11. Animal

ELEVEN

Animal

I was halfway across the road, my eyes fixed to the flashing green man that indicated my turn to walk. I wasn't paying attention to the SUV that crawled along the hazy dawn roads, slowly coming to a stop at the lights. I barely even blinked when the door opened.

It was like a dream.

The hand wrapping around my arm should have alarmed me, but I wasn't even surprised.

It was a talent of mine, finding my way back to Nicholai Fell.

I knew it was him. He touched me as though he had every right to, as though his fingers belonged on my skin, and he did it all without saying a word. He steered me toward his car. I recognised the black Ford that he had driven out of the parking lot … yesterday?

Was it really only yesterday ?

I had trouble lifting my leg to the step that would help me get into the passenger seat, my thigh cramping with the movement. He picked me up, set me into the seat, and leaned over me to pull on my seatbelt.

His scent washed over me, salty and sharp, a winter ocean breeze. I could see how tight his jaw was and feel the tension in his body as he clicked in my seatbelt. I stared out of the front windshield, averting my eyes, avoiding thinking about him, refusing to believe that the scent of sea breeze was somehow calming my nausea. Instead, I wiped away my thoughts and watched the empty roads. I wondered where they would all lead if I followed them right to the end.

He didn't take me back to the hospital. He drove past the parking lot and turned right. He was smart enough to know that I would find my way out again. He still hadn't spoken, but I preferred it that way.

He stopped at a three-story building in the centre of town, opening my door and helping me out before taking me right to the building's entrance. I briefly glanced at the sign indicating that it was some kind of counselling center. He pulled out a set of keys, unlocked the door, disarmed the security system, and then led me up two sets of stairs. It wasn't easy: we had to go slow, but at least he didn't complain or offer to carry me.

We passed a door with Dr. Nicholai Fell on it, but we didn't go inside. He opened the next door beside his office, revealing a small room that had every appearance of a waiting room, or an informal meeting room. Two lemon-yellow couches faced each other, with a yellow, wing-backed chair in the corner. There was a fern beside the door and a tray on a table with a covered jug of water, several glasses, and a box of tissues.

"Sit." He waved at one of the yellow couches.

I fell onto it, every muscle protesting, my stomach beginning to cramp again. He sat on the couch facing me, pulling his cell phone out and dialling a number.

"Hey, Ginny, it's me. Can you let Doctor Kenneth know that Mika Grey is with me? Thanks. Oh, and were there any visitors? Who brought her in?" He paused, listening to whatever Ginny said, whoever Ginny was, before replying. "Okay. Let them know, too. Thanks, Ginny."

He hung up, storing his phone away, and I did the only thing that felt right in that moment. I turned my back on him, curled up on my side with my knees to my chest, and closed my eyes.

"You were my emergency contact." My voice was muffled against the yellow, faux leather material of the couch, but I was sure that he heard me. There were no other sounds inside the building. He would have heard a pin drop .

"I added myself to your records." He sounded calm enough, certainly not the way you were supposed to sound while admitting something like that.

"Why?"

"I knew you'd end up there eventually."

And there would have been nobody to call .

"Leave me alone," I murmured dully. "I don't need your help."

"I can tell when you're lying, even when you aren't looking at me."

"You don't know me. Stop acting like you do. I don't need your help ." My body was shuddering with my sudden fury, making soft, rustling noises against the leather.

"And?" he asked calmly, his voice growing quiet.

"And … and I could get any person to help me. Any guidance counsellor. Any guy slumming it at a public school hoping to learn about teenage deviance. How many people have been given an office in this building after finishing their thesis? I could get help from any of them."

I heard him move, heard the sound of his shoes brushing across the carpet, and then I saw his hand against the back of the couch as he leaned over me.

"That ship has sailed, Mika." He was whispering, as though telling me a secret. "I won't let you destroy yourself. "

I blinked, my breath halting

Was I trying to destroy myself?

I jerked upright, my chest knocking against his arm. He pulled back, drawing to his full height, staring down at me.

"You think you know me better than I do?" I sneered, forcing myself to my feet. Forcing him to stand with me or step back from me.

He chose to stay, allowing my body to press against his. Allowing my breasts to brush against his chest, the rustle of our clothing passing heat between our bodies. He would cross every line … every line but one .

The one that really mattered.

My ultimate path to destruction.

I blinked, my hands against his stomach, pushing him back. He allowed me to push him away, but he didn't move any further of his own accord. Was that why I couldn't stop thinking about him? Because an affair with my guidance counsellor was the ultimate path to my own ruin? It was an idea that my mind seemed to immediately repel, but I couldn't shake the pattern. The pattern he had pointed out.

