Chapter 16 Confession #2
I look down at my hands, the knuckles gone white around the cup. “What happens if I don’t? If I refuse the inheritance?”
Lane’s gaze sharpens. “Then it gets worse for us. But you can, Nora. You can leave here and try to never come back, but it has its claws in you. It might not have fully claimed you like it has us, but you won’t ever truly get away.
The nightmares. The strange urges. Feeling like your mind is playing tricks on you.
It’ll all be stuck with you unless you return. ”
I feel sick.
“To end it, the house wants a blood sacrifice, but it has to come willingly. Otherwise it’ll just keep finding ways to break you down.”
There is a silence, loud and throbbing, like the pulse behind my eyes.
“What do you mean, a blood sacrifice?”
Lane’s jaw sets, the muscle twitching. “Means what it sounds like. You offer yourself to it as owner, your blood breaks the curse. But if you choose to stay, then it continues on and on, like this.”
I want to laugh. “So kill myself or be trapped here, ruled by stone and plaster?”
He looks at me, and for the first time there is something like fear in his eyes. “Yes. You can save yourself by staying. By letting the house have you.”
My mouth goes dry. The tea is suddenly undrinkable. “But if I take the deal, everyone else is free?”
He shrugs again, but it’s a broken motion.
“That’s the hope. Maeve’s hope. But look, I don’t want to be free.
This is the only home I’ve ever known. I may be trapped here, but it’s mine, in a way.
I don’t want to leave.” He looks at me for a moment, and his voice shrinks, as if he’s nervous to say what’s next. “I don’t want to lose you, either.
I stare at the table, at the mug between my hands, at the heat bleeding out into the cold air. I want to scream at him, to call him a liar, a coward, a child. But instead I say, “Tell me about your father.”
Lane blinks, caught off guard. “What?”
“You said you had nowhere else to go. You never talk about your life before this place. Why?”
He looks down, the lines around his mouth deepening.
“There was no life before this. I was born here, remember? My father worked for your aunt. Groundskeeper. He was a good man at heart, but . . . couldn’t deal with the pain of being stuck here.
Drank himself sick every night, sometimes didn’t wake up for days.
My mom died when I was a kid, and after that, there was just me and the job.
Hemlock was the only place that kept us both alive, even if it was killing us slow. ”
There is a grief in Lane’s voice I have never heard before. I reach across the table, and this time, he takes my hand without hesitation. His grip is iron and shaking at the same time.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and this time I mean it for him, for his father, for all the ways the house has made us monsters.
He nods, but does not let go.
“You’re the only one who could break it,” he says. “But you can choose to leave here. Hope the house hasn’t claimed you fully and get out now. Never come back. But like I said, it will always call to you. No matter where you go, or what you do, it will have you dying to come back.”
I think of the house, the weight of it, the way every corridor curves back to the same center. I think of the hunger that lives here, and the way it never stops wanting.
I want to tell Lane that I can do it, that I am strong enough, that he is wrong about me. But the truth is, I am terrified.
I sit in the steam-thick dawn, my hand in his, and I let the fear have me. Just for a minute.
Outside, the frost blurs the edges of the world, and the only thing real is the pulse of Lane’s fingers around mine.
His thumb traces the inside of my wrist, the rough pad dragging along the line of vein, up toward the heel of my hand.
The difference is microscopic—just a shift of pressure, the smallest claim of territory—but my whole body riots in response.
The greenhouse is a jungle now, air so wet I could drink it, every surface glazed with sweat.
“I should have told you sooner,” Lane says, and his voice is so low it barely survives the trip from his mouth to my ear.
His hand is enormous, but it cups mine with the same delicacy he used on the seedlings.
I feel every scar, every patch of callus, the catalog of his years laid out in a topography of touch.
Something in me snaps. Not a break, but a letting go. If I’m to suffer from this decision, then I’m going to at least take what I want while I’m here.
I lean across the table, grab the back of Lane’s neck, and pull him toward me.
The kiss is not gentle. It is a collision, the meeting of two bodies that have been denied too long and have no interest in ceremony.
His mouth is hot, open, greedy; I taste earth and tea and the acid tang of something old and fermenting under his tongue.
Lane stands, pulling me up with him, and the stool goes over with a clatter. He backs me into the steel table, the edge digging into my hips, but I don’t care. I want bruises. I want proof.
His hands roam—up my arms, over my back, fisting in the hem of my sweater. He lifts it off in a single, brutal motion, then strips off his own t-shirt. I can see the sweat pearling on his chest, can see the fine tremble in the muscle as he holds himself back from simply devouring me.
“Tell me to stop,” he says.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I answer, and it is the first time I’ve ever heard myself sound truly alive.
He grins