
He watches all of it. He absorbs all of it. He revels in all of it.
And the truth settles in my bones with a cold, suffocating weight.
He isn’t going to let me go. Not now. Not ever.
And I have no idea how to get out of this room.
My hands shake as I try to stand upright, my body struck by his proximity, frozen in place, unable to utter a single word, he’s close enough that I can smell him, that scent that has lingered around me for weeks, the presence that is almost suffocating.
“Don’t do this…” I whisper, eyes locked onto his.
My mind begins to run wild, will he hurt me, force this connection, take my devotion and twist it into something more…
The scenarios run rampant in my head, I need to get out of here.
I try to move, my legs shaky as I take small steps towards the door, my hands out in a surrendering gesture “Please just let me go.”
“You know I can’t do that Bunny.” before I can bolt his hand strikes and grabs my upper arm, roughly pressing me into the door, his irises swallowed by dilated pupils.
“Stop pretending you don’t want me.” He growls into my neck, leaning in to brush his lips across my throat, I writhe in his arms, trying to wriggle free, to escape the heat that is blooming in my lower stomach “Please…” I have no idea what I’m begging for, freedom, him?
“Look at me.” He snaps, his hand beneath my chin, my gaze snaps to his my mouth forming an O shape as my blood runs cold, ice cold.
“Your body betrays you Bunny, stop trying to fight yourself.” His hand shifts from my jaw to my neck, his fingers squeezing my pulse point lightly, a satisfied smile crossing his features.
His ability to suck the air from my lungs with one simple look terrifies me, and when his words accompany the deadly stare it feels as though my lungs don’t work at all.
His gaze lowers, across the skin just below his hands that goosebumps have scattered across, betraying my earlier words completely, a cruel snarl crosses his features as his hands lower, fingers dancing across my waist where my t-shirt ends, his hands slowly lifting, my arms instinctively reach above my head as he removes it, leaving my torso bare in front of him, he sucks in a sharp intake of air as his gaze rakes over me, finally seeing me bare in front of him snaps some invisible thread that was holding him together, a low growl sounds in his throat as he pushes me back into the wooden doorframe again, this time with much more force.
A gasp escapes my lips as he steps back, my hands instinctively shoot up to cover myself, to retain some form of dignity.
“Don’t you fucking dare hide yourself from me.” he commands, and I find myself lowering my arms straight away, my gaze still locked onto his eyes.
“I want to see you.” I whisper, his eyebrow raises in response, his discarded shirt from the tattoo session earlier still out on the bench.
“There isn’t much left to see Bunny, are you telling me you want me naked?” His head tilts, a challenge.
Maybe if I give him my body, this will end whatever cat and mouse situation we have going on, and I’d be lying if I said my body didn’t react at the thought, wetness pooling between my thighs betraying my fear once again.
“Do you want me to fuck you?” He steps closer again, his finger dancing across the waistband of my cargo pants, flicking the button open with a practiced ease.
I don’t speak, don’t move, refusing to admit that this is what I want.
A part of me wants to say no, to tell him to go fuck himself, but a dark and twisted part of me wants him to force this, to make me take it, no matter how much I beg him to stop.
He can see my thoughts whirling, his hand shoots out and pulls me closer.
“On your knees Bunny.” A simple command, something that should send alarms ringing in my head, I should run, before this goes too far.