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The whole time he simply watched me as if this was the most entertained he had been in years. He studied my struggle the way you’d watch a moth work pointlessly at a window. Only when my arms went weak and my breath ran out of me did I realize he was exactly where he had been at the start, not one inch moved, not one hair out of place.

That was the moment I stopped. Not because I decided to but because my body made that choice for me.

And somewhere against my hip, muffled and absurd, my monitor started to buzz.

Adrenaline eats sugar.

It was the most basic math of my entire life, and I had never once been so completely unable to do anything about it. My chews were in a bag on a chair four feet away, which may as well have been another county, and both of my hands were pinned above my head in one of his.

I laughed. God help me, some cracked little sound came out of me that was almost a laugh. Killed by a man with no name or killed by my own pancreas. Place your bets, people.

“There,” he hummed softly. “That’s better.”

I was shaking so hard my teeth felt like they would shatter. I flinched back when I saw his free hand come up. But all he did was rest his palm flat against my chest, over my scrubs, over my heart, and hold it there.

“Look at that,” he murmured. “Like a frightened bird in a box.”

Then the buzzing came again, and his hand went still against my chest. But he didn’t ask what it was. He didn’t look confused, or irritated, or even particularly interested. He simply turned his head a fraction, the way a man does when he has heard a sound he already knows the meaning of. Then he looked back down at me.

And something behind his eyes changed. Filed. Put away somewhere for later. He knows, said the small cold part of me that never stops taking notes.

“Please,” I uttered before I could stop the whispered plea.

“Please what?” He asked firmly but I didn’t have an answer. Yet I had never in my life needed one so badly. Perhaps subconsciously I knew there was no point to one, as he didn’t look like he had any intention of letting me go.

I knew that for sure when his free hand began to move.

Slowly at first and down over my ribs, over the fabric, tracing the shape of me the way a man runs a hand along a car he is thinking about buying. Naturally, I couldn’t stop panting, and I couldn’t look up at him. Like this he was huge, a giant compared to me as I had never felt so small in my whole life.

A tear went down my cheek before I even understood it had arrived and his reaction shocked me even more than his escape had as he leaned in and licked it off my face.

The sound I made wasn’t a word but more like a choked plea for mercy.

“Mmm.” His mouth stayed near my cheekbone, and his voice dropped into something almost conversational.

“You taste as good as you smell. Do you have any idea how rare that is?” It wasn’t a question I could answer, so I asked him one of my own instead,

“Are… are you… going to kill me?”

It came out stammered like some threadbare sentence my mind had barely woven together.

He went very still at first. Then he lowered his head into the curve of my neck, and breathed in deep, and let it out in a hum I felt all the way down my spine.

“Now why would I ever want to harm what is mine?” he said into my skin, as if branding me with the knowledge that I belonged to him. I shook my head and argued,

“I’m… I’m not yours.”

His head came up at that, and he looked down at me for a long moment, before the corner of his mouth curved.

“No.” This definitely wasn’t said as a question but more like a mocking fact. Then he squeezed, just once. His hand tightened around both my wrists until the bones ground together and a startled gasp came out of me. He watched my face while he did it with an expression of complete and unhurried calm.

“Feels like you’re mine to me.” My instincts kicked in at this as I twisted, trying to break free of him again. Something he didn’t appreciate as his mouth came down on my throat like a striking viper. His teeth then closed on the muscle where my neck met my shoulder and everything in me stopped at the threat.

However, he didn’t break the skin, and some clinical corner of my brain filed that away with perfect calm while the rest of me went rigid against the wall. He simply held me there, a piece of me caught between his teeth, the pressure sitting exactly on the line where alarm becomes agony, and not one ounce past it.

The lesson wasn’t subtle. He could have taken that piece. Taken a whole chunk out of me and watched me bleed for the offense. But he didn’t, and I had no idea why.

It was only when I went completely still that the pressure eased. Then his tongue moved over the place he had bitten, soft and slow, and he sucked at it until the ache turned into something that was not painful at all. Something far more shameful I refused to admit as my hands closed into fists above my head.