Better Monster (Taken #5)

She was never going to leave on her own. So the man who'd been watching her for seven months decided for her.

Cleo tells herself it'll get better.

She's been telling herself that for two years.

She's good at long sleeves in summer now. Good at patching drywall, at listening for his footsteps, at making herself small. It isn't a life. It's a thing she survives.

Beckett Hale is the quiet donor at the shelter. Big checks, hard eyes, a question prepared every Tuesday. He noticed the bruises before anyone else did. She told herself it was none of his business.

She was wrong.

She wakes up in his house — warm, clean, more beautiful than anywhere she's ever slept. Her cats are already there. Already fed. Already safe.

He didn't just take her.

He took everything she would have stayed for.

Beckett isn't gentle and he doesn't apologize. He bought her building four months ago. He knows how she takes her coffee, what her cats eat, which Saturday she spent teaching herself to patch a wall. And the man who put those bruises on her is in a hospital in another state, learning what happens to men who touch what Beckett has decided is his.

He's a monster.

He's just a better one than the last.

The terrible part isn't the locked door. It's that the cage is kinder than any free day she ever had.

She keeps waiting to want to run.

She keeps not running.

A dark captive romance with an obsessive, protective hero, captivity-as-comfort, and a dark-to-light happily-ever-after. He saw what she couldn't admit — then fixed it without asking. Reader discretion advised. Check warnings inside.