Page 63 of His Toy

But with Heather, I clenched my jaw. I restrained myself.

Because she was right to question me. And even if I despised defiance, I respected her ability to come clean, to speak what was on her mind. She wasn’t a blind follower, but she still believed in people. She still believed in me.

I lunged towards her, grabbing her shoulders, digging my nails into her skin. She gasped. “I said hit me, Heather.Hit me.We’ve come this far. I abducted your sister. I coerced you into an agreement. I extorted you, Heather, plain and simple. And now your very life is on the line.” She shook in my grip. “You need to be prepared to face true ugliness. Show me how you will fight for your life.”

Her body trembled, inescapable fear of what was happening coursing through her veins.

This was how I should have been all along. Rule with fear. It was safer this way. So that when she saw the opportunity to run, she ran.

So that she didn’t stay with me.

“What’s going on, Zaid?” her voice wavered. “I don’t understand.”

“Did you forget that we’re training?” I asked. She bit her tongue. I wrenched her in my grip again. “I am your sir, Heather. Your fucking sir. When we’re training, you’re nothing more to me than a toy.”

She never should have believed I was anything more than her enemy.

“What happened?” she asked.

I let go of her shoulders. She stumbled, catching her balance. I turned around, facing the woods. What was the point in keeping this a secret too? If she knew, maybe she would leave.

“Eric has requested your presence.”

Her shadow visibly relaxed at the words. “That’s good, right?” Her footsteps shuffled towards me. “This is what we wanted, isn’t it? I’m a gift. An offering. All of that.”

“There’s no ‘we’ in this scenario,” I said. She stopped, her shadow frozen on the ground. “There’s been a change. A dangerous one. I wanted to offer you as a gift. Not to fulfill a request.”

The air around us stilled. The truth was that if Eric had requested Heather, there was a chance that he knew who I was, and that was the real danger. Heather held her breath. I wanted to protect her from this world, but the best way to do that was to make her leave. She was safer away from me.

“This is different now,” I said softly. I faced her. “The fact that he’s requesting you means you’re on his mind. He will not rest until he’s had you.”

“Let him have me,” she said. “We’ll do as we always planned.”

As it if were that simple.

“He will torture you, Heather, and that torture will lead to murder. It’s not a simple trade. It’s not just sex.”

“It never was,” she said. “I know that.”

I wanted her to escape. To leave. To run away. To not be taken by the monster. Even if she survived Eric, the experience would forever change her. She’d never be able to trust the world again. Heather reached for her collar, and she clutched it, reminding herself, and me, of what it meant. Even if we hadn’t made it official, we both knew that I owned her. She agreed to my commands. But even if she listened, I couldn’t make the strong woman inside of her see the perilousness of the situation. That we could both die.

“Believe in me,” she said. “I can do this.” She stepped closer and held my hand. “You’ve trained me well. I won’t forget what you’ve taught me.”

But what if that wasn’t enough?

I watched her thumb rub circles on the top of my hand, as if it wasn’t mine.

“Eric needs to pay for what he’s done,” she said, her voice resolute. “I want to help. I’m going to help.”

“You’re a fool,” I muttered.

“I’m not going to break our agreement, even if you order me to,” she said. The defiance was admirable, and fucking aggravating. But I loved her loyalty, even if it drove me mad. “Sir,” she added for good measure, a grin on her face.

I realized that the only thing I could do was to protect her, for now. To do my best to make sure she was safe. But when the day came to follow through with my design, I hoped with everything I stood for that she left. That she betrayed our agreement. That I would be wrong about her.

If I died, so be it. I would drag Eric down to hell with me.

But Heather needed to live.