There’s a kind of madness that doesn’t come crashing through the walls. It doesn’t scream or break furniture or wave red flags. No, the worst kind of madness is quieter than that.
It slips beneath your skin and settles into your bones, whispering things you’re not ready to hear.
Things like: this is your life now; he’s not letting you go; this is all you’ll ever have. And honestly? That’s exactly what being in this house feels like.
Like being wrapped in silk and strangled slowly.
I don’t know how many days it’s been. Time here doesn’t move, it just hovers, heavy and mocking. At first, I tried to keep track, scratching marks into the inside of a drawer with a broken spoon handle.
But somewhere between what I think was Day Four and my second panic attack, I stopped. There was no point.
Because the worst part isn’t the guards who act like I might shatter if they look at me wrong. It’s not the locked doors that seal like a vault. It’s him. One and only Pierce.
The bite on my neck hasn’t stopped burning since the day he sank his teeth into me. There are moments I swear it’s getting worse. A throb that radiates down my spine, hot and deep, like some ancient evil clawing beneath my own skin.
But I don’t cry or scream, and I probably won’t beg. I just grit my teeth and press my palm to it when it flares, hoping the pressure dulls the ache. Hoping I can still pretend I have some kind of control left.
I wash it with cold clothes, wrap scarves around it just to avoid seeing the angry mark in the mirror. But it knows I’m ignoring it. It pulses harder, especially at night. When it’s quiet and lonely.
Like it wants to be felt, no, it wants to feel him. And I hate that it’s working.
He visits like we’re lovers. Brings food I don’t eat, leaves books I don’t read, and talks like we’re stuck in some twisted version of The Notebook meets Stockholm Syndrome. Pierce acts like this is a waiting game and all he has to do is outlast me.
Yesterday, I tried to remind him I still had a fight left in me. I crossed my arms, glared from the velvet chair, and said, “You can’t keep me here forever.”
He didn’t blink, just smiled and said, “I won’t need to.”
And I honestly don’t know what chilled me more. That he said was a fact or that somewhere, deep down, I believed him?
This morning, I snapped. I dragged a chair to the window, hauled it over my head, and slammed it into the glass with everything I had. The crash was deafening, making the guard flinch.
But the glass? Didn’t even crack.
I let the chair fall and sank into the corner, forehead pressed to the cold wall, whispering escape plans even I didn’t believe in. And that’s when the door creaked open.
I didn’t even have to look. I felt him.
Pierce didn’t need an entrance. His presence just filled a room, it crawled under my skin, made my neck burn and my heart skipped like it couldn’t decide whether to race or freeze.
I looked up, and immediately, I knew something was off.
His shirt was rumpled. Buttons misaligned, his tie hung loose, hair looked like he’d run his hands through it a hundred times. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy, locked on me. Then the scent hit. Whiskey.
He was drunk, every muscle in my body locked.
“What do you want?” I asked, voice hard even as I subtly moved toward the bed.
He dragged his gaze over me, slow and deliberate, like he was stripping me down with every blink. “To see you,” he said, voice low and raw.
“I’ve seen enough of you.”
“That’s the problem,” he murmured, stepping inside and closing the door. “You haven’t seen nearly enough.”
I backed up another step. “You’re drunk. Get out.” But Pierce didn’t listen. He never did.
He moved closer off-balance but still dangerous. The scotch on his breath hit me next. His hand lifted, aiming for my face, too soft, too slow.
I slapped it away. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
His jaw twitched, revealing the crack beneath his perfect exterior.
“Why do you keep pushing me away?” he asked, voice tighter now. “You feel it too, I know that. The bond that pulls us to each other. The heat. Whatever the hell this is between us.”
I shoved him. “You don’t get to decide what I feel.” That was it.
His hand grabbed my wrist tightly and firm, not bruising but enough to say ‘I could’.
“Let me go,” I said, voice trembling. He leaned in, aiming for my mouth and I turned so he just kissed my cheek instead.
“Don’t fight it,” he whispered. “You feel it. Just like I do.”
“Stop it!” I shoved him again but he caught me. One arm under my knees, one at my back. Suddenly I was airborne, then flat on the bed, gasping, pinned beneath him.
“I can feel your pulse,” he said, nose trailing along my jaw. “You don’t get like this for just anyone.”
“Don’t you dare to touch me—” But then his mouth found the bite and just like that I was shattered.
My spine arched, hands flew to his chest—not to push him away, but to grip his shirt like it was the only thing anchoring me. The second his tongue traced the swollen mark, I gasped loud, wrecked and ruined.
Heat flooded me in waves as he licked it again. Slower. Deeper. Like he wanted to taste every second of my surrender. And suddenly for me, the maddening pain on my neck seems to go away right after his tongue.
“You taste like you were made for me,” he whispered. “Mine. Even your blood knows it.”
My breath hitched and thighs twitched on those words. I hated the sound that slipped out of me, a broken moan, but it came and it made him smile. His hand slid up my thigh, fingers dragging over burning skin.
“You keep saying ‘no’,” he murmured, “but this?” He touched just above my knee light, teasing and devastating. “This says you’ll beg soon.”
I wanted to scream, but when my mouth opened his lips were already on mine. And as driven by some mad instinct, I kissed him back. Our tongues clashed, breaths tangled, hands everywhere. I didn’t know where hate ended and hunger began.
I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to burn. Instead, I burned with him.
Then, just when I started to slip, he pulled away. I almost followed his mouth, almost whimpered, but I caught myself just in time. Because no matter what my body wanted… My mind was still mine.
He looked down at me, breath ragged, and lips red. “I could take you right now,” he whispered. “And your body would thank me for it.”
I met his gaze, fire roaring in my chest.
“Do it,” I said. “And I’ll kill you.” He smiled softly like I’d just whispered ‘I love you’.
“I’m not going to forcefully take what’s already mine,” he said. “You’ll give it to me. When you’re ready and desperate.”
He stood, adjusted his shirt like he hadn’t just turned me inside out, and walked to the door. At the threshold, he paused. “Think about how you felt just now,” he said. “Because I will. Every time you lie to me again.”
Then he left, leaving me to lay there breathless and body burning. I hate him. I hate myself.
I hate most of all that part of me that already wanted him back.
30
