Page 45 of Ruining Him

“You look good, tied up for me,” I murmur, and his lips curve the slightest bit before he glares at me.

There’s no anger behind the glare. No, he’s just using it as a way to hide his smile.

It hits me then that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a genuine smile from him. Sure, I’ve seen the mask he wears when he’s in public, but that’s just it. A mask. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him genuinely happy, and it makes me wonder what that would look like on him. Would it suit him?

“What are you gonna do with me, baby?”

I smirk down at him, taking in his rapidly rising and falling chest, his blown-out pupils, and his freshly fucked–looking hair.

“I’m going to ruin you, pretty boy,” I purr.

“So ruin me, little menace. Ruin me, destroy me, do whatever the hell you want with me.”

A rush of warmth washes over me, and I can’t help but crack a smile.

“It’d be my pleasure.”

I climb to my feet, and he growls at the lack of contact between us before I send him a pointed look. He huffs but doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t try and move, he doesn’t get up to follow me. He just lies there, in the middle of the boxing ring, in a pair of shorts with his hands tied.

He knows I’m not leaving him like this. I just need to find something to make this a little more… fun.

I snoop around the room, looking for anything that catches my attention, and then I see it.

The stack of dumbbells.

Huh.

That could be interesting.

TWENTY-EIGHT

COLE

From the way I’m lying, I can’t see what she’s up to. All I can hear are her labored breaths as she seems to search for something. My heart rate picks up as I hear the clanging of metal on metal.

What is she doing?

What is she looking for?

What is she going to do with me?

And more importantly, why do I like the not knowing? Why do I enjoy the fact that I never know if she’s going to fuck me or throttle me?

I can see her movements in my periphery, hear her grunt as she seems to lift something. The only things on that side of the room are… Is she lifting weights right now? Has she seriously just left me here while she gets a workout in? It shouldn’t surprise me, really. I’ve never known her to be normal.

Only, she doesn’t leave me alone for long. A moment later, she comes shuffling over, carrying two dumbbells. One’ssmaller than the other, and I can’t work out from here what weights they are.

“I got us some toys to play with,” she murmurs, dropping the weights to the floor beside me, merely inches from my head.

“You’re insane,” I spit, my eyes widening when I see how close she just came to killing me.

I know she’s killed people before. Hell, I’ve seen it—and I know without a doubt that that was not the first time, since she’s clearly really fucking trained for that shit—but would she really kill me? And would she even bat an eyelash if she did? Or would she just move on with the rest of her day like she did the last time?

“I know,” she laughs and crouches down beside me to look me in the eye, a grin widening her lips. “Being normal is boring, pretty boy. I’m going to introduce you to the fun side of life.”

God help me. Her definition of an okay time is probably tying me to a wooden beam and practicing her knife throwing. A fun time to her is almost unimaginable.

“I’m going to live through this, right?”