I fell back to the couch, my head spinning, nausea returning. "Food," I groaned. "I still haven't eaten."

"I'll be right back." His reply was instant. He didn't even think about it.

The door shut behind him before I had even opened my mouth to thank him, and I was left alone to sit in the strange sitting room. Eventually, I stood and tried the door, surprised to find it unlocked.

I can tell when you're lying, even when you aren't looking at me .

He knew that I wouldn't run away.

Because … fucking hell . I needed him. I needed his help.

I shoved the realisation aside, pushing the door wide. I could see him at the very end of the hall, his back toward the stairs. He had his phone pressed to his ear, mumbling lowly. I moved to the next door, glancing up at his name plaque above it before pushing it open and slipping inside. I flicked on the light, carefully shutting the door behind me. His office was mostly empty; the only personalised thing about it had been the name on the door. The bare desktop with the squeaky-clean monitor could have belonged to anybody. The chair looked new. The bookshelves were filled with the same books and pamphlets as his office at the high school. I wondered how many offices he had. There was probably one in his house, maybe another at Stanford. Maybe he had another apartment in Palo Alto, another office there. That made five. Five empty, impersonal offices.

Was that normal? I doubted it.

I pulled the chair out, sitting down and opening the top drawer on the right-hand side. There was a stack of forms that I didn't bother to sort through and a few labelled folders slotted beneath the pile of paperwork. Still nothing significant. I slid the drawer closed and leaned to the other side, opening that drawer. There was a USB stick lying right in the middle, looking entirely absurd since there was nothing else there. I grabbed it, switched on the monitor, and plugged it in.

Research was the only folder on the device. I clicked on it and found dozens upon dozens of articles and a few sub-folders of pictures. I scrolled through the first picture folder, shock steadily taking hold of me as the images flashed before my eyes, one by one. Most of them were women, and most of those women seemed to be dead. Some had ropes around their necks, so at first, I thought that they had all tried to hang themselves … but then the images began to change. Some didn't have anything around their necks but the bruised, red handprints of other human beings. One had a large, silken ribbon around her neck. Another wore a belt.

I exited the sub-folder, clicking on the first article.

Autoerotic Asphyxiation—The Unspoken Danger .

"What the fuck?" I flicked my eyes from the headline to the body of text, but at that moment, the door swung open .

Nicholai didn't seem surprised to find me there. He shut the door calmly and started walking around to my side of the desk, his expression completely neutral.

And then he saw the USB sticking out of the side of his monitor. I watched as the darkness slowly descended over his features, pulling at his mouth and pinching in the arch of his brows. He looked at the screen, and I could almost see the way his pupils moved from left to right, reading the headline. He grabbed the USB and yanked it out of the monitor, shoving it into his pocket. Then, his hand was on the arm of my chair, swinging it around to force me to face him. His other hand found the other side of the chair, his fists tightening, punishing the leather as his whole persona seemed to darken, swelling with temper.

"Get up," he said quietly, forcing the words out through clenched teeth.

"I can't." I looked down at his hands, caging me in.

He immediately pulled himself away, and I stood, trying to edge past him. He refused to move, only turning sideways as I squeezed between him and the desk. I tried not to brush against his body, but he was either leaning closer to make it difficult for me, or else I had misjudged how much space he had left for me. The zipper of his jacket snagged on the thin material of my dress, forcing me to stop moving at the worst possible time. I was directly in front of him, his desk pressing into me from behind. I reached for his jacket to free myself, but he caught my wrist. A sound that was almost like a snarl ripped out of his throat, and I winced.

"What?" I snapped, tugging my arm down in an attempt to free myself. He didn't release me. "I'm sorry, okay? I didn't realise it was going to be …"

"Going to be what ?" He tightened his grip on my wrist until it was painful. "Do you have any idea what you just saw?"

"No! I don't?—"

"Good." He dropped my wrist. "Keep it that way. If you go through my crap again, you'd better be ready to tell me why."

"Only if you tell me why you refuse to treat me like a student, or a patient, or a human being with plenty of free will—or however you're supposed to be treating me." I forced my arms up into the space between us, folding them over my chest so that we were separated.

He leaned further into me, pressing on my arms until the weight against my chest made it hard to breathe, and I was forced to lean back over his desk.

