Page 16 of Sincerely, Secretary of Doom

The one from the bell tower. He must have owned this office. He must have been following along on what the news was saying about his kidnapping, memory-stealing ways.

His hood was still up, shadowing his diabolical face, but the office window brought in enough light that Violet could see his features this time; his smooth, tanned skin. His wild, treacherously beautiful eyes. The shallow curve of his lips that he kept calmly together instead of gaping at her like she was at him.

Violet slid back and bumped into a desk. Her hand flew to it to keep balance, and she padded her fingers over everything in reach. But she didn’t take her eyes off the guy. He didn’t take his eyes off her, either. He just watched as her fingers wrapped around a cup of pens, and he raised an eyebrow as if asking what she planned to do with them.

They became ammo. She hurled them at him, three pens at a time.

“You psycho!” she shouted.

One pen bounced off his shoulder. Another off his stomach. One even pelted his face.

He looked annoyed, but he didn’t retaliate.

When that didn’t work, Violet spun for the desk and grabbed a jar of ink. She turned back and raised it above her head, threatening to throw it.

This time, his hands came up like a shield, and he tried to stop her. “Miss Miller—”

She splattered the ink at him—hitting the side of his face and his collar.

He dropped his hands and rose to his full height, eyes narrowing, mouth thinning. But he still didn’t try to grab her or shove her or eat her for a snack.

“Murderous, hostage-taking psycho!” she said anyway.

Violet spun for the desk and picked up a thick book to throw at him, but dizziness rushed in, and her limbs grew weak. The book dropped back onto the desk, and she grabbed her head as her thoughts teetered. Tingling sensations washed up her legs and she knew they might give out.

“My iron pills…” she murmured to herself, or whoever. She whirled back toward him, but the spinning only made it worse. Violet tipped forward, grabbing a handful of his vampire coat on the way down. He didn’t reach to catch her like a gentleman. He didn’t touch her at all as she passed out.

Music was playing somewhere, softly brushed violin strings and a deep cello. Violet opened her eyes.

A canopy of sheer curtains hung between thick, black, gothic-like spokes that held the bed together. It wasn’t a room she recognized, and she had to think for a moment before she recalled where she was.

She sprang up, gripping the white bedsheets with all her might when it hit her. Her mouth went dry, and her wide eyes darted around to take in her surroundings. The windows were covered by bloodred curtains, and the furniture around the room was all dark wood and surprisingly clean, yet inexplicably sharp looking.

Classical music, a gothic bed, drawn curtains…

“He istotallya vampire!” Violet whispered.

“Not at all.”

Violet almost sprang from the bed before spotting the silvery-eyed guy at her bedside. Her mind soared with the thought to fight her way out, but her body wouldn’t move. She sat there, pinned beneath his attention, realizing that exiting the bed would only make it easy for him to grab her.

Her eyes dropped to his casual white shirt and gym pants. His creepy coat was gone, allowing Violet to see several tattoos wrapping his neck. His curly hair was pulled back into a bun too, as though he was heading out for a jog like any normal person who got up early to exercise. He looked vastly different than he had in the bell tower and outside the police station. In fact, he was a bit handsome, in a terrifying way. She cleared her throat and scolded herself for having such a thought about a dangerous, possibly supernatural kidnapper.

“Are you the…” What were you supposed to call someone who looked and acted like a vampire? “…masterof this house?” She said it with an uneasy note—it wasn’t really a house. More like a haunted mansion.

“Yes.” The guy’s deep voice was calm. Deceptively soothing.

Violet glanced at his arms where reddish marks covered his wrists and palms. It was like he’d stuck his hands into an oven and pulled out a hot pan without oven mitts.

“What are you, then? Some sort of dark housemaster of doom?” She scootched backward an inch on the bed, wondering if she could jump off the other side and plunge through the window. She’d have to break the glass with her body, but so be it. It would probably only be a two-story fall.

She swallowed at the thought, rubbed her temples, and cursed her brain fog. She needed her iron supplements before her irrational thinking got her killed.

Her attention fired back up to the Master of Doom. He was folding his large arms, hiding away the burn marks on his tanned skin.

“I’ll admit, I didn’t plan to ever see you again after you recklessly flung yourself off my roof like a fool,” he said. Violet’s fingers worked through the knots she’d made in the bedsheets. He spoke with a bit of an accent. “And I would have taken you home after you fainted in my faeborn-cursed office but…” He unfolded his arms and leaned forward, coming over her and bracing his fists against the bed. Violet’s insides tumbled into acrobatic leaps she didn’t realize her organs knew how to do. His face was less than three inches away, and he studied her curiously—right in the eyes. Exactly what a murderous psycho would do.

Violet’s breathing turned shallow when he inched even closer. She imagined him trying to kiss her or some other horrifying atrocity. But his cheek moved past hers and he paused there. He sniffed.

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