Page 16 of Breaking Ophelia
I need to stay the fuck away from her because this burning need to split her open on my cock and claim her like the little ember she is, is slowly consuming my every waking thought.
Ophelia walks the main aisle like she’s immune to surveillance. Backpack hiked high, skirt bunched under her sweater, boots heavy on the floor.
She looks like a fairy met a goth and they fucked and shit out whatever her style is.
It’s annoyingly cute.
She’s in the student section. The one where the books are carefully curated for Academy ideals. She stops at every third row, scanning the shelf, touching spines like a bored housewife at a grocery store. No urgency. No fear. I watch her, and I keep count: how many seconds she lingers on a title, how often she tucks her hair behind her ear (every thirty-four seconds, average), the pattern of her breathing when she thinks she’s alone.
Last night should have broken her. It broke everyone else that came before.
For years, the ritual’s been the same: find the woman, put her through whatever humiliation we deem worthy, watch her fracture. But when Colton made her stand, when she was forced to stand on the bench, when we handed her the chalice and told her to bow, she didn’t even tremble. Didn’t blink. She drankthe vinegar and venom and hatred, let it burn her insides, then looked up at me like she could drink a hundred times more.
Not even my father held a stare like that.
Now, in the hush of the library, she’s just a girl again—round face, strong jaw, the line of her throat dark with an old bruise. But the memory is still there, the shape of her defiance: she knelt, but her eyes never dropped. She saidnot yours.
I thought I wanted to punish her. But here, under the judge’s gaze of all the dead men, I want to break her in a different way.
My hands knot on the balcony rail. The metal is cold, pitted from generations of ringed fingers. I imagine the skin of her throat under my thumb—would it dent or bruise first? She’s soft, but not fragile; the kind of girl who’ll look up at you, hating you, while you force her to come apart.
She doubles back, retracing her steps. Another tell: she always circles twice before she commits. She’s running numbers, risk versus reward, and she doesn’t even know it. I want to climb down right now, press her against the shelf, and see if she’d fight or fold. Not in front of the others. Just her and me. I want her to know whose hands are on her, and why.
Her hips sway as she bends to the lower shelf. Under the light, the hem of her skirt rides up just enough. I feel the heat crawl behind my ribs, settle low, tighten everything. She tugs a book free—it's so thick she almost drops it. I could help her, but I like the way she handles things too heavy for her. She reads thespine, lips moving on the Latin, then hugs the book to her chest and heads for the reading tables.
I lean over the rail, blood buzzing. She sits alone, nearest the shadows, and sets up her perimeter: book dead center, phone to the right, pen aligned parallel. She opens to a random page, doesn’t start at the beginning. There’s something specific she’s searching for.
Another girl wanders past, sees her, does a quick double take. Ophelia looks up, face blank, and the girl moves on. There’s no invitation to join. No interest in company. She’s chosen isolation, as if the world might be less cruel at arm’s length.
I study the little shakes in her hands, the twitch of her fingers on the pen. She’s mad. She’s still running on the high from last night, and she’s using this to burn it off. I understand the need. I’ve spent entire nights in this library, plotting the best ways to tear down my enemies—sometimes even friends.
I wonder if she’s thinking about me.
The air up here is stale, but I can still pick up the scent of old paper, glue, dust. There’s also a faint trace of her perfume—something chemical and sweet, cheap, the kind that lingers on fingers after you touch a stranger’s hair.
She reads three pages, then closes the book and just stares at the table. The urge to go to her is heavy, unsettling, but I don’t move. Not yet. I want to see how long it takes her to look up, to sense me.
She does. Almost exactly two minutes later.
Her gaze is a slow lift, like she’s peeling back layers of glass between us. She sees me, even if she can’t seeme. The tilt of her head says she knows she’s being watched.
I let her watch me watch her.
My pulse doesn’t slow. My hands ache. It’s not rage, it’s something older, sharper… a hunger to mold her into something even stronger than she already is, and to know that every time she looks in the mirror, she’ll see me in the cracks.
I roll my tongue along my teeth, trying to decide how I want to start. I could call her up to the rail. I could drop a note from the balcony, like a cat torturing a bird. I could wait until she’s alone in the stacks and corner her where nobody will hear if she screams.
The urge is to act now, but I force myself to wait. Tradition matters more than impulse. If I do this right, she’ll never want to run from anyone else. She’ll belong to me before she even knows it.
I watch until the next flicker in her hand, the way she taps her fingers when she’s bored or agitated. She’s not reading anymore. She’s thinking.
Probably about last night.
Probably about me.
Good girl.
I want her thoughts to be a snare with my name on every knot.
