Page 16

I'm on my back on my own closet floor. My chin throbs. I can feel my cheekbone swelling. The chandelier above me blurs at the edges.

"You can rest soon,” Marcus says, crouching beside me. He smooths a stray bit of hair off my forehead with two careful fingers. "I promise. Just one more thing first."

He gestures toward the back of the closet where the elevator is. His palm open and congenial. He has all the time in the world and he knows it. Legion just left, Mercy is missing.

He gave himself time.

"Open the elevator for me, Savannah.” He punctuates his request with a small, tender smile. "I want to show you something beautiful. I want to smother you in my love."

I laugh.

It comes up from somewhere below my ribs, raw, and ugly, and completely involuntary, the kind of sound that has no manners in it at all. It echoes off the closet walls, and bounces back at me, and I can't stop it, or manage it, or shape it into anything that helps me. It just—comes out.

"Never." My voice is mostly air. "I will never open that vault for you." I make myself look at him. "You can kill me first."

Something moves across his face. Fast, like a shadow crossing a field. Then it's gone.

His hands drop to my waistband.

He pops the button on my jeans. One-handed. Efficient. Like he's done it a thousand times in his imagination and practiced it there until the motion went smooth.

I grab his wrists. He ignores me the way you ignore weather. The zipper goes down, and then both hands close around the denim at my hips, and he pulls—one long deliberate drag—working the fabric over the curve of my hips, exposing me inch by inch to the warm closet air.

Then he stands.

He reaches down and cups his cock through his dress pants. Squeezes it, manhandles it like it's a thing separate from himself. All the while studying my reaction.

"We can do this the hard way," he says. "If you want."

Something cracks open inside me and I just… cry.

Not the clean, dignified kind. The ugly, animal kind. Where your face does things you can't control and your breath comes in these horrible hitching bursts that hurt your ribs and accomplish absolutely nothing.

I want to be brave now. I want to stand up to him. I mean, he's going to do it anyway. No matter how much I cooperate, he's going to rape me. Because Marcus White Jr. thinks I belong to him. He sees me as property.

Legion is nothing but a lease gone wrong. A clerical error. Paperwork.

I know this. I understand it.

So I should just… get it over with. Say no and go out brave.

But I can't. I can't stomach the thought of him climbing on top of me right now. Shoving himself inside me for the sole purpose of showing me he can.

That he has the power here.

That I might as well be an inanimate object.

Marcus watches me work this out and must see something on my face. Some signal that relays my submission. Because he extends his hand, palm up, like he's here to save me.

I take it.

I don't know why. Survival, I guess. The body doing calculations the brain is too fractured to run. I take his hand and he pulls me to my feet, easy and gentle, like he's helping me out of a saddle.

I pull my pants back up as he turns me toward the panel.

Tears fill my eyes like a well. I can barely see the keypad.

But my fingers find the numbers anyway and the elevator doors open.