#previously:

His limbs were uncoordinated, his eyes unfocused on his surroundings. Through some miracle of muscle memory, he ended up in his study. The smell of ink and leather from the numerous books was grounding. 

“What the fuck am I doing,” he muttered quietly. 

He was entirely out of his depth. He was a bounty hunter! It wasn’t exactly a job that required being the most in touch with your emotions, meaning that it attracted asshole loners like himself! He didn’t know how to deal with…

With whatever the fuck that had been. 

What had that been? 

She had been offering herself to him. That much was clear. What he didn’t understand was why. She had been so skittish the day before, flinching away and seeming to lose herself in memories when he even touched her leg.

The image of the dried blood on her inner thighs flashed behind his eyelids.

He breathed slowly and deliberately, reminding himself that he couldn’t go find Emmett Harding and punch him in the face. Not without it causing far more trouble than it was worth. 

Besides, Harding might have been the vampire’s last ‘owner’, but he wasn’t her only one. If Tobias was going to punch all of them in the face, he would have a hell of a job tracking them all down first.

Fuck.

Tobias grabbed his journal and pen. If he was going to figure this out, he needed to write things down. 

He’d already written up all that had happened on the job, up to and including how the vampire had saved him after Harding’s hired goons wounded him. He started jotting down his notes of the vampire’s behavior since then, using his personal shorthand for privacy. 

He wrote down everything he’d noticed, handwriting nearly unreadable as his hands continued to shake. He started with the vampire’s appearance, then her injuries, both old and new. He wrote down how she’d been afraid to have him take the muzzle off, and how she’d expected him to pull her fangs when he finally did. 

Could this attempt to throw herself at him something similar?

He frowned down at the paper. He let his thoughts flow onto the page with the ink. 

She had been trained, somehow, to act as a pet. He didn’t know what they were, but she had been taught some kind of rules for how she was supposed to act. She had set ideas for what she needed to do and what punishments would come with certain actions.

Something she had done would have merited her fangs being pulled, with her former owners. Maybe it was that she had drunk his blood? He’d been a little more focused on how she had saved his life in the process, but he doubted that would have been allowed. She’d also taken off the muzzle to do it, and put it back on afterwards. 

Whatever the reason, she had expected him to pull her fangs. Maybe this… attempt at seduction, for lack of a better description, was something similar?

He re-read what he’d written, trying to make sense of it all. 

She had little mannerisms he didn’t understand.Things like offering her hands for him to bind, kneeling and making herself vulnerable when she thought she’d done something wrong, offering up her fangs for him to pull. 

It was like she was following a script, written out by whoever had hurt her again and again and again. She had things linked in her mind as cause and effect. If she acted out, she got punished. If she behaved, she got… less harsh treatment, he supposed? She played one part, and expected him to play another.

The problem was, Tobias wasn’t reading from the same script. It was clear how confused she was by his actions, by what he considered to be basic human decency, that she was expecting something entirely different.

Something in their interactions had made her think she needed to do… that. Made her think that she was required to offer herself up to him as payment. The idea was horrific. Could she really have been subjected to such horrors for so long that it was what she considered normal?

It was somehow still a better option than thinking that she honestly expected him to— 

Just thinking about it too hard was making him feel nauseated. The idea that he would take advantage of someone so injured and vulnerable, so young? 

Did she honestly think he was that kind of man?

He shook his head. This wasn’t about him.  

He put away the pen and closed his journal. No matter what the reason was, he had a person who expected horrific things to happen to them. Who was willing to offer up her body as payment, as a sacrifice to appease him. 

Which meant it was now his responsibility to explain that he didn’t want that. He had to make her understand that she didn’t need to do such things with him.

It suddenly occurred to him that he’d left her alone. He’d left the traumatized, frightened vampire alone after reacting badly to something she’d done. 

She was probably terrified out of her mind. 

“Fuck,” he said, quietly but with feeling. 

He had to fix this.

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