Page 16 of The Freedom in Captivity

“What, like in blood?”

With my joke, there’s no amusement on her face. Instead, she reaches beside her and picks up a fragmented rock from the edge of the school and brings it between us.

She’s insane, but this is why I love her. I hold out my palm toward her.

Fuck. I scrub my hands over my face, striding away from her entirely, giving her my back. She can’t witness this—witness as the long-buried memory resurfaces. I’d forgotten about it. Well, notforgottenabout it necessarily but certainly shoved it into the many boxes I placed anything to do with her in.

“Flynn.” Then she’s there, her small hand touching my back, and I react as the brief hold she has on my arm clenches around my heart too.

She owned that organ once but not anymore.

I spin and not bothering with the chain, my hand forms a vise around her neck. I walk her backwards to the nearest wall, beside the bathroom’s entrance. She gasps as her back hits the it but doesn’t fight my hold, even as a thumb and finger squeeze either side of her neck.

“Give up, Rozelyn.”

“We made a promise, Flynn.” Her gaze darts to my hand. “Somehow, it came true. We found each other again. It’s fate that the family my father has been targeting is the very one you’re working for.”

The reminder isn’t doing her any favours and I seethe. “You didn’t tell me who you were back then, so how I see it, the girl I made the promise to doesn’t even exist.”

“I’m the same person.”

“You’ve been saying this whole time, you’re not. Neither of us are. The scars on our palms were the actions of stupid teenage hormones. Give up trying to find my heart, Rozelyn, because I don’t have one.”

I drop my hand but don’t move away. And she doesn’t fight me. Both of us breathing heavily, staring at one another. Her eyes flicker with sadness and regret, and I have no idea what she sees in mine. Ideally, nothing, even as traces of the past invade my mind. Memories I stopped focusing on.

Every kiss.

Every touch.

Every laugh.

The first time we had sex.

Every other time we had sex.

The experimenting.

The awakening of both our desires.

I can’t help myself. Can’t fucking help my eyes from studying her. Grazing the tops of her breasts. Ripped jeans and a bra is all I’ve left her in and my dick twitches in my pants. My jaw tightens, trying to breathe through the lust.

Rozelyn back then was beautiful. Rozelyn now is sexy. She’s a wet dream come to life and seeing her like this, riled up, clothing ripped, a chain around her neck, minutes from being tied to a chair again excites me. Old desires are reborn.

But it changes nothing. Lust is secondary to loyalty. This bitch decided to play with fire, and since she’s so interested in the game, I’ll have to burn her.

I back away.

She reaches for me.

Final mistake on her part.

Keeping her eyes captive, I grab the end of the chain and lift it high above her head, locking her into place. She gasps, one hand clawing at the metal, the other me, but she has nothing to worry about. I’m holding the leash in a way she won’t be without breath. In a quick movement, I also bind her wrists together in my free hand.

Leaning closer, I grit, “Give up, Rozelyn. Whatever goal you walked into this room with, lose it right fuckin’ now. I’m not playing.”

Rozelyn’s desires have always run deep and despite the near-death hold I have her in, her pupils expand. Her breath hikes. Fear. Lust. The two mingle so closely within her—always have—that it’s impossible to differentiate between them.

Her eyelids hood, her breaths come out in sharp pants. Her back arches, her breasts right there. If I thought earlier she was a wet dream come to life, no, this is fucking paradise.

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