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“I’m not a greedy man.” He looked down at me with something close to worship, which was somehow more frightening than anything else.

“I’ll share,” he said before his hand went back down between my legs, unhurried and gathering, as if I was his bounty to plunder. Again, I shuddered against him, like he knew I would. Then once his fingers were coated a second time, they came up to my mouth.

“Open,” he ordered, and I shook my head in a panicked little motion.

“Anna.” My name came out in that soft way of his, and it should not have been possible for a voice like that to come out of a man like him. A complete contradiction when his thumb settled on my lower lip and pressed down.

“Now open your mouth, girl.” The shift from the tender way he spoke my name to this stern command had me doing as he asked without another thought. My mouth opened as if he had simply pressed a button.

“Such a good girl for me,” he breathed, and pushed his thumb inside.

I closed my lips around it because at that point there was nothing left of me that knew how not to.

“That is the taste of you. Remember it, because I certainly will.”

He drew it out slowly.

“And soon,” he lowered his head to mine, before promising me…

“I will have all of you.”

19

ONLY I GET TO BREAK YOU

ANNA

It took me a long time to get my breathing back.

His threat of owning all of me didn’t seem that far from the truth after what he had just done. After how he had just pulled me apart at the seams and then held me through the moment I unraveled.

He stayed exactly where he was with his arm around me, holding me up and not saying anything at all. I hadn’t even realized the showers had stopped until the silence started to feel too heavy.

Heavy enough to tell him,

“They’ll find us,” I said into his chest, my voice sounding weak.

“You know that, don’t you? There will be a shift change. Somebody will come down and find you in here with me.”

The laugh started in his chest, under my cheek as the cold, unnerving sound vibrated through me. He then placed me back on my feet and held me a moment longer as if to assure himself I was steady enough on my legs. Once there he then took hold of my chin and tipped my head back, so I was forced to look at him.

“Did nobody tell you?” he said.

“Tell me what?”

“I own this fucking prison now, Anna. And everybody in it.” He tucked a piece of wet hair behind my ear, almost absently, as though this were a conversation over breakfast. “The officers. The doctor. The warden, who came to see you recently and offered you a contract, all because I told him to.”

The floor went out from under me.

I thought of the warden, the way he’d checked the corners of the room, his hand gripping the door frame when he told me to go. To get in my car and drive a long way.

“That was you,” I uttered, and he grinned wickedly down at me.

“That was me.”

“Why? Why would you…?” he was quick to interrupt me,

“Because I’m far from done with you and couldn’t have you leaving,” he said as though it were obvious.