I took the plate he offered me without really looking at him. He watched me eat in silence, which I would have found weird if I weren’t so focused on not telling him anything about my contacts at school. If I kept him locked out completely, he couldn’t manipulate me into surrendering.

He took the plate back when I finished the final bite.

“I’m guessing you’re not ready to cooperate with me,” he said, his resigned tone telling me he already knew my answer.

I simply shook my head and laid back on my little nest of pillows, turning my attention to the TV.

“Sofia.” He said my name slowly, his tone tense with uncharacteristic uncertainty. “I don’t like how you’re reacting to this, but I can’t just change the consequences. I have to be consistent.”

“No one’s asking you to change anything,” I said dully, refusing to engage.

“I’ll stay in here with you,” he announced, as though he’d arrived at a solution. “See? I can compromise.”

“I don’t want you in here. Just go away, Mateo.”

If I let him stay, he might put his tender hands all over my body and break down my resistance. I refused to let that happen.

He hesitated, so I rolled over onto my side, facing away from him; the physical equivalent of fuck off.

“We’ll talk more tomorrow,” he said. It sounded like a command.

If he thought I’d get all melty if he bossed me around and called me his good girl, he was mistaken.

When he’d invaded my space and my senses with those dark words this morning, I’d felt far happier than I should have, given my circumstances. I could see now that I’d just been allowing him to distract me from my miserable situation. As soon as Mateo reminded me that he was part of that misery, I severed any emotional bonds I’d been forming.

I might have harbored an intense crush for years, but now, I didn’t feel anything for Mateo. Not anymore.Chapter 7MateoFuck. I tossed my Xbox controller aside, giving up. Had I really thought that playing a mindless video game could distract me from the disturbing image of Sofia’s hollow stare?

When she’d ignored me at lunchtime, I’d assessed that she was just sulking. But by the time I took her dinner, the giggling girl I’d played with this morning had been replaced by a cold, emotionless woman.

I’d thought confining her to the bedroom was the mildest punishment I could impose on her. When she’d accused me of being an untrustworthy criminal, it had been all I could do to cling on to control. The stinging insults were too venomous coming from my sweet Sofia.

My immediate impulse had been to take her over my knee and give her a sound spanking until she agreed to obey me.

But the shred of conscience I possessed acknowledged that I would be acting in anger. That impulse had more to do with my feelings about losing her trust than it did about her disobedience.

And if she thought I was a bad man for demanding her phone contacts, she’d think I was a complete monster if I spanked her for upsetting me with her pointed accusations.

Sending her to her room had seemed like the most restrained option available to me. I’d chosen that punishment because I thought I was being cautious with her.

Maybe that had been a mistake. She’d responded so well to my touch this morning; she obviously thrived on physical contact. I’d thought depriving her would be an effective way to drive home the lesson I was trying to teach her.

Instead, simply a day in isolation seemed to have broken her spirit far more thoroughly than I could have managed with a sound thrashing.

I ran a hand over my face, frustrated. If I didn’t actually care what Sofia thought of me, this wouldn’t be so difficult. Spanking her until she submitted would have been the obvious course of action. But I’d decided that she wasn’t ready for me to push her that far. I’d decided I wanted her to obey me because she trusted me, not because she feared me.

Despite everything I’d done to her so far—drugging her, abducting her, and imprisoning her in my home—she hadn’t looked at me with true fear. I never wanted that to change.

My fists clenched at my sides as my indecision tore at me. She’d told me to leave her alone, but she was my captive. I didn’t have to honor her wishes. I could do whatever I wanted.

And I wanted to hold her and pet her until she snuggled into me and smiled again.

Forcing myself on her wouldn’t earn her smile.

My phone pinged, and my stomach dropped. That tiny little sound was my unique alert that someone had set off my security system. I quickly opened my app and determined that the breach was located at the back of my property. Someone had made it over the walled barrier I’d hidden in the tree line behind the house.

Tags: Julia Sykes Romance
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