Property Of A Monster

Stained

Chapter 3

Lorenzo dragged her through the doors and into a room lined with dark wood and locked windows, then pushed her down into a chair so firmly her teeth clicked together. Mary's pulse hadn't slowed since the car. If anything, it climbed higher now, trapped in a room she didn't recognize with a man she was apparently supposed to marry.

"Wait." Her voice came out ragged, panic cracking through every syllable. "You can't do this. I'm engaged. I'm engaged, do you understand? We're in love, we have a wedding planned, you can't just, "

"Then call it off." He said it the way most people ordered coffee, flat, unbothered, already moving past her toward the desk in the corner.

"What?"

"Call it off." He turned back to face her, and there was nothing in his expression that looked like it was joking. "That's the only way you protect him. Whatever life he thinks the two of you are building, it ends today, quietly, or it ends loudly. Your choice."

The threat landed harder than a shout would have. Mary's hands curled into fists against her thighs, her whole body shaking now with something past fear.

"You're insane." Tears blurred her vision, hot and humiliating. "Are you a psycho? Who does this? Who just, drags a stranger off the street and decides they're getting married?"

He didn't answer that either. Instead he reached for the buttons of his own shirt, working them open one by one with the same unhurried economy he did everything with, until the ruined, blood-crusted fabric fell open across a chest marked with old scars and the fresh line of gauze Mary had pressed there herself hours ago.

She looked away, cheeks burning despite herself.

"Yours is soiled too." His voice cut through the room, calm, clinical, nothing like the heat rising in her face. His eyes dropped briefly to the dried rust-brown stain across her scrub top, evidence of his own blood she'd fought to keep inside him. "Off your clothes."

Mary's head snapped up so fast her neck ached. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

"You pervert." The word tore out of her, more fury than fear now, though both were tangled so tightly together she couldn't tell where one ended. "I am not, "

He didn't so much as blink at the accusation. "Your clothes are soiled with blood. I don't want you dirtying my house." He nodded toward a folded set of fresh clothes on the edge of the bed she hadn't noticed until now, dark fabric, clearly meant for her. "There's something clean. Use it."

The heat in her face didn't cool, but the shape of her fear shifted, from one kind of danger to a different, quieter one. She stood on legs that didn't feel entirely hers, gathered the folded clothes against her chest like armor, and turned her back to him.

Her fingers fumbled at the hem of her scrub top. She prayed, silently, fiercely, that he'd have the decency to look away.

He didn't.

She could feel it, the weight of his attention settling over her shoulders like a hand, unmoving, unapologetic, watching her with the same still, assessing focus he gave everything else in his world that belonged to him now.