Mine

My inhale is an audible tremble matching the slow steps. He’s not trying to sneak up on me. 

The footsteps stop, and the hair on the back of my neck rises, the air in the room shifting, becoming heavier, making it harder to breathe. 

There’s a crunching sound.

“Hope you don’t mind I helped myself,” he says, and his voice makes my spine go rigid, makes me grip the knife so hard my knuckles go white. “And I took a shower. Fixed the leak, too.”

The leaky shower drips for an hour after every shower. It drives me nuts. 

“Turn around, Katie. Let me see you.”

I’m going to be sick. I shake my head and make some strange, involuntary sound from inside my throat. 

Footsteps warn me he’s coming closer, then he’s right behind me. I feel him, feel the warmth of his big body when he stops so close that another inch and we’d be touching, and I remember the last time he touched me.

But it’s on purpose that he doesn’t touch me. I know it when he brings his arms around me and brushes the crumbs off his hands in the sink and all I can do is look down at them, so big. They’ve been gentle, and they’ve been rough, but I haven’t seen them be violent. Not yet. Not to me.

He leans his head close, and I close my eyes when the familiar scruff on his jaw scratches my cheek, when his fingers push my hair away from my ear, and I feel his breath tickle my neck when he speaks. 

“Cat got your tongue, Kat.”

One big hand closes around my knife hand while the other relieves me of it. I stand there, mute, and watch it clang into the sink. 

“Now what were you going to do with that?”

The taunt animates me, and I thrust my elbow backward into his ribs. I don’t know what I expect, but I hit a wall of solid muscle. 

“Ouch,” he says, and I hear the grin on his face. 

I whirl, bringing both hands to his face, nails digging into his cheeks as I let out a violent scream and fight. I fight like this is the fight of my life because it is. He’s going to kill me like he killed Nina. Like he killed her family and who knows how many others. 

I fight even though I know I’m no match for him. He’s too strong, too big, and too well trained. 

I got lucky once against a predator, but Lev, he’s different. Smarter. Faster. 

Within a moment, he has me pressed against his chest, hand crushing my mouth to smother my scream and lifting me off my feet to carry me backward. 

I kick and twist and fight every step of the way as I try to pry his arm off me, but he seems unaffected as he easily carries me through the kitchen and into the living room, then through to my bedroom where he throws me on the bed so hard I bounce twice from the force of it.

I look up at him, see the rage in his black eyes, his fisted hands, the muscles of his arms, his wide shoulders. I see the new tattoo snaking along his forearm, disappearing under the T-shirt. 

His hair is still wet, and I remember he said he’d taken a shower. He’s not in a hurry. He’s relaxed, even. Not afraid of getting caught or of me escaping him now. Because I can’t. I know it. We both know it.