Soul Keepers (Editing) #Wattys2020

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She woke up with a start surrounded by white walls. She was wearing a short thin, silk night gown that molded to her body and cold eyes watching her. She knew he was in the room, her senses weakly flaring out, warning her, making her stomach tighten into hard knots. Millie lay still trying to pretend that she was still asleep but she knew that he was already aware that she was awake.

Slowly she rose, a headache throbbing in her temples pulling herself upright and pushed her fingers through her hair, away from her face. Her body felt sluggish and heavy and very much unlike it belonged to her. He had somehow drugged her, so that even the inside of her mouth felt like cotton. Her fingers twitched and she closed her hands into a fist raising her eyes and met his gaze. He stood leaning against a wall, his body relaxed, his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes focused on her, roving her body possessively.

Millie looked away inhaling sharply, hating that she couldn’t hold his gaze, hating the weakness in herself. The room was bare, no windows and only one door, the only furniture in the room was the bed she lay on. She tugged on the bottom of her nightgown, hoping to cover more of herself from his eyesight.

“Where—” she started but broke off in surprise.

He lunged at her quickly, firmly shackling her wrists above her head with one hand, the other taking hold of her hips pulling her against his body and his obvious arousal. Millie cringed at the feeling, more so now than she ever did before. Her feet sunk into the soft pillows and she unsteadily tried to support her weight on her weak limbs. She struggled against his hold but the strength of him was too much.

“You are so very beautiful,” he breathed into the side of her face, his nose rubbing along her skin. She turned away from him, the urge to spit in his face quickly rising along with the urge to vomit. “Even when you’re asleep.”

“Where am I?” she asked firmly, though her voice sounded mildly hoarse.

A small smile quirked on the side of his mouth “So clever Milliana. Do you honestly think I would reveal that so easily? I have you now and there is no way I will ever again allow you to escape from me. No one is going to take you from me. You. Are. Mine.”

“Yours?” she scoffed twisting her wrists in an attempt to get away from him again, but the action just made her feel even more weakened.  “Do you not know what I am? What we are to each other? Who we are to each other?” He gave her a look of mild disinterest and indulgence, one that you might give a child. “I am your sister and you my brother.”

He pulled back to look into her face, “Is that supposed to dissuade me?” his voice was smooth velvet, but to Millie the sound of it just grated sickeningly on her eardrums. “Do you think that knowledge will lessen the way I feel about you? I can assure you it will not. All that it proves is that you, belong, to me. And I will not let you leave me again. You will learn to love me.”

“I will never love you,” the words were said quietly, but the conviction behind them—in her eyes—were firm “You can lock me in here but I will never lover you. Never want you. And never welcome your touch. Never.”

Millie just stared at him, not backing down from her statement even as displeasure crossed his features. She had hoped, even if she dared not admit it until now, that he would have been as revolted by the idea as she were, but he wasn’t. In fact he seemed to rather enjoy the fact that they were blood kin. His eyes glowed with a new kind of possession, his fangs elongating as he brought his mouth to her neck. Millie screamed when he broke the barrier of her skin, pain radiating through her from that one point. 

She fought against him—a reflex action—his teeth sunken deep into the side of her neck, but that only succeeded in increasing her pain. She struggled within herself, she didn’t want give into him, but she let herself stop fighting. Millie could feel the thrill of his satisfaction. He would feel like he won this round, like he was the one who got her to back off.

He took his fill, feeding gluttonously from her until she went limp, her body sagging boneless-ly against his.

Micah looked down at the way she slouched against him. His. The word repeated in his head as he scooped her up to lay her gently on the bed. Her skin was pale, the puncture wounds at her neck causing a surge of male pride to run through him. His mark would be on her. A sign of his possession.

He brushed back the strands of her hair that fell across her face. He bent pressing his lips to hers “I will return soon love.”

He strode out of the room in long confident strides, barely acknowledging the guard he placed outside the door.

***

It had just been two days, instinctively she knew that, but the hours dragged by in what appeared to be weeks. Torturous weeks. She was cooped up in the tiny room and she thought that she was going to go crazy, not that she expected him to let her go out for walks. Even if she was like some kind of pet.

He had used her; her body, her blood without remorse or tenderness, taking what she had never offered until she was bruised and weak. She rolled over her aching body to stare up at the ceiling unwilling to let her tears leak from her eyes. She had never let him see her cry but she had fought, fought with everything inside of her. She wasn’t willing to make it easy for him.

He derived pleasure from it, she knew. Pleasure from her fight. It was just the same amount pleasure that he got when she didn’t fight.  He used her body demanding pleasure from her flesh, but while she could not stop the response her body gave she remained indifferent to him never allowing herself to find completion with him. He hated her for it, for never having given herself that single piece of her—she had guarded it well—and Millie reveled in the knowledge that no matter now much he touched her or how he tilted his hips to drive into her, he would find himself on the brink of his orgasm, a place where she never allowed herself to go.

Millie thought that he saw the bruises that he put on her body like a Mating Mark, like the ones that appeared on one’s True Mate, but to her infinite, smug satisfaction the marks faded. They never stayed and when he returned to her they would be gone leaving no proof to him, let alone anyone else that she belonged to him in any way.

She was bone tired and just wanted sleep, but it would not come. Somehow her overly tired mind wouldn’t calm down enough for her to slip into the void of nothingness that sleep promised.

Her thumb traced the bite marks he’d left on the inner corner on her left hand, more proof that he’d fed from her, left a mark on her. The wound was raw, red and angry. 

She closed her eyes and thought about Theo. His golden eyes and tawny hair, the way his sensuous mouth with quirk in a naughty smile when he looked at her, the memory of his kisses was what made her endure when Micah came to her. Her body shivered, swollen and tender. He had taken care of her too when she’d been hurt. He was so angry, but gentle, never letting her feel the brunt of that anger.

It may have been juvenile but she clung to the hope that she would see him again, it was her only solace here when despair crept up on her.  She thought about him so much that now she could almost feel his touch on her skin—so warm and comforting—and feel his breath on her face, his scent surrounding her in a cocoon that was just him. Just Theo. Her Theo.

“Millie.”

It was his voice, or rather the memory of his voice, because she knew that he couldn’t be here. Here she was all alone. It took great effort but she eventually pried her eyes open and was met directly by his golden eyes boring into her face with so much emotion. A small tired smiled curved on her lips his name staining her tongue. She had even managed to conjure him.

She frowned when she saw the worry that creased between his eyebrows. She reached out slowly, her index finger smoothing up and down on the spot. “I don’t like it when you frown,” she stated drowsily, finding it hard to keep her eyes open.

“Baby, tell me where you are,” he loosely shackled her wrist moving it away from his face, there was an urgency in his voice that she didn’t register.

“I don’t know,” she sighed burrowing into her pillow, the words coming out in a breathy whisper all blurred together. “I don’t know. He has me.”

“Think of something. Anything that I can use to find you.”

It was suddenly a monumental task to keep her eyes open, to keep his image alive before her. “I miss you she said instead. Millie reached out again, her heavy hand tracing the full swell of his lower lips just before her vision wavered and blackness swallowed her.