Page 94 of Serpentine Valentine
“You think going to the papers isgoing to do anything?” he continued, all bared teeth and angry flushed cheeks. He wanted to murder me. I could see it in every angle and plane of his big body. If he could have gotten away with it right there and then, he would have snapped my neck. “You think anyone will believe a little no one from nowhere with a bad reputation?”
“You gave me that bad reputation.” I didn’t recognize my voice. It was cold, carved from the ice and stone my body had alchemized into after his assault. “Nothing you say will change the fact that you did this to me. To Tessie. To yourself. I’m blameless here.”
It felt good to say that.
Blameless.
The word that never seemed to be directed to me. As if we were polar opposite sides of two magnets that could never meet.
I was flawed. I had made mistakes. But nothing in my life had made me responsible for what Dylan Morgan did to me. Not my good looks, not the way I dressed, not the fact that I’d even befriended him.
He was the monster.
So why had heneverbeen punished as one?
“You think what I did to you then was so bad?” he asked, seething and boiling with anger. He rounded the desk faster than a blink, and suddenly, he was caging me in that fucking velvet chair, his body all around me. Bile rose in my throat, and I thought I would vomit into his face. It would have served him right, but I couldn’t allow myself to show any of the weakness surging inside me.
I refused to let his perception of me as weak and meek become a reality.
I would be brave because I deserved justice.
I could be brave because I finally knew how much love I had at my back. My sisters, Agatha, the girls in the group, and the girls in the new Man Eater Patrol Crew.
The love of Luna Pallas, even and especially when I didn’t deserve it.
So I could do this, look into Morgan’s cold, furious face, a god in this world of academia, whereas I was a mere mortal, a peasant. I could look into his face with this dynamic, and I could fuckingsmile.
Because nothing he said would change the acts I’d taken and the ways I’d been changed because of what he did.
“What I’m going to do to you for speaking of it will be so much worse,” he taunted, and there was actual delight in his expression, like the idea of violating me again, breaking me apart until I died, was a fantasy of his. “You stupid cunt. You could have just walked away and lived a normal life. Instead, I’m going to ruin your future.”
“Too late,” I said, and thank God or whatever force was out there that my voice was steady. I could smell the jasmine on his breath, and I wanted to cry. “I ruined yours first. You can’t hide from this, Morgan. It’s public now, what you did, and you’ll have to pay for it.”
“Men like me don’t pay for shit,” he goaded, and then his hand was on my throat.
My neck was still sore from Pierce’s attack, so the contact instantly shot pain from the roots of my hair to the ends of my toes. My vision darkened, narrowed, and I thought I might pass out from the fear.
But then there was a firm knock on the door.
Arap, rap, rapthat echoed the wild pounding of my heart.
I sucked in as much breath as I could when Morgan tightened his fingers. “Today,” I gasped. “They do.”
I curled my hands into his over my throat, nails digging so deeply I could feel the skinpopand warm blood pool against my flesh.
“Get off me,” I breathed.
His fingers tightened.
Another knock. “Professor Morgan? Open the door.”
Panic etched itself under the lines of angry strain on his oncehandsome face. “You cunt,” he repeated, like calling me names would fix anything.
I wrenched his hand off my throat, leveraging my entire weight with my back against the chair to peel his fingers off.
“This isn’t even the end,” I said, voice threadbare but victorious. “Losing your job and your reputation isn’t enough. What you did to me will haunt you like it’s haunted me. I hope you know one day, I’ll kill you.”
He reared back and backhanded me so hard, stars and black holes burst across my vision, and I slumped sideways in the chair.
