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Monsters were not normal.
And Raaf was okay with that.
But what he was absolutely not okay about was the way his Sara made him feel normal in spite of being one.
It had been a piece of cake to forge her signature on the necessary paperwork, and by mailing it with a gift to the tune of thousands of dollars, Ivy Creek High's principal had been more than happy to accommodate what should have been an impossible transfer request.
Although his actions had been partly motivated by his own desire to see her graduate high school with the rest of her class, which he knew she rightly deserved, a more compelling reason behind his decision was to see if his Sara would finally be tempted to ask for help.
One of the earliest lessons he had learned in life was how dangerous it was to lie to one's self. He had seen what such lies had done to the woman he once believed was his mother and the blind fools that had followed her. He had sworn to himself never to follow in their footsteps, and that was probably why he was having such difficulty believing that his Sara was not too good to be true, and especially for one like him.
Today was her first day going back to class, and it meant hours of ample opportunity to alert someone about her situation. Since he had not restricted her access to the Internet in any way, she would have been able to send an SOS to anyone or even text 911.
But instead of doing any of those things, she had simply attended her classes like nothing was out of the ordinary. Melted into his arms the moment he touched her. Had lunch with him under the sun like they were merely out sailing for a date.
It all felt too fucking normal, and that was why it had also felt too fucking wrong.
In the first few years that followed the cult's dismantlement, Raaf had felt hapless as he witnessed those he knew from Ypeíko start dying one by one like shooting targets falling off a shelf.
These were kids he had grown up with, and when he had gotten a little older, he had done his best to protect. Raaf had thought he was saving his friends by bringing Ypeíko down, but in the first year alone he had found himself attending the funerals of six of his friends. Two boys and four girls, all of them struggling to find a place for themselves in the new world they had been shoved to. All of them made to feel that they would never fit in, and so they had decided to kill themselves to end their misery.
By the second year, fourteen more of his friends had died. Four-fucking-teen. Over a dozen lives that could have been saved, if the people around them had not made them feel that they needed to be normal in order to be loved.
The world had made all of them believe that there could be no redemption for monsters who weren't able to excise the darkness out of them, and for a very long time, Raaf had believed this, too. He had believed there always had to be a choice...until her.
His Sara now had spent days in his possession, and she had seen both the man and the monster in him. His Sara, more than anyone else, had the right to demand that he destroy the monster inside him. But she never had. Even though she had never lived in his kind of darkness, his Sara, simply by being herself, debunked everything he once thought was true—-
And in the process, it had left Raaf tasting fear and uncertainty for the first time in years. She had, for better or for worse, made the monster feel human again, and it was precisely because of that he found himself testing her at every turn.
Time and time again, he would show her more of his darkness, and with each instance, hope and despair would battle within him as he waited for her to hate him for good...but she never did.
Time and time again, he would tempt her with a chance to escape, but she never did.
His Sara, without even trying, was pushing him to believe they could have a future, and as if that was not bad enough...
His remote access to her laptop allowed him to watch everything she was doing without leaving his seat, and right now, instead of listening to her history professor's admittedly dull-sounding lecture, she was typing out a list of terms on her notepad that had nothing to do with any of her classes.
Cold storage for what?
Halving - what?
Exchange - what? when? who?
She would never have any reason to write such things if she hadn't been eavesdropping on his calls, and since he could easily see why such words had obviously led her to the wrong conclusions...
Why the fuck was she still with him?
It really was a blessing he had not kidnapped her for her brains because it was becoming increasingly apparent his Sara had none to speak of. She should have run for the fucking woods the moment she had her suspicions, but here she was in front of him, obediently logging out of Zoom when her last class ended, and not once had she tried to tell anyone she had been kidnapped.
School might be over, but it was not too late to have her learn the most important lesson of all. And since example was supposedly the best teacher in life...
"Are you all done with classes, my dove?"
The eyes were supposedly windows to a person's soul, but where Sara was concerned, her eyes were her soul, and Raaf did not know whether to be amused or worried at how her eyes were telling him more than what her meek little nod indicated.
How does he know I'm done with classes?
Is he spying on me again?
But how is he doing it?
