Chapter 27: What I keep

Rufus’s POV

I watched her sleep on the couch after I carried her upstairs and put her in my bed.

Bronte always looked younger when she was unconscious softer, less haunted.

The marks I’d left on her thighs and hips stood out against her skin in the low light.

The necklace rested in the hollow of her throat. She still wore it even when she was alone. That detail pleased me more than it should have.

Catherine was coming home tonight. I could feel it. The messages she’d sent earlier were careful, distant, full of the kind of quiet that meant she had already started making decisions.

Jake was pushing harder. Chloe was calling more often. The walls were closing in, and Bronte was starting to feel the pressure in ways that made her hesitate.

I didn’t like hesitation.

I sat in the chair near the bed and opened my laptop. The security feeds from the house played in small windows on the side of the screen.

The recordings from the guest lounge the night my friends came over were still encrypted and stored off site. I hadn’t decided yet whether I would ever use them.

Possession was often more useful than action.

Bronte shifted in her sleep and made a small sound.

I closed the laptop and walked over to the bed, for a moment I just looked at her. The way her dark hair spilled across my pillow.

The faint bruises on her wrists from where I’d held her down earlier.

The soft rise and fall of her chest.

She was mine in ways that went beyond sex. I had rewritten her slowly first with pleasure, then with fear, then with the careful mix of both that made her come back even when she hated herself for it.

Most men would have rushed. I never rushed. Control was better when the other person believed they still had a choice.

My phone vibrated.

It was Catherine,

I’m coming home in an hour, we need to talk. Properly this time.

I stared at the message for a few seconds, then deleted it without a reply. Let her arrive to silence.

Let her walk into the house and feel the shift before any words were spoken.

I leaned down and brushed my mouth against Bronte’s temple.

She stirred but didn’t wake.

“She’s coming back,” I murmured against her skin. “And when she does, you’re going to remember who you belong to.”

Bronte made a soft noise in her sleep and turned toward me.

Even unconscious, she reached for me. That was the part no one else understood.

Jake thought he was saving her, Chloe thought she was protecting her.

Catherine thought she was losing her daughter to something dark.

They were all wrong.

I wasn’t taking her.

She was already gone.

And I intended to keep her that way no matter what it cost.

I straightened and walked to the window, looking out at the quiet street.

An hour, that was all the time left before the next phase began.

I was ready.

I only hoped Bronte was too.