Page 55 of Her Creation

Victoria gaped as he stepped closer to her with outstretched arms.

“You needn’t trick me. You are my creator—my god. Anything you ask of me, I will do willingly,” he rasped.

He looked like a fallen angel. She pulled her eyes away and searched for the skeleton key with three ornate rings at the top.

“Is this needed?”

Her head craned to look at the man now holding the iron skeleton key in his cuffed hand.

Air gulped into her lungs as she stared. Of course he had the key. That’s how he escaped before.

She moved for it and felt fully incompetent taking the key from the prisoner. When she was close enough to grab it from his outstretched palm, his arm tucked closer to his body so she was forced to move closer to him to collect it, not in a mocking way, but in an almost desperate, hungered move to get her close. Unable to meet his imperious stare, she swiped her stiff fingers over his palm and collected the key before bumbling away from his presence.

A low sound, not angry, but deeply displeased, left his throat. “You are frightened of me.”

Her fingers curled around the key until the iron dug into her palm painfully. She welcomed the feel of something real. “No,” she lied, not wanting to show weakness.

His dark brows pulled together.

She swallowed and instinctively took a step back, until her back hit the wall in front of the stairs. She wasn’t sure if she was imagining the power that rolled off him. Though seemingly controlled, it felt suffocating and haunting. She followed the chains from his arms and legs to the short length of chain bolted on the stone wall, reassuring herself that he was tethered and unable to reach her.

He noticed and took several slow, drawn-out steps toward her, stopping only a breath in front of her when she heard a small crack come from his foot and the chains clanked taut at his ankles.

Victoria’s entire body trembled and shook as he towered over her slight frame.

“I thought you wished to see if I was all right,” he drawled.

“You seem fine,” Victoria returned with heavy breath.

He nodded slowly as if seeing something she didn’t.

The fabric at her back snagged on the stone as she slid along the wall toward the stairs. “Stay here—please. Do not leave the laboratory,” she said, unsure that he would listen.

“You’re leaving me?”

“I have to go,” she mumbled incoherently and tried to control her arms and legs enough to begin the climb up the stairs.

“God,” he whispered, and she realized he was speaking to her.

“Don’t—don’t call me that.” God was already punishing her; she didn’t need him to be more furious with her.

“What shall I call you?” His question caused her to pause at the foot of the stairs, just over the stained patch of stone.

She shook her head violently, more to the dried puddle of memories than to his question. “You need not call me anything,” she snapped. The weird connection between them was already too odd—too much. If he knew her name, it would only make things worse when she had to kill him tomorrow. There were a thousand things she wished she could hear from his mouth, her name being only one of them, but if she felt the way the syllables of her name sounded from the man she was already in love with, she would not be able to stop herself from loving him with every fiber of her being.

“What will you call me then?” he asked, arms now at his sides, his chains stretched with no slack.

Victoria turned to him, overwhelmed with grief and sadness. “I will call you nothing, because I have no need of ever calling for you. Stay here.” The harshness that filled her voice only tore into her tender insides. The dichotomy of the situation was nearly unbearable. How long she had waited for love, and now that it stared back at her, she had to let it go, barely even having held it in her grip at all.

He looked as if he wanted to snap back at her but didn’t. Instead, he held his arms out straight as she climbed the stairs. “What if you’ve forgotten to lock my clasps? What should I call you then?”

She froze before retreating down the stairs and reluctantly walking to him. Once in front of him again, she searched the folds of the tablecloth, her hands growing frantic when she found no key. It had been in her left palm; she knew it. Had it fallen—

The key appeared in front of her face, dwarfed between the man’s two large fingers as he held it out.

Victoria looked up, amazed. His arms fell to his sides as all amusement faded from his expression, and he studied her. Uncomfortable with the intimate examination, Victoria waved her fingers, signaling for him to give her his wrists as she held the key ready in her other hand.

“What will you call me? My former name is a shadow in a storm of memories I cannot touch,” he muttered.