Page 42 of Guarded By the Phantom

I froze.

“Oh, God… What… What are we…”

I couldn’t say it, couldn’t even think it, because my thoughts swirled rapidly, all of them screaming how good this was, how bad,that it was exactly right but so wrong, just what I needed yet utterly forbidden.

I shoved myself off Phantom’s lap, landing on the floor with a gasp of pain. I crawled away until we didn’t touch.

“Why did you let me?” I gasped out, looking at his legs.

I was embarrassed and ashamed. I couldn’t understand why he put up with me when I threw myself at him like… like an easy girl. There. That was what my mother would call me if she knew. Though, maybe not. Maybe she’d say something worse.

Phantom laughed hoarsely, sitting back, his long legs clad in black combats spread comfortably wide. I flushed, that sight making me tighten with lurid want.

“Let you?” he asked, amused. “I practically pulled you on top of me, doll. You brought this on yourself by being nice to me. Let this be a lesson: don’t ever be nice to the monster.”

I shook my head. It was jarring and all wrong, his voice too light, like it was all a joke. A part of me felt hurt—that he could joke about me wanting him and twist it so strangely—but didn’t he also laugh while telling me about his trauma just now?

“I don’t understand,” I said miserably, burying my fingers in the thick carpet at his feet. “I’ve never… We’ve just met.”

He sighed heavily, leaning closer. I jerked when his warm, unarmored knuckle gently pushed my chin up. We were face to face, so close, the air was charged with his proximity. I stopped breathing.

“I’m as perplexed as you are,” he said, his eyes twinkling, no longer silver. They seemed… kind of pink. “But sweetheart, understanding this thing won’t make it any better. You should go. For your own good.”

I recoiled with a gasp, hurt flaring in my chest. So first, he let me practically grope him, and now, he rejected me. Maybe he was just too polite to throw me off when I attacked him. I bit back a groan of utter shame and got up, stumbling over my own feet.

“Goodnight.”

I was out of the room before he had a chance to say it back.

The next few days were awkward. I had my ballet lessons and a session with a public speaking coach who mainly taught me about the best ways to present myself on screen, since I was never required to actually say much. Phantom shadowed me everywhere but kept to himself, becoming the professional bodyguard he should have been from the start.

I hated it. Even though his behavior on our outing to the library was so annoying, I realized I had enjoyed it. Now I missed his antics, and although we went out a couple of times when I was free, visiting that pawn shop and a few other places, he remained professional and rarely spoke to me.

And while he grew completely indifferent, I had to force myself to keep my eyes off him whenever he was near, which was almost always. It was excruciating. I had this stupid craving to look at him, to study his expressions and the way he stood or played with his knife.

When I sat in the window nook of my dark bedroom at night, watching the orange ember of his cigarette in the garden, I longed to go out there and just talk to him. But he had grown detached and polite, and I wasn’t brave enough to seek him out.

Instead, I allowed myself to fantasize in bed about the things I couldn’t have. They made me blush, and in the morning, when I had to look at his polite face, I blushed even harder, remembering what I imagined at night.

Those fantasies weren’t even that bad. I didn’t know what he looked like under his armor, so I spent hours wondering about it. And then, I replayed those few moments of intimacy between us. How he’d pressed me into the bookcase. The touch of his naked hand on me. The brush of teeth in the crook of my neck.

It was a trying period. With Phantom behaving so properly, my little trips were far less fun, but I still planned more. My goalwasn’t to enjoy myself, after all, but to learn how to function in the normal world.

So that, if I ever gathered up the courage to move out, I wouldn’t be helpless.

But even though he treated me with distance, Phantom also kept his word. After he was done with the mind manipulation book, he gave it back to me, a few passages underlined with a black pen, the pages dog-eared so I could find them easily. When I saw the state the book was in, I told him off, glaring at him with fury.

“You could have used bookmarks and a pencil! This is a rare book, and the only one discussing this subject. I wanted to give it back to the library after we were done, but now, I’ll be too ashamed.”

He laughed at my angry tirade, and for a moment, it was like before. He grinned with his usual audacity, saying in a low, seductive voice, “Careful, sugar. You’re way too hot when you’re angry. It might unleash something in me.”

That made me stomp in helpless rage, because there he was, joking like this was nothing, while I was in complete agony over my unwelcome, ridiculous crush on him. I grabbed the book with an angry huff and stormed away, chased off by his laughter.

I settled down in my room and looked through the pages, stopping every time I found an underlined sentence or paragraph. Some were useless, some confirmed what I already knew—that it was possible to resist mind-control—and some gave me ideas. Phantom seemed to have underlined every relevant bit, which made me grudgingly appreciate how thorough he was.

“The study on rakshasas suggests the victim’s strength of character is inversely proportional to their susceptibility to mind control.”

My stomach churned unpleasantly after I understood that sentence, since it confirmed what I already suspected: I was weak. Yet, the rest of the chapter didn’t offer any solutions for weakness of character, so I huffed and went on skimming the book until I found one of the last passages Phantom underlined for me. He had also doodled tiny skulls on the margins. I smiled, tracing them fondly, my anger at the book destruction almost forgotten.

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