"This miserable world of ours is divided into three groups of people," he said, his voice dangerously soft. "Those who need help, those who can help, and those who don't care; and these groups are divided by lines. Lines of separation, lines of taboo, lines of instruction, lines of legislation; the polite lines of a polite society. This way, no person can really touch the life of another person, and we can separate ourselves from their mistakes. My mother was a psychologist. Did you find that out when you were looking me up?"

Dumbly, I shook my head.

My back was starting to ache, but he didn't let up the pressure. His arms moved to either side of me, his hands gripping the desk on either side of my thighs.

"She was," he said. "She was one of the best in her field, and she worked hard to get there. She was so good that nobody noticed her fucking her favourite patient every Friday in her home office. She was so good that she didn't notice what else was happening under that roof." His eyes cooled, his whole face sharpening with fury and hurt.

Goosebumps broke out all over my skin. I wanted to crack Nicholai open, but I was suddenly doubting I was prepared for whatever would spill out.

He took a deep breath, his eyes flicking between mine. "When her patient killed himself, she was ruined. She didn't understand. She had done everything right … except all the things that she was doing wrong. She had put him on the right medication. She had worked tirelessly in weekly sessions for years and years … so can you tell me why he did it? Why he killed himself? "

He was waiting for my response. My throat was working, trying to form the words, but when I peered inside myself in search of them, I encountered no words. Only fear.

Thick, inexplicable fear.

He was giving me a glimpse of the man behind the mood-swings and the empty offices. I had expected him to be messy and convoluted, but I was already in over my head and he was only shaving off the surface.

"Are you …" I flailed. "Is this a real story?"

He smiled, the gesture cold. "What makes you say that?"

"It sounds like you're trying to prove a point."

He backed off me. "Can't it be both?"

I didn't want to reply to the question. I quickly moved away from the desk, making my way to the door. I got it, I did. He was trying to tell me that he cared . That he wasn't like his mother. That he wasn't going to fuck me or fuck me over, he was just going to fuck me up, and he was going to continue fucking me up until I lost the ability to fuck myself up.

"Why me?" I made it to the door, but I made no attempt to open it. I was always running to the door when I was alone in a room with him, but as soon as I left, I was aching and empty, and the red washed back in.

"You remind me of someone." His tone was back to mild. I still had my back turned, but I knew, somehow, that his expression would also be back to neutral.

"You did everything you were supposed to do with her?" I prompted. "And it didn't work?"

"I didn't even realise," he admitted, growing quieter by the second. "I had no idea. Not until after she was dead."

I reached out for the door handle, but I missed it, my shaking fingers barely scraping the metal. I had goosebumps again and a chill running down my spine. I felt bad for him but I didn't want to feel at all. I didn't want to be his redemption, and I hated that he was attempting to deny me my chosen future just to satisfy his past. It didn't matter if my future held nothing but pain, misery, and death. It was mine, and he couldn't change it just to calm his demons.

I wasn't his .

Not his to order around.

Not his to change.

Not his to save.

"It'll never work." I finally managed to grab the door, yanking it open and spinning to face him. "What you're trying to do. Fixing me won't make it better. I refuse to be fixed, and she will still be dead."

I slammed the door behind me, walking down the hallway toward the stairs. I was still aching everywhere, but the adrenaline of my encounter with him was rushing through me like a drug, numbing the pain and the reality.

Maybe I was a heartless bitch.

I had said something only a heartless bitch would say.

He had opened his chest and revealed to me the knife that was still wedged in there, and all I had done was reach out and twist it further. I was a terrible person and a heartless bitch, but Nicholai was stubbornly on a path toward vindication, and I was heading in the opposite direction, so it was better for me to separate myself from him while I still could.

I was smart enough to know that he wouldn't want to help me forever. He would be there, obsessive-compulsive and all-encompassing, until the minute I declared myself magically healed, and then he would disappear. Off to terrorise and save the next person. Because that's what people did: they waited until you could stand without falling, and then they handed you an empty trailer and a bank account of "please don't try to contact us" money before disappearing from your life.

A car pulled up behind Nicholai's truck as I was walking away from the building and I watched the guy climb out, a bag of takeout in his arms. I approached him, tapping him on the shoulder as he passed me, staring down at a little slip of paper.

"Order for Nicholai Fell?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah." The guy turned, his eyes fixing on my face before flicking quickly lower, and then back up again. "Yeah. You Nicholai?"

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he flushed. He looked down at the little slip of paper in accusation, as though it were the paper's fault.

"Sure. I'm Nicholai. I can take that from you."

