The Prison Project (by Bethany Donaghy) novel Chapter 44

Margot’s POV

The walk back to our room was short and quiet, as I couldn’t hide the little smile on my face after Sarah had managed to get off the hook…

When I stepped inside, the change hit me again immediately. The room was clean. Impossibly so. That I almost didn’t believe I had managed to fix its earlier state so well.

The sheets were straightened, the floor spotless, even our shoes neatly laid along the wall in a small neat order.

It looked totally untouched. Unlived in.

Like a reset.

Playing my first night here out to me all over again…

It felt like what had happened only hours before was already being erased from existence, overwritten by the next chapter in whatever twisted game this was. As though Coban hadn’t ripped all of my dignity away in this very room…

I stepped in first, hearing the soft click of the door behind me as it swung slowly back on its hinges — still remaining open only slightly.

My back stayed to him. I didn’t dare turn around yet.

Because I was better off waiting.

Waiting for him to speak. To command me. To take control of the next part of our day. To bark another one of his sharp instructions, as if this weird bubble we’d been floating in for the last hour was over now.

But nothing came.

Not until I felt it.

His hand.

It wrapped firm and sudden around my upper arm, fingers pressing into the fabric of my sweatshirt sleeve and right through to the skin. My entire body tensed like a live wire. My breath lodging in my throat in a soft gasp.

Shit!

So it had pissed him off?

I’d pushed my luck too far with Sarah!

He was angry at me again?!

The thing about Coban’s anger was that you never saw it coming until it was already roaring, already storming through you. He didn’t warm up he just exploded. And I didn’t know if I had the stomach to be his target again tonight.

–

My mind raced as he turned me around to face him, as if I weighed nothing, bringing our bodies close- too close the air between us instantly running low of oxygen.

–

His eyes studied me with a slow burn. Half–lidded, intense, calculated. He wasn’t looking at me like prey this time.

No

–

it was worse.

He was studying me.

“You think I’m weak for you now?” His voice was low.

Dangerous.

A question, but not really.

A challenge more like!

I shook my head immediately, pulse jumping.

“Cobán, please don’t do this again…” I whispered, voice strained, too familiar with the shadows that could fall across his face. “Please…”

But then he smiled.

A real smile.

Like the one I’d seen on his face whenever he was laughing with Leo.

Teeth flashing down at me like white knives under the soft lighting.

God, he was handsome.

It was so frustrating.

I couldn’t deny it, he was honestly the epitome of the most gorgeous man I had ever seen, and I hated myself for knowing it.

No it was infuriating, the way that man could tear through my nerves like a storm one minute, and then look like that the next. No one that good–looking should be allowed to be that terrifying. Or that unpredictable.

“Calm down… I’m not mad… not this time,” he said, voice lighter now, almost amused. “Just… more entertained, I guess.”

He tilted his head slightly, regarding me the way a lion might study a deer that had the audacity to bite it back.

–

Then, without warning, he lifted one heavy foot and kicked the door shut behind him the slam reverberating through the concrete walls like a gunshot.

I jumped in his grip.

“A–Amused?” I stuttered, mouth suddenly dry, head spinning with the whiplash of it all.

Where was this going now? I couldn’t seem to catch up…

Could I?

But my body wasn’t listening. My brain screamed at me to shove him away – to call him a monster, a manipulative psychopath. But all I could feel was the way my heartbeat surged like a tidal wave in my chest. The way the heat from his mouth melted into my skin like it belonged there.

I should have pushed him off of me.

But Instead, I stood still held prisoner by the chaos in my own mind.

–

His mouth drifted up, grazing just beneath my ear. His voice was like velvet soaked in poison when he whispered, “You like this, don’t you?”

‘No,‘ I breathed. But my voice trembled with a lie even I could hear.

His hands shifted then one slipping around my waist, the other lifting to cradle my jaw, guiding my face up toward his.

–

“You think I’m bipolar, hmm Bella?” he murmured, as if reading the very word from the front of my mind. “Maybe I am? Or maybe… I’m just someone who likes to keep you guessing.”

He pressed his forehead to mine, the intimacy so sudden it made my eyes sting.

“I’m not weak for you, Bella, let’s get that straight,” he said. “Im not weak for anyone. But maybe you’ve made me… curious… maybe I just need a taste of you to get it out of my system, hm?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t even know what he meant by it.

But I knew one thing – this wasn’t the same Coban who shoved me, screamed at me, wanted to see me cower beneath him earlier today.

This one was softer.

But no less dangerous. I couldn’t be fooled.

Maybe this version of him was actually worse…

Because this one didn’t want to scare me…

He wanted me willing. To comply. To need him.

And I didn’t know what scared me more – his rage or this… twisted tenderness.

The man beneath the monster.

The monster pretending to be a man?

Or the fact that I couldn’t tell the difference between my own emotions anymore either…