Page 77 of Mine

My pressure increases, my strokes faster and faster as I watch him watch her.

Hatred, like a rolling simmer, bubbles inside me.

I dig my index finger into the bloody mush of the bat’s neck where I decapitated it earlier. I begin finger-fucking the puffy flesh while imagining jumping through the window and strangling them both.

I pull my hand out of my coat, stick my fingers into my mouth, and suck the blood.

“Soon.”

I spit a string of bloody mucus against the window.

“Soon.”

Forty-Seven

Sabine

The next morning, I find Astor’s office door open—actually open. This is the first time, since I’ve been here, that the door has not been shut and locked.

He looks up when I walk in. As usual, he’s wearing a suit, but today, the top button of his white shirt is undone and he looks more relaxed. Or relaxed at all, I should say. Somehow, he’s even sexier.

And just like that, a gentle tingle spreads between my legs. My very, very sore legs.

The office is as stunning as he is. Masculine with hard lines, deep mahogany, sweeping windows framed by blood-red velvet drapes. The desk he’s sitting behind is quite literally the largest I’ve ever seen (just like him).

“Yes?” he says in greeting, and I swear he’s concealing a smile.

“I want to go out.”

Astor sets down his pen, leans back, folds his hands over his lap, and regards me closely. “Why?”

“I’m going stir crazy.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Into the nearest town, wherever that is.”

“Okay.”

I can’t hide my surprise.

“Cillian will accompany you.”

I scoff. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Why can’t you accompany me?”

“I have meetings.”

“Fine.”

A moment ticks away between us. He’s wanting more of me, I can tell. A comment about our explosive sex the night before, or perhaps an invitation to do it again. I give him neither, reveling in every second of his wanting.

Finally, he lifts the phone from his desk. “Cillian, I need you to accompany Miss Hart for the afternoon. Take her wherever she wishes to go, and do not leave her side.”

Astor slides a credit card across the desk. It’s black, of course. The coveted black AmEx card.

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