MARKED BY HIM: His Innocent Target

I smiled at everyone. It was just me being friendly. The barista who remembered my order. The girl who sat next to me in Statistics and always forgot a pen. The old man who fed pigeons by the quad every morning at 8:03 AM sharp. Smile, say hi, keep walking. That was my rule. Twenty years old, third year Psych major, three part-time jobs, one goal: graduate without drama. Normal uni life. Coffee that tasted like water. Notes that never made sense until 2 AM. A roommate who blasted K-pop while I studied. Safe. Boring. Mine. I didn’t know one smile would be enough for him to decide I was his. --- The library was my favorite kind of quiet. The kind where you could hear pages turn and pens scratch and nobody asked you questions. Row C. Third table from the window. That was my seat. Had been since first year. I liked the light. I liked that the heating vent was right under it in winter. I liked that no one else ever took it. Until today. A black leather notebook sat there. Closed. No name. Just a silver pen laid perfectly parallel to the edge. Like someone measured it. Weird. But libraries were full of weird. I moved the notebook two inches and sat down. Unpacked my laptop. Psych 302. Cognitive bias. Due Friday. Ten minutes later, the chair across from me pulled out. No sound. Just weight. Air pressure changed. I looked up. Lucien Ashford. Cold. Brilliant. Terrifying. The guy professors fear and girls whisper about. He wasn’t a student. Not really. Twenty-six. Dropped out of Cambridge at nineteen to run his family’s investment firm. Came back to “finish a degree he didn’t need” according to campus gossip. PhD track in Behavioral Economics. Published papers that grad students cried over. And he was staring at me. Gray eyes. No expression. Like he was cataloging my face. “Your seat,” he said. Voice low. Didn’t ask. Stated. I blinked. “Excuse me?” “Row C. Third table from the window. That’s my seat.” I glanced at the notebook. At the pen. At him. “There’s no name on it. And I’ve sat here for three years.” “I started sitting here last month,” he said. “You just never noticed.” Something cold slid down my spine. Last month? I would’ve noticed Lucien Ashford. Everyone did. He moved like the air got heavier when he entered a room. “Okay,” I said slowly. “Well, I’m here now. You can… take the table behind me?” He didn’t move. Just watched. Then he reached across, picked up my coffee, sniffed it, set it back down. My oat latte. Extra shot. The one I got every Tuesday and Thursday at 2:15 PM. “You’re off schedule,” he murmured. “You usually order at 2:08. It’s 2:17.” My blood went cold. “That’s… coincidence.” “Coincidence is just pattern you haven’t mapped yet,” he said. He opened the notebook. Blank pages. Except the top one. My class schedule. Printed. Every lecture. Every shift at the campus café. Every Psych lab. Highlighted in yellow. I stood so fast my chair screeched. “That’s my schedule. How did you—” “I like that you’re innocent,” he said, not even looking up. “It means you won’t understand how dirty my thoughts about you are. Yet.” The word "yet" hit me like a slap. I grabbed my bag. Laptop, notes, everything. “Stay away from me.” He finally looked up. And smiled. Small. Sharp. Nothing friendly about it. “I’m not near you,” he said. “I’m exactly where I need to be. You’re the one who smiled at me in the quad last Tuesday. 11:42 AM. You were carrying three books and a coffee. You almost dropped them. You smiled at me because I caught one.” I remembered. Vaguely. A guy in a black coat. Books everywhere. I’d mumbled thanks. That was it. “One smile,” he said. He stood. Six foot two. Suit. No tie. Like he walked out of a board meeting into a library just to ruin my day. “That’s all it took for me to decide.” “Decide what?” My voice shook. I hated that it shook. “That you’re mine,” he said simply. He didn’t touch me. He didn’t need to. He stepped forward once and suddenly the table was behind me and the wall was at my back and he was in front of me, not touching, just… caging me in. His hands on the wall on either side of my head. Library wall. Quiet. Public. But it felt like no one else existed. “I like that you’re innocent,” he murmured again. His breath smelled like coffee and something sharper. Cedar. “It means you won’t understand how dirty my thoughts about you are. Yet.” My heart was hammering. “Let me go.” “I’m protecting you,” he said. Eyes dropped to my mouth for half a second, then back up. “From late buses. From boys who don’t read your research. From yourself, when you work until 3 AM and forget to eat.” “I don’t need protecting.” “Everyone needs protecting,” he said. “You just didn’t know you needed it from me.” A librarian walked past. Glanced over. Saw Lucien Ashford and kept walking. Because professors fear him. Because his family name was on the new science wing. Because terrifying men get to cage girls against walls and no one says anything. He stepped back. Just like that. Space and air again. “Your coffee,” he said, sliding it across the table toward me. “It’ll get cold. You hate cold coffee.” “How do you—” “I observe,” he said. Picked up his notebook. My schedule was still on top. “I’ll walk you to your 4 PM lecture. You usually take the back path to avoid the crowd. You’ll switch to the front path now. It’s safer.” “I don’t—” “You do now,” he cut me off gently. Like I was a child who didn’t understand rules yet. “Because I said so.” He started walking. Didn’t look back. Assumed I’d follow. And the worst part? My feet moved. Not because I wanted to. Because my brain was screaming "this is wrong and this is Lucien Ashford and no one says no to him all at the same time." Outside the library, he paused at the bike racks. A black car idled at the curb. Driver in front. Tinted windows. “My schedule,” I said, voice barely there. “My friends. My phone. My freedom. You’re not taking those.” He turned. Looked at me like I’d said something cute. “I started small,” he said. “Your seat. Your coffee. Your schedule.” He took one step closer. Didn’t cage me this time. Just close enough that I could see the gold flecks in his gray eyes. “Then bigger,” he murmured. “Your friends. Your phone. Your freedom.” My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out. New contact. No name. Just an L. Message: Front path.Now. I hadn’t given him my number. He saw me see it. “You’re safe with me, little one,” he said. The nickname made me flinch. “That’s all this is.” “It’s not,” I whispered. “It’s control.” “Control keeps you alive,” he said. Then he got in the car. Window rolled down. “4 PM lecture. Front path. I’ll be watching from the second floor window. Wave if you need me.” The car drove off. I stood there with my coffee going cold and my schedule in his notebook and my heart beating too fast. I’m just a lively 20-year-old who wanted a normal uni life. He’s a man who doesn’t ask. He takes. And he chose me. I told myself I wouldn’t go to the front path. I’d take the back path like always. Prove he didn’t own me. Prove one smile didn’t mean anything. But at 3:55 PM, I found myself walking the front path. Past the science wing. Past the second floor window. He was there. Suit. Hands in pockets. Watching. I didn’t wave. He smiled anyway. Like he knew I would be there. Like he’d already mapped that too. Now the question isn’t if I’ll fall for him. It’s if I’ll survive him. And as I slid into my lecture seat, I felt it. That prickle on my neck. That weight of eyes. Row 7. Back corner. Empty seat, until he sat down. He opened his notebook. Wrote one line. Then turned it so I could see. You smiled. Now you’re mine. Class started. I didn’t hear a word.