“You were supposed to study this,” I scold her. “Understand why it happened. Correct the mistakes.”
She wanted a professor? She gottheprofessor.
On the wall, the clip loops and loops again. Every weakness, every moment she flinched or hesitated, meant to remind her what she was then: nothing.
“But I—” she tries to say, but it’s in vain when I cut her off.
“I said, watch it. Eyes on the screen.”
She exhales loudly, more out of frustration than pain. While the sounds and the images fill the room.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
“Next time just leave written feedback,” she says, eyes still fixed on the video.
This little…
“You’re missing the point, Victoria.”
“The point being?” she asks indifferently, but there is nothing indifferent in the way her eyes focus on the screen.
I don’t answer. She thought this would be about pain—thought she could compartmentalize, endure, survive.
One last detail.
I take the scalpel again, scraping the skin from her collarbone down to her ribs, ripping the side of her dress.
I move my eyes to hers, silently ordering her to beg, but hers are just wondering, more curious by the minute. This is the last moment of her old life, before I crave myself so deep in herexistence, she will have no place to hide ever again. When the scalpel reaches her bone, I mark her mine.
A. Z.
She’ll see it later, when she changes, when she walks past mirrors, long after she forgets about tonight. She will see my mark.
But this was not the same marking as Samantha. I don’t mark Victoria to make her useless, I mark her, so she knows whom she belongs to from now on
Blood wells in thin red ribbons, and as much as I enjoy seeing it on her body, I cannot help but feel like I also need to stop everything and cure her.
I reach for the bottle of wine before I do something stupid, letting the smell burn itself into my memory while pouring the liquid on her body.
Across her shoulder. Down her chest. Over the fresh cuts.
She gasps from the sting over the new wound, and I can feel my cock twitching.
“Now you’ll feel it every time you breathe in,” I say. “Every step. Every stretch. Every glance in the mirror.”
“You are a little psychopath, aren’t you?” she smiles, but it finally shows something else. However, it is not fear, but something closer to fascination. She is beginning to enjoy it, and this only makes me more furious.
“Only for you,” I murmur, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “Always for you.”
She looks so innocent, like she could break if I push my fingers into her skin. Her armor is slowly dropping, leaving behind the fragile girl she is so desperately hiding deep inside. It will be such a shame once I’m done with her. She is indeed a spectacular specimen.
An alarm shrieks in the room, and her face crumpled into a mask of pure confusion, a look that, judging by her expression, was just adding to the mess already brewing in her brain.
“So this is when the pain begins?” she asks eagerly, and I’m pretty sure she is mentally slapping herself for showing how impatient she is.