Page 20 of Repossess My Heart

It’s the small girl next to her, walking in the same hypersexualized gait. Their movements are perfectly in sync and it makes sense now… her voice. Her laugh. Her braided pigtails bounce, swaying with her before she turns, tossing my heart up into my throat. Her wide green eyes scan me in the same way a bot would, processing information. Looking for my registration chip. It doesn’t take long before those bright green eyes widen slightly, a knowing smirk pulling up her lips. Her micromini skirt swishes, revealing her backside as my stomach roils and panic threatens to overtake me.

I’m fucked. So fucked.

We both are.

She lifts a small painted finger to her lips, silencing me before turning back around. I shouldn’t feel sorry for her, knowing my brain probably can’t even begin to process whatever fucked up reason she has for keeping quiet. Knowing she’s been made to look like a child, but she’s almost certainly far, far older. Older than me and most residents on death's door in the Below. It’s the way she’s been memorialized, been… altered to look like a little girl that grosses me out but far from surprises me. After all, the Officials are hand-picked by the family at the very top. An elite almost God like family that rules all three levels of our world with an iron fist. Ensuring order, that the poor stay poor and the rich never know the pangs of hunger children of the Below sing silly songs about on the rusted playgrounds. They have no idea… none of them.

Our world would implode if they knew… that family, that untouchable, elite bloodline we’re told to respect that worship is nothing more than prettied polished pawns. Sat up high on their pedestals by a man that rules it all from far below…

The sound of fabric hitting the floor beside me jerks my focus from my reflection. The long dust and streak free mirror is backlit by the same moody lighting Nine seems to stick everywhere. My long hair is still damp from the shower, plastering my body. I should shy away, maybe scream at him for barging into his bedroom without knocking, but I don’t.

“Some clothes.” He breathes, lingering in the door frame. My hair drips, sending cold droplets rolling down my breasts. I’m surprised it isn’t dry by now, with as long as I’ve stood here. Trying to wrap my mind around… well, fucking any of this honestly. Ripping my eyes from the Adonis like man behind me, I glance down at the pile of admittedly a little musty smelling clothes. I’d never noticed before, but now that I’m up high, surrounded by luxury I’d ever only seen in ads. It’s clearer to me, the rips and frayed edges. The smell and probably a small stain or two.

“Why do you have my clothes?”

“Stole them.” He retorts, bringing my eyes back to him in the mirror. He says it like it’s a perfectly normal thing for him to have.

“Why?”

An annoyed look graces his features, his own hair wet and clinging to his forehead. The cropped top he wears shows off every expertly sculpted plane of his athletic figure. Nine isn’t bulked in the way bodybuilders or most Halves are. He’s toned with lethal accuracy. Ivory colored skin stretched over corded veins and muscle. “It’s part of my job.”

I frown, bending to scoop the clothes off the floor, not missing the way his eyes follow every curve. “It’s your job to sneak into my place of work and steal lingerie I had in my locker there?”

“If you’d prefer to remain naked, you won’t hear any complaints from me sweetling.”

“Couldn’t have gone the extra mile and stolen actual clothes?” My frown deepens on the structured lacy bra, matched with leather pants, sheer panels running up them in all the places you’d normally want coverage.

“I wanted to see you in this,” he comments, his voice taking on a deeper… heavier tone as he stalks closer to me, our eyes glued together in the mirror, “Although I must admit I’m rethinking things.” My skin breaks out in goosebumps as he runs the back of his hand down my spine.

“Is that so?” I breathe out, not recognizing my own voice, or the blatant want I feel budding between my legs.

“Hmmm,” he muses, his hand knotting in my hair before drawing my head back, forcing me to look at him. Forcing me to take the full intensity of him, instead of the safer diffused version offered by the mirror, “These bruises… “ he trails off, tugging my hair gently until my back is flush with his heated skin, his mechanical hand snaking around my waist, “Knowing I put them on you-“

The loud jarring sound of my stomach growling rips us both from the moment, but he leans in, his lips tickling my shoulder, “It’s a shame your eyes are so fucking boring.”

Frustration peaks in me as I try to jerk away, having forgotten about the hand tangled in my hair. One he uses to pull me back to him, “If you were hungry sweetling, all you had to do was say so.”

“Let go Nine.”

He purses his lips, ones that look rosy next to his pale skin as if he’s considering it.

“I don’t want you to feed me. I want you to kill me. I think by now I’ve made myself clear or has gutting innocents rotted your mind so deeply you can’t grasp even that?” I spit, unsure where all this anger is coming from. The desire to hurt… to anger him, too. Aside from generally not liking him. With that thought, my core pulses, making me clench my thighs together.

I want him again.

Badly.

He releases my hair, shifting back from me, and my eyes immediately find the erection that had been pressed into the small of my back.

He wants me too.

“Make a more interesting face and I’ll give you the death you want so badly. Look afraid, let some fear into those eyes of yours. Let’s see it.”

My hands fist at my sides, crumpling the already impossibly wrinkled clothes further, “I can’t.”

He nods, opening his mouth to speak before his drone floats in. the air in the room is filtered but right now it's too heavy to breathe. The drone hovers above him, waiting before he finally takes whatever it was offering. Nine gives me a final glance before turning to leave.

“Nine, stop this please. I want to die now. I don’t want to wait any longer. No more games.”

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