He handed me the bag and rushed back to his car, his head tucked down, but he was only halfway there before he jerked to a stop and came back, holding out the slip of paper and a pen. He was even redder than before.

"Sign down at the bottom. Thanks—I mean please. Please."

I took the paper and signed Doctor Deviance , handing it back and walking away with the bag in my arms. I heard his car start up just as another rolled in. Probably another social worker arriving early to get some paperwork done. I was tempted to turn around and commit their appearance to memory, to remind myself that Nicholai wasn't normal. I wanted to see a mousy-haired, matronly woman with spectacles, sucking at a thermos of coffee the size of her head. I wanted to see a man in tan slacks, with tired lines beneath his kind eyes. I wanted to turn around and see the signs of strain, because Nicholai was starting to scare me with his outward perfection. People that damaged were supposed to show it.

I walked down the road, the bag of food tucked beneath my arm. I was gaining strength back into my muscles by the minute, but I was losing cohesion from my brain. Whatever they had given me at the hospital had helped with my pain, but it seemed as though my mind simply didn't want to function anymore. Without the stimulus that Nicholai presented, it was trying to shut down again. My eyelids drooped, and I stumbled on the sidewalk, almost dropping the bag.

That wasn't a good sign.

I glanced around, trying to figure out what road I was on. My only choices were to walk back to the hospital, or to walk back home, and I didn't want to do either. I wasn't sure that I could do either. Just as it occurred to me that I was stuck, a black Ford pulled up beside me. The reflection of my face in the shiny paint made me wince as the window rolled down.

"Get in." Nicholai's voice. Not that I had expected anyone else.

"Leave me alone," I growled, using what little strength I had to hurl the bag through the open window.

He caught it deftly, reaching behind his seat to store it somewhere. I mostly just hadn't wanted to carry it anymore, but it felt good to fake the tantrum. The look of answering anger on his face also felt good.

"You have two choices," he snapped back. "I can take you home myself, or I can call your friend's mom to take you home. Choose."

Why wouldn't he just give up ?

I pulled on the handle, swinging open the door of his car. "Fine," I spat, climbing up into the passenger seat. "You want to take me home. Take me home."

He focused on me, and I returned his stare without flinching. He didn't put the car back into drive. He was suspicious. Maybe he could read the bad intention on my face. I slid against the seat, drawing closer to the centre console. His hand was wrapped around the emergency brake. I dropped my fingers lightly over his. I saw his entire body stiffen at the contact, but his eyes didn't shift from mine.

"What are you doing?" he asked as I gently pulled his hand to my lap.

"I'm talking to you about my problems." I made it sound so obvious . He should know exactly what I was doing.

He was the expert.

"Someone touched me," I continued, "without my permission. Do you want to know where? "

"What?" His voice was impossibly soft and impossibly sharp—the kind of knife you didn't even feel until you were already pierced. It rolled over me with the same frightening intensity as before.

I ignored the goosebumps on my legs, laying his hand over my knee. He didn't grip me, but he allowed me to place his hand there without drawing it away. He was so still , a quiet fury burning in the simmering, dark indigo of his eyes. Maybe he was too shocked by my words to register where I had put his hand.

He seemed to be battling too many thoughts, too many reactions—to me, to my words, to what I had insinuated, to the brush of my fingertips against the back of his hand.

"Here," I muttered, laying my hand over his again and applying enough pressure to draw it up.

His eyes darkened, that rich colour fading behind a smokescreen of complicated emotion as his pupils expanded and he sucked a subtle breath between his teeth. I turned away, focussing on the image of his hand against my skin. Gold against gold, my pale blue sundress bunching in wrinkles of soft cotton. He still wasn't fighting me … but he wasn't participating, either. He was probably trying to figure out how to turn this around, but I wasn't going to let him.

Not this time.

This time, he would break.

I wasn't going to stop until he did.

"And here," I continued, pulling his hand higher.

The hem of my dress was pushed up now, our hands half-hidden beneath the material as it dragged slowly up with the movement of our hands. A deep, rumbling sound vibrated out of him—something caught between a growl and a reprimand. It tugged something low in my stomach and shortened my breath. I closed my eyes, trying to block him out. I didn't want him affecting me. I didn't want to show a reaction to him. This was about him . Not me.

"He—the boy who touched me," I said, "was talking … telling me some song lyrics. I don't remember them now. It's not like it mattered. He was just playing with me. Like you do … but in a different way."

