CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT #3
“You went where you shouldn’t have without warning me,” Collin bit out. “It was the best I could come up with for why you were where you weren’t supposed to be.”
“So being your pet wasn’t enough?” I barked, stepping toward him. “Now I have to be your spy?”
“I never called you my pet,” Collin gritted, his eyes flashing. His anger tangled with mine, electrifying the air between us. “It would be so much easier if that’s all you were.”
“What does that even mean?” When he didn’t answer, I snapped. “Fine, don’t tell me. I might as well be your pet. Mate, pet, what’s the difference?”
“Is that what you want to be to me?” Collin asked, stalking toward me.
“None of this is what I want. I’m a vessel that has to be subservient to you.”
He towered over me, and my pulse grew louder in my ears. “I have never asked you to be subservient, Emeline. It would be nice, however, if you could just try to follow their rules. So I wouldn’t have to worry all the damn time.”
“You act like they’re different things. Their rules make me your property.” My tether on everything I shoved down snapped completely.
I darted from the room into my soon-to-be quarters, slamming the bathroom door behind me.
“Emeline,” Collin called. I snatched my bag off the vanity. “I just meant we could make this pleasant for both of us. This mating doesn’t have to be like this. I understand this isn’t what you want, but could you just stop fighting me and trust me?”
Trust what you see, not what they say. I took a steadying breath. I saw a man who murdered Defects and somehow asked me to forgive and trust him without telling me anything.
I reentered my quarters to find Collin to the right of the bed, his hands fisted at his sides.
I took him in, his shirt slightly unbuttoned, exposing the top of his sculpted, tanned chest. The windows behind him, the night sky surrounding him as if it belonged to him.
My traitorous heart raced at the sight. He was a vision.
I understood why I had gotten swept away. Collin was everything the Elite held sacred. He truly was beautiful, and if beauty was all that mattered, he would be right. I could envision it. It might even be more than pleasant.
I thrust my hand into my bag, finding the loose supplements. I withdrew a fistful, walking into Collin’s magnetic pull.
Maybe I was digging my own grave, solidifying my demise. Maybe, like all the art they destroyed, I had revealed too much of the things they tried to keep hidden. But I knew one thing: I had felt more alive beneath than I ever had above. Maybe I was okay burying myself alive.
“Here, my spying,” I said, my heart in my throat as I held out my hand. Collin’s brows knitted together as he reached out. A shiver wrecked me as his hand brushed against mine.
I dumped the supplements into his palm. His eyes flew from the supplements to me.
“Does anyone else know you’re not taking these?” Collin asked, his sapphire eyes wide.
“Does it matter?”
“Does anyone else know?” Collin demanded, closing the space between us as he bore down on me, his warm breath caressing my face.
“Strange that now that I stopped taking them, I’m optimal.”
“It isn’t pleasant what happens to those who don’t follow the Illum.”
“You mean don’t follow you,” I spat, our breath mixing.
My heart slammed into my ribs. Something twisted deep in my core, but I ignored it.
“You know what’s unpleasant? Being drugged into a shell of yourself against your will.
” I shot past him, ripping away from his magnetic field as I stormed toward the living area.
I heard his footsteps not far behind me.
“I am doing what’s best,” Collin growled, that polished exterior cracking as I heard the supplements scatter across the floor. I spun to face him.
“The best for who, Collin?” I yelled back, marching up to him and poking his massive chest. “The best for you? The best for the people in the damn clouds? What about the people down there? What about me?”
“What about you?” Collin bit out, grabbing my hand from where, I hadn’t realized, I was touching him, wild storms raging in his eyes. “Tell me, what’s best for you, Emeline?”
I froze as his eyes dipped to my lips. My pulse skittered across my skin, leaving a wildfire in its wake beneath his gaze. He stepped closer until his muscular chest grazed mine. I should step away from him. I shouldn’t want him near me.
My feet remained rooted.
“I—” I began breathlessly as he dragged his eyes back to mine. I couldn’t step out of that pull of his.
“You,” Collin murmured, lowering his face until the tip of his nose grazed mine. “You are unlike anything I have ever known.” His voice was a deep whisper. “You’re maddening, consuming, unwilling to follow any of their rules. I have a role to play and yet I spend my time thinking about you.”
If I leaned forward an inch, our lips would meet. His heart thundered against my chest, as untamed as his eyes.
His eyes held mine, a need there I had never seen.
“Thinking about how to make sure I’m obedient?” I rasped.
His lips found my ear. “You have only ever listened once. Rule Ten.” He breathed in the scent of my hair, and I shuddered, warmth pooling traitorously low. The feel of his lips in the Sphere slammed into me.
Beneath the storm that raged through my veins, I remembered.
Rule Ten: You are not permitted under any circumstances to tell your Mate no regarding public appearances, attire, or desires. If your Mate asks, you are to oblige him.
“Would you say no to me this time, Emeline?” Collin asked, dragging his mouth away from my ear until it hovered above mine.
His eyes searched me desperately. Looking for something.
“If I told you to kiss me,” he said, his lips brushing against mine with each word.
The touch featherlight, a mere whisper of what could happen.
“Knowing every terrible thing I am capable of. Would you tell me no?”
I couldn’t breathe around how his eyes held mine. My core tightened. I would tell him no. I didn’t want this. An Illum.
But my body betrayed me as his arm swept behind my lower back, pressing me against him, and I welcomed it. Arched into him. My hips flush against his, my hands finding his chest, his heart thundering beneath my touch. I told myself it was to push him away.
“Tell me no,” Collin breathed, his lips lingered before mine. Was he begging?
My eyes fluttered closed, my breaths too shallow. “I can’t.”
Collin went unnaturally still. “Can’t, or you don’t want to?”
I leaned in.
“Oh,” a small voice squeaked. I whipped my head to find Nora in a cream robe behind Collin with her cake stand.
I ripped away from him as reality found me.
“I want a Pod now.” I felt as if my body were on fire. I covered my searing lips.
“Of course,” she muttered, her eyes flying between us once more before she rushed to her room.
Collin stared at me like he had never truly seen me.
I watched as he re-formed that polished exterior, the storms in his sapphire pools winking out.
He pulled away to fetch his empty glass and refilled it from the bottle on the shelf.
Collin downed the liquid before filling the glass again. He stalked over to me.
“The other rules should be followed. I am a member of the Illum, and you are my Mate,” Collin told me, thrusting the glass into my trembling hand. “Therefore, you have to adhere to their rules.”
“And if I don’t?” I whispered. Those sapphire eyes gutted at my question.
“The consequences won’t be pleasant.” Collin spoke quietly, stepping away again, his hands in fists. The space between us grew. “Nora will secure you a Pod. The ball is in two weeks. I shall see you then. Good night.”
“What of the public appearances?” I asked, my chest empty as something that resembled disappointment crept in.
Collin halted. “There’s no need. You can just be my pet at the ball.”
My spine went rigid at the way he said pet. The knot in my throat choked me. I downed the drink to burn it away. It didn’t work.
Without another word, he left, as if he couldn’t escape me quickly enough.
Alone, I stared at the painting above Collin’s heating hearth once again.
What made the woman walk away? I hated that I would never know.
At the man’s feet something grew—maybe a flower, bloodred as if his agony had given it life.
The woman walked away all the same. But a tendril of her blond hair flowed behind her, a connection to the man and his perpetual sorrow.
As if even in leaving him she remained tied to him. Forever.