Page 84 of Depraved Devotion

The words slither through the darkness, low and smooth, dripping with amusement. I jerk upright, my heart hammering as I scan the room. Shadows stretch across the walls, the glow of the streetlight outside doing little to illuminate the corners of my bedroom.

“Ghost?” I whisper, my voice shaky and barely audible.

There’s no answer. Nothing but the sound of my own ragged breathing and the hum of the city beyond the window. My hands shake when I lower my t-shirt while continuing my search for any sign of him.

Finding nothing, I sigh. It was nothing more than my imagination. My mind’s desperate attempt to make him real.

“Hello, Doc.”

CHAPTER 37

GHOST

Earlier that night…

Two weeks.

Fourteen fucking days since I last saw her, since I touched her, since I made her come apart in that interview room while the world outside burned with violence.

My Geneva.

I stare at the cracked screen of my smuggled phone, the faint glow illuminating the only thing keeping me tethered to this woman.

Her face.

Her voice.

Her body.

Every part of her teases me. Tempts me. Maddens me.

She hasn’t texted. Hasn’t called. Not even to insult me. My hand shakes as rage and longing entwine into something I can’t contain.

If I wasn’t insane before, I certainly am now with wanting her.

I’m not the only one with issues. Geneva is getting therapybecause of me, which I find amusing. I know why. It’s because I got inside her head, and she’s trying to claw me out. Exorcise me like the ghost I am.

My fingers hover over the screen, over the message I’ve typed and deleted a hundred times. I could send it now. Just one text to remind her how it felt.

Howwefelt.

But I don’t send it. Because if I do, she’ll know the power she has over me. It’s complete and total domination.

Although I might’ve already exposed my vulnerability to her. By admitting that losing her scares me. By saying I don’t know what I’d do without her. It was a moment of weakness, brought on by her surrender to me.

I lean back against the wall, the cold concrete doing nothing to calm the heat burning through me. My fingers twitch with the urge to break something. Or to caress her.

I remember the way she looked that day in the interview room. I replay it in my mind every waking moment. Her lips swollen, her breath shaky, and her eyes wide with something I’ve never seen before. It wasn’t fear. It was desire.

And it wasreal.

“Two weeks,” I mutter to myself. The words echo in the small cell, bouncing off the walls like a taunt. Fourteen days without her, and I feel like I’m dying. She’s in every thought, every breath, every fucking moment of my existence.

I unlock my phone again, searching the cameras in her apartment. My chest tightens when I find her, and for a split second, I want to smash the phone against the wall. Instead, I zoom in on her face, looking for something beneath the surface. A crack in the façade.

A trace of me.

She’s hiding it well. But I can still make out the tension in her shoulders, see the shadows beneath her eyes. She’s unraveling just like I am. That’s why she’s running.