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We’re alone now. I take this opportunity to get out of my chair and run for the door, but Aidan is faster. He grips me by the arm, pulls me back, and presses me against the wall where one of the guards stood only a few minutes ago. I can still feel the warmth of body heat.

He pins me, his hand closing around my throat. He doesn’t squeeze or apply any pressure.

“I control the air you breathe.” When he directs these words at me, his voice is softer, and I hate my body for responding…

to the seductive purr of it, to his touch, to the way he smells even while covered in death…

that green woody scent, like something magic from the forest and something expensive from the city all at the same time.

“Please, Aidan. You’re scaring me.”

“Am I? Or are you scared of yourself? You aren’t a wilting violet, Maddie. You have fire to match mine, and we both know it. You may be the sun, but let’s not forget the sun is a giant ball of fire in the sky.”

I want to sneer at this impromptu poetry. Is it an echo of something he would have written for me when we were children? Is he reciting it now that I’m no longer in a position to laugh at him?

I pretend I don’t know what he means, but I am scared of myself.

I’m scared of how my body responds to him, how I just watched him kill a man, and still, I crave him.

Every nerve ending is lit up by his voice, his touch, his smell, the way he consumes me with only a look.

He surrounds me like a fog in a dark forest that I can’t find my way out of…

and every time I try to move away, I just get sucked deeper and deeper into the darkness, becoming more and more lost.

I hate him. He’s the weird kid. He stalked me and forced me into this. He’s a killer, something I’ve tried desperately to deny. On paper I’m his wife, but in reality I’m his prisoner with no chance of parole.

In the eyes of his church are we even really married?

There has been no consummation. I’ve berated myself wondering if he even really wants me.

How can a man who kills without mercy have this much self-control?

Maybe he has buyer’s remorse. Maybe he was just about the chase, and now that he has me, it’s not the same.

Maybe it’s that rush of adrenaline he craves, and my slow somewhat willing descent has taken away all the thrill.

Maybe he doesn’t want a rabbit that wants to be consumed.

He strokes the side of my throat, and my breathing calms. “Beg me, Maddie,” he says quietly.

I close my eyes and think please let me go, please let me go, please let me go . But my words...those evil fucking traitors say, “Please fuck me.”

And now I’ve done it. I’ve fucked up. I lost the one power I held—the power to deny him my desire.

These are the words he’s been waiting for.

The words I’ve resisted no matter how much pleasure he’s wrung from my body.

No matter how uneven the exchange, I’ve fought these words.

I kept wanting to see if his word was good…

if he would truly honor what he said… If I really had the power, if I had to actually say the words for him to take my virginity.

And now that I’ve said them, I can’t unsay them. I can’t gather them up from the air they’ve dissipated into, to put them back in the bottle. I can’t make myself safe from his invasion any longer.

This war is now upon me and there’s nowhere left to run.

The smug look of triumph on his face enrages me. “I hate you,” I say, again. I have to hold onto my hatred. It’s the only thing preventing me from coming completely undone, losing the last thread of sanity and normality still anchoring me to the world. “You’re a monster.”

“Maybe, but I’m your monster. I think that counts for something, don’t you?”

I don’t reply. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of thinking of himself as “My Monster”. Even though I know it’s true. I believe it now. He would burn down the world if it was threatening me. He would protect me from anything and anyone except himself.

For a moment I think nothing will happen. He’ll back off, and I’ll awkwardly extricate myself from this situation. But he’s not done.

He leans in close to my ear, his breath fluttering out in a warm puff of air on the side of my cheek. “Say it again,” he whispers, “… beg me.”

He shoves his other hand underneath my skirt exploring beneath my panties.

I gasp as he pushes two fingers inside me, teasing along the edge of the barrier he seems almost gleeful to keep in tact, to keep me on a knife’s edge wondering when it will happen, when he’ll breech this final wall between us.

His mouth moves to the side of my throat.

He presses a soft kiss there then moves up to whisper again in my ear.

“Shameful. You are so fucking wet. How can you be this wet after what you just saw? You know what I am, and yet… here you are.”