His fingers curled inward suddenly, digging into my skin and forcing our hands to a stop. I blinked my eyes open, allowing my head to fall to the side so that I could look at him.

"Keep going," I taunted. "He didn't stop there."

"Careful," Nicholai's grip tightened even further, and I could see the muscle ticking in his jaw now, the slight movement telling me that he was grinding his teeth .

His features didn't look so perfect with violence slashed across his expression.

I planted my hands on the edge of the seat, pulling myself up and leaning into him. His face was only a breath away, his hand now caught between my thighs as I twisted my body to the side to reach him. There was a hungry little monster inside me that very much enjoyed the stricken look on his face, the hint of aggression that hovered in the air around him. It was everything he didn't want me to see. Everything he tried to lock deep down inside himself, tucked away behind his well-pressed suits and contained little half smiles. It shot electricity right through my body, forcing me to dig my teeth into my lower lip to bite back the sound of satisfaction that almost purred out of me.

I was taking far too much pleasure from his loss of control.

Far too much pleasure from cracking him open, little bit by little bit.

"Still want to take me home, Nicholai?" I whispered, the words falling right over his mouth.

The hand between my legs twitched, and before I realised what I was doing, I had inched my thighs open, pulling myself up even further until my knees were planted against the seat. His hand moved, but it didn't continue up the way I needed it to. It brushed along the outside of my thigh before gripping the edge of my hip.

"You picked the wrong game." His voice was gravelly and hard as his fingers turned bruising, pushing me back into my seat. "You have no experience in this."

"Are you telling me to go out and get some experience?" I arched a brow at him, pretending I was as unaffected as I wanted to be.

Not that it would work. He wouldn't believe my act for a second. He had felt the heat of my body. He had barely even touched me, and I had burned up for him in a way I hadn't even thought possible.

"You can't blackmail me," he warned. "You think this is all a big game, but it's not, and I'm not going to play."

"No." I laughed, dry and soft, before dropping my hand onto his thigh. "It's not a game. It's my life, and I want you to get the fuck out of it."

"Go ahead." His eyes had narrowed, the colour almost pitch black now, glittering furiously at me. "Push me. See what happens."

I slid my hand over until I was barely brushing the length of his cock, pushing up against the zipper of his pants. We both froze. He was hard . Really, really fucking hard. I was surprised, despite everything. I had expected to make him uncomfortable. Angry. Furious. I had expected him to toss me out of the truck and drive away.

I definitely didn't expect …

I glanced down at my hand, and back to his face, but I didn't get to see the expression he wore because he had grabbed my jaw and was forcing my mouth to his.

Every single molecule of my body seemed to be hypersensitive to the fact that Nicholai Fell was kissing me, and it took me a few moments to work around the shock. In that time, he had captured my hand, jerking it away from his lap and pulling it behind my back as he dragged my upper body over the console. His chest was suddenly pressed against mine, rumbling with a groan that vibrated against my heated skin as I began to sluggishly respond.

It felt like my first kiss.

I was suddenly unsure about what to do.

With Duke, I had simply … existed. For him to do whatever he wanted with me. I had processed what was required of me and had delivered on the requirement. Now, my heart was beating too ferociously for coherent thought, my body melting into Nicholai's, my breath stuttering in shock and indecision and want .

I wanted him, but I didn't know how to get him .

Even with him kissing me, I still didn't know how to get him.

Even if I got him, I still wouldn't know what to do with him.

His firm lips demanded more, pressing harder against the soft swell of my own flesh, forcing my lips to part as his tongue dug inside and claimed me, filling me with the taste of him, the heat of him, the flexing of him. Either I was delusional, or he tasted like the ocean.

He tasted like I might drown.

This wasn't like when Duke kissed me or when Trip touched me. This was far too intentional. Nicholai was gripping the steel of my soul and melting it down until I was liquid metal dripping over us both, trying to harden and meld us together. He was tasting my desperation, measuring it, testing me. There were lights flashing behind my closed eyelids and heat rising through my whole body, and then …

Then there was pain.

His hand had twisted into my hair, edging my head back from his. I could taste copper on my lips. Maybe he had bitten me, or I had bitten myself. I couldn't tell from the vicious look on his face.

"Me and you …" he growled, his eyes travelling back to my lips, his chest expanding, his pupils blown out, "it isn't going to happen. "

He released me, and I slumped back into the seat, the world around me spinning. This was all my fault, but I still wanted to be angry at him . I wanted to hate him, but I couldn't. Because he had been right—again.

I had picked the wrong game.

This game, only he could win.