He thought about it for a second. Offended, he decided in the end. The questions he read in her Bambi eyes absolutely offended him because it showed how little appreciation she had of his skills. He had learned about her entire life with just a few clicks of his mouse, and he also knew everything there was to know about every person who worked in and went to her high school, in case the need to twist a couple of arms ever arose. Sara knew who he fucking was. What his background was. But here his adorably cute and frighteningly stupid idiot of a woman was, all too obviously wondering how it was that he had known the exact moment the last of her classes had ended?
As Raaf pinched the bridge of his nose, he heard Sara quickly rise to her feet. "Are you alright?"
No, he thought. How the fuck could a monster like him be al-fucking-right when a young innocent girl like her was so easily driving him crazy?
She stepped closer towards him, so much like a deer showing concern for the big, bad cat that planned to eat it whole, and the thought made it harder for him not to smile.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
How was it that his composure had never failed him whenever his life was on the line, and yet where his Sara was concerned it had become anything but reliable?
"Raaf?"
She had finally found the courage to approach him, and he even saw the way her hands were clenching and unclenching as if she was fighting against the urge to reach for him.
It was amusing as hell, and while such a thing would normally be enough to have him fuck her then and there, he still did have a lesson to teach her, and so Raaf heard himself say, "It's my work..."
His Sara paled and gulped, but to her credit, she somehow managed to put her fears aside in order to respond with what did seem like real-enough sympathy. "Is there something that troubles you?"
"Just the usual. Investment trust, profit margins..."
"I see."
He could practically see his Sara making air quotations in her head as she repeated his words to herself, and he was almost amused. Almost being the operative word, but if push came to shove, what he really was would be exasperated. And still offended as hell.
"I suddenly have an idea, my dove." He rose to his feet and took her hand, saying, "Perhaps I need a pair of fresh eyes—-" He pretended not to hear her squeak as he tugged her close. "Perhaps you can help me figure out what's wrong?"
"Uh..."
He could feel her literally dragging her feet, but since he was a lot stronger than her, she still ultimately found herself following him as they descended the steps.
"I'd like your opinion about cold storage." She crashed into his back at the words, and he clenched his jaw to keep himself from smirking.
"Your, um, work...has need for cold storage?"
"My work would be in danger without it."
"Oh..."
She sounded as if she was close to tears, and he needed just one extra moment to compose himself yet again before he could trust himself to turn around.
Ah, fuck.
She really did look like she was about to cry, and the monster in him liked it. Actually, the monster in him liked it very much, and since the things one liked should be made to last...
"Why do you look like you're the one having work trouble instead, my dove?"
"It's, um, nothing."
"Is it school? Did something happen?"
"No."
"Is it your father?"
She shook her head.
"Then..." His brows met in a frown. "Is it because I want to show you my work?" He took her hand, which turned out to be icy cold. "I thought you'd be pleased I'm sharing another part of my life with you." As soon as the words were out, he realized that he might be laying it a little too thick, but when his gaze went back to hers, it was to see how his Sara's eyes were now filled with guilt.
"Oh, Raaf, I'm sorry. Of course I'm pleased."
Maybe she did need to be kidnapped, if only to save her from other monsters...even if no one could be as bad as him.
"I do want to be know more about you, but it's just—-"
He pressed a finger over her lips, and her eyes widened yet again, but this time in complete and utter fascination. So much fascination that he might never tell her he had also stumbled across a bucket list she had written when she was sixteen. In said list, his Sara had enumerated the things she wanted her "badass hero" to do to her, and of course one of those was this.
His finger on her lips, because apparently her fictional kidnappers had a thing for making their women shut up with such a technique. Personally, he would have preferred to stuff her mouth with his cock, but then again, he was a monster that was real, and they were not.
In any case, it was time to teach her that lesson, and so he slowly lifted his finger off her lips and whispered in his best killer voice, "Not one more word, my dove, until I show you my cold storage."
Her face went white as a ghost, and she swallowed so many times that he stopped counting after eleven. But in the end, his beautiful good girl whispered back in her best captive voice, "Okay."
He took her hand and led her down, and once they reached his office, he invited her in, and she entered without hesitation.
"Take a seat, my dove." He let go of her hand to pull a chair out for her, and as he walked away, he could feel her eyes following his every move. Once he was behind his desk, he made a show of slowly pulling his drawer open, and he could practically hear her heart start to race and her mind start to spiral.
"The only reason I'm asking you this is because I want your honest opinion," he said softly. "I know you haven't any idea how cold storage works, but you don't need to stress yourself out over it. Alright?"
