Page 66 of Run Rabbit Run

The praise feels like acid in my veins.

He's not rewarding me. He's marking the exact moment my spirit snaps.

He moves over me, his weight crushing, a predator claiming the kill.

He enters me in one smooth, brutal thrust.

I cry out, the sound muffled by the tinny narration of my old life.

The contrast is a physical blow.

The woman on the screen is talking about the beauty of the wilderness.

The woman in the bed is being filled by a man who owns her breath.

He doesn't rush.

He moves with a patient, rhythmic cruelty, driving deep into my core.

Every thrust pushes the ghost-Wren further away.

I can feel the parts of me that were strong, that were survivalists, dissolving.

I'm not a hunter anymore.

I'm the prey that's learned to love the teeth.

I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, begging for the friction to drown out the sound of that laughing voice.

I want to erase her.

I want to kill the memory of the woman who could climb mountains.

Ezra's eyes stay flat and cold, watching my undoing.

He doesn't lose control.

He doesn't moan or sweat or break his composure.

He just takes, his hand still firm on my throat, regulating my oxygen.

"You're mine now, Wren," he says, the words flat as a line in a ledger. "Every piece of you."

I sob, a broken sound that merges with the tinny audio of the phone.

I'm reaching for him with everything I have left.

My heart is hammering against my ribs, not in terror, but in a sickening, needy rhythm.

The horror isn't that he's doing this to me.

The horror is that I'm helping him.

I'm an accomplice in my own destruction.

He speeds up, his movements becoming more aggressive, more explicit.

The sound of skin slapping against skin fills the room, rhythmic and raw.