And what are my other options? This man is never letting me go. He smells like both death and salvation right now, and I know the warm chiseled perfection that hides beneath that suit.

“Please…” I say, my voice far too breathy. I’m desperate to grab that word and put it back inside me, but I can’t. I want him so much I can barely breathe. Why do I want him?

Finally he takes his hand from my throat, and I regret its absence because I am a lunatic.

I have lost every shred of sanity, decency, morality, and goodness in my soul.

This man is the devil, and he is happily carting me off to hell.

He unbuttons my top, and I let him because my demented brain has decided that yes, this is a great time for this.

I just watched Aidan kill a man, and my libido is on hyperdrive. I’m starting to realize that maybe I’m built different. Did Aidan sense something in me that didn’t quite color inside the lines of normalcy? Is that why he’s been so obsessed all this time?

A moan escapes my lips as he unhooks my bra.

It’s a front clasp, and he handles it as though he’s become familiar with lingerie from a thousand women.

As though he understands every hook, every ribbon, every corset, every hidden button of every piece of clothing meant to display a woman for the pleasure of his hungry gaze.

Like he went to a special school for it and graduated with honors.

“I won’t let you give yourself to me while pretending I’m someone else,” he says.

“Who else could I possibly pretend you are?”

“You know what I mean, Maddie.”

He’s the one who put up the illusion, the mask of charm.

He’s the one who has been seducing me, wrapping me up in the soft glow of candlelight.

But now he’s not happy with that. It’s not enough for him anymore.

He wants me to really see him. He wants to drag me into the cold hard day, make me see his true form, all while demanding my desire remain steady in the face of that awful truth.

And the fucked up part is… it does.

“You know you’ve won,” I say, my hips moving desperately with his fingers. He pulls away, and I nearly cry at the loss of contact. He backs up a few steps.

I take those same steps toward him. Those first thoughts I had when I saw him in the alley come back to me, and now I am the lamb desperate for the wolf to feast. His gaze is entirely predatory, but he lures. He doesn’t stalk.

For once.

He wants me to agree to every step along the path to this madness.

And I know that once he’s inside me the possession he feels will only grow.

Because then he’ll have really claimed me, really marked me somehow, deflowered me, stripped me of the last bit of innocence to drag me into the darkened woods with him so he can finish consuming me at his leisure.

“Undress,” he says. His voice has turned animal, barely human.

I take the top off, the bra, the skirt, the panties. My gaze never leaves him. He inches away, and I inch forward as my clothing drops in a trail behind me.

When I reach him, he says it again. “Beg me, Maddie.”

“Please, fuck me,” I whisper. It’s so breathy. How can this be me?

I control the air you breathe. The words dance around in my brain, wrapping around me, pulling me closer to my fate.

He pushes me back onto the table. This is sick, twisted, grotesque.

I should be horrified that I’m lying in the still warm blood of the man Aidan just killed.

Pain and pleasure. Life and death. All these lines and edges blur.

I feel hypnotized, out of control, spreading my legs for him, as he undoes his pants.

He doesn’t undress for this. He doesn’t allow me to see the smooth perfection of his body, the tattoos—and the scars that should mar him, but somehow only enhance him.

“Good girl,” he finally says.

A flush of warmth spreads through me, and I know I am forever lost to the man I’ve run from practically my entire life, that I have willingly just walked to my destruction, begging him to take my innocence in a pool of someone else’s blood.

“It’s going to hurt for a moment,” he says.

I don’t care. But I don’t say this out loud. I hold this thought inside, unwilling to let him see everything. Somehow I know, I should have fought him harder, hated him more, held onto every second of our past and every ounce of revulsion, because this is the end of me.

He pushes inside. There’s a sharp rip of pain, and I cry out. He stills inside me, cradling me in his arms.

“Shhhh,” he says, stroking my hair. Aidan surrounds me, the soft cashmere blend of his suit pressing against my naked skin like a comforting blanket.

And then he’s moving again, savage thrusts, erasing the softness of only a moment before. His mouth is on my throat, kissing, sucking, biting, as his hands move feverishly over me. He moves a hand between us to stroke my clit as he drives harder and faster.