Her face told him no. She was not alright. She was, in fact, already stressing over it, and yet in the end she still nodded.
"Good girl."
She looked like she was about to cry again.
"And now, I'll explain to you how it works. Alright?"
He could see she clearly wanted to say yes, but then his Sara suddenly burst to her feet and said jerkily, "I'm sorry." And then she began to pace. "You said you want me to be honest, so...okay. I'll be honest. Neither of us are angels, and obviously, there are things that we both like that aren't...mainstream."
He lowered his head, purely as a preventive measure because it was clear to him by now that fate had sent Sara Perez to fuck with his composure. He was her kidnapper, and she his captive, and apparently what they had could be simply defined as not...mainstream? Had his Sara finally started getting the knack of millennial English or was it a latent talent that only showed up when she was distressed?
Either way, it was funny as fuck.
"But there needs to be a...limit. Like, like a safe word—-"
And it kept getting funnier because someone was clearly thinking he could be as nice as Christian Grey.
"But it's more like a safe...line? And one that we should never willingly cross because it was bad?"
Sara finally stopped pacing, and her gaze turned to him in desperate appeal.
"You understand, right? Because I don't think I can ever...if there's no good reason for you to...it would just..."
Her words stumbled to a stop when she saw him reach for something inside the drawer, and when he started to take the cold storage out—-
"Oh...em...gee..."
And so he was right, after all. She talked like her age when she was nervous, and right now it was just too fucking much.
He started to laugh, and Sara stopped freaking out.
He tossed the device on the desk, and Sara's jaw dropped.
"A cold storage, ye dove of little faith," he told her silkily, "is an offline wallet for cryptocurrency tokens."
"Oh."
"It is not a means for me to hide murdered bodies," he murmured, "just like halving and exchange have nothing to do with said dead bodies." He counted the seconds after this, and he made it to three before his Sara finally connected the dots.
"You read what I wrote on my laptop?"
"I'm your kidnapper," he reminded her dryly. "And you're actually surprised I know what you're doing with a laptop I bought?"
"Oh. Um. Right."
And then she crashed to her knees without warning.
"Fuck!" Raaf leapt over his desk and was next to her on the floor in a flash. "I'm sorry," he gritted out. "I went too far. I've never even pranked anyone before, and I obviously fucking suck—-" He stopped speaking when he saw a smile wobble on Sara's lips.
"I'm fine," she assured him shakily. "It just finally hit me that you didn't do any awfully unforgivable thing—-"
"What if I had?" He had only meant to tease her, but the way she suddenly sobered up made his chest tighten.
"With hindsight, I realize now how stupid I was to jump to conclusions."
"You're brainless about a lot of things," he acknowledged.
Sara started choking.
"But not about suspecting me, considering my background—-"
"No, Raaf." She took his hand. "No."
He wanted to believe her.
"What happened to you," she said shakily, "is why you would never do anything awfully unforgivable."
"And yet I kidnapped you."
Such words were usually enough for her to take the bait, but this time—-
Sara's big, brown eyes remained steady on him.
"Not mainstream," she said with another wobbly smile, "but not awfully unforgivable."
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
He had never really believed her when she told him she might start falling in love with him, but now?
"I'm going to give you twenty minutes—-"
Her smile faded.
"To have a shower and put on the sluttiest lingerie you can find—-"
Because she was now letting out that part-bovine squeak of hers, a sound which should have turned him off but instead turned him on like his cock was about to go off like a fucking firecracker.
"And after that, you'll get into your bed like my obedient little dove."
Her lips parted.
"You'll wait for me until you can't wait any longer, and you'll wait and wait until you'll fall asleep. And once that happens..."
A whimper escaped her, and it almost had him pushing her down to the floor so she would keep fucking whimpering.
"Your kidnapper will do something...not mainstream."
She was out of the room in the next second, his Sara playing her role of captive to the hilt. And as he got back up to his feet, he was already thinking of ways to fuck her up because that was how they both wanted it. But he would do it gradually, of course. Give her time to know the worst parts of him one fucking mess at a time. It was a good plan, and he had every intention of sticking to it...until that call.
A call that only lasted for two minutes, but it destroyed his entire timetable for good and forced him to take the most drastic of detours.
He had planned to strategically alternate between being her dream and nightmare, but because of that call...