Collateral (Collateral Damage 1)

What did I say?

His face is unreadable. A crease forms between his eyebrows as he takes this in.

God.

Fuck.

I’ve never said it out loud. Not to anyone. Not even to myself.

Why did I say it?

“Gabriela,” he starts, his tone no longer a warning. Almost softer. Almost.

I can’t read him. He’s so closed, he doesn’t give anything away and I’m so stupid.

“Get out, Stefan. Leave me alone.”

“You don’t want to be alone. You said so last night.”

“I was drunk. Drunk people say stupid things they don’t mean.”

“The opposite is true, actually.”

“Get out. Please.”

He opens his mouth to speak and I don’t wait to hear what he has to say. I don’t want to hear. I can’t.

I lunge and I don’t mean to. I don’t mean to hurt him. It doesn’t occur to me that I even can.

But he moves too and then there’s blood because he catches the knife. Catches it by the blade.

I gasp, look at his hand. Look at the blood. I let go.

When he releases it, I watch its progress as it twirls, falling to the floor. Watch the splatters of blood on the white sheets, on my legs. On the marble when it clatters to the floor.

And I expect him to be raging. It’s what I’m prepared for. What I deserve.

But when he grabs hold of my wrists and tugs me close, it’s not rage I see. It’s something else. Something worse.

Pity.

Fucking pity.

And I can’t stand it.

“Get your hands off me!”

“I won’t let him put a mark on you again,” he says, and his words, they somehow surprise me because I know he knows who did it. Who burned me. Who cut me. He’s not stupid. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out who put the marks on me anyway. I handed him the answer on a silver fucking platter.

I feel the heat of more tears sting my eyes, but I steel myself against this man. This monster. Because even if he’s not the same as my father, he is still that.

Just a different sort of monster.

I have to remember that.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

“Only your mark going forward, Stefan? What will you use? What should I prepare myself for?”

I don’t know why I’m pushing. Why I’m goading him. I remember him from the night of my sixteenth birthday. Remember his rage. How there was just the thinnest layer of control shielding me from it.

“Shut up, Gabriela.”

“Tell me. Tell me so I’m ready. It’s only fair. Tell me. What is it that’s going to get you off, Stefan?”

His hands tighten on my wrists. I feel the warmth of blood from his cut hand on one. A second later, he shoves me backward onto the bed so hard, that I bounce twice.

He leans down, pressing his knee between mine, forcing my legs apart and sliding his knee high until it collides with my sex.

I gasp with the impact. There’s nothing sexual about this. This is something else.

This is violence.

This is dominance.

This is power.

He looms over me, closes his bloodied hand around my throat and presses his knee against me. “You want to make me your enemy?” he asks, and his voice, it’s hoarse and harsh and low, like there’s so much rage inside that he’s struggling to control. Like he’s too close to losing the battle.

I try to swallow as he squeezes. Try to make a sound.

“Is that how you want this?” he spits.

I claw at his forearm. I don’t know if he realizes how hard he’s squeezing.

I slap at his arm, his chest, I can’t reach his face and my vision is fading. I can’t hear what he’s saying. All I feel is the rage coming off him. Like the floodgates have opened and I’m the one who opened them and I’m standing in the path of the storm. This tsunami of rage.

And just when I think I’m going to pass out, he releases me and stalks from my room.21Stefan“Are you going to drown me too?”

It’s late the next afternoon and those words are still circling my head. I should have let her be. Not pushed. She was acting out because she was embarrassed. I knew that. And still, she made me so fucking angry.

What did I expect, though? That she’d welcome my protection? That she’d even believe I would protect her?

She’s right in a sense. I am a monster. A different sort of monster than her father, but not a whole other breed of animal. Case in point, the fact that she’s here. That the seamstress is walking down the stairs from her room right now, her attendants carrying that hideous dress as they scurry behind the older woman who is grumbling under her breath.

I’m forcing her to marry me.

And I did touch her. She wasn’t off the mark to ask.

Was that what pissed me off? The fact that she was right about me? That I am not a man of my word, like I so pretentiously claimed to be just hours earlier?