Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 60198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
“You’re rude,” he says.
Fuck me. He’s just not going to understand. He’s going to willfully refuse to get it because he’s more invested in doing Daddy’s bidding than making a good choice for himself.
“You’re a liability. We have a very big development going into the forest and your insistence on sabotaging it is unacceptable. You should be in jail, but you can have some babies instead. I don’t like you, but I will fuck a baby into you.”
“Good luck with that,” I mutter under my breath. I think I might already be pregnant. I hope I am. I hope I still have that bit of Karl with me. Thinking about it makes me feel safe and connected to him, though if I was it would probably only be a collection of cells with gills or whatever at this point.
“You’ll let me do what I want to you,” Patrick says. It’s the same sentiment that Karl’s given before, but it’s not hot. It’s just gross. He disgusts me in a deep, visceral way. I can’t even imagine the abominations I’d give birth to if he were to somehow impregnate me. Bland little boring children of the financial corn.
He’s really not getting it. He sees a woman in a dress, just like my mother wanted him to. And he thinks that he can bully me because most women in dresses can be bullied, just like his father no doubt taught him. Fuck.
I used to think Karl was a terrible guy, and he is. But there are worse. There’s this. This man who owns a world he’ll never be a part of. This man who might as well be shrink-wrapped in plastic.
“You couldn’t get anything pregnant,” I say. “You look like you shoot blank checks.”
He narrows his eyes. “That sounded like a compliment.”
“Yeah. I fucked it up,” I snap back.
Karl would have laughed. This guy doesn’t. This guy just stands in front of me internally spiritually decomposing and presenting a clear physical danger I can’t allow myself to deal with because of the consequences. If I murder all these people, there are going to be repercussions.
He looks at me like I’m an annoying problem, like I’m something to put in a category and fix. I don’t know how to get out of this in a human form. I don’t really know how to navigate anything in a human form.
There’s a lot of money at stake in the forestry development, and because I don’t care about money, it never really occurred to me that anyone else would go to this extreme to kidnap me.
“You’re going to do as you’re told,” he says.
“Or what?”
I can’t help the words as they come out of me. It’s an automatic response. And it infuriates him.
Whap!
He smacks me across the face hard enough to make my ears ring. There’s a moment in which I can’t think, in which all I feel is rage. But when I look at him, I see that he’s not angry at all. He’s just looking at me with that clear, calculating expression, trying to tell if he hit me hard enough. Trying to work out what he’ll have to do next to make me do what he wants. He’s not an animal like me. He’s not even really a man. He’s a walking computational robot, and that makes him the most dangerous creature I’ve ever encountered.
I’m a little excited as I make a silent vow to myself to kill him.
It’s not often that I get to kill anyone.
Shifters are mostly peaceful, but there’s always some part of us that makes us dangerous in ways people cannot be. It’s a hunting instinct, a sort of prey drive that only applies to humans. Every shifter wants to kill someone. Most of us don’t, because we understand consequences, and because when we do we get hunted to near extinction. But I think I will make an exception for this man.
“Good,” he says. “You know how to be quiet. I want you to stay that way.”
I think about ripping his throat out in a wooded area somewhere. I think about how warm his blood will be in my mouth, how his flesh will nourish me…
“Come here,” he says, making a swirling motion with his finger. He wants me to turn around. I don’t want to. I don’t trust him in front of me, and I definitely don’t trust him behind me.
“What are you doing?”
I don’t really need to ask. I know what he’s doing. His arms extend out around my shoulders and a little flash of reflected light sparkles. He’s putting a silver necklace around my throat. I catch a glance of myself in a mirror hanging on the wall. I look pale and feminine. I look weak. I look small. And the thing going around my neck isn’t really a necklace. It’s more of a choker really. Or, more to the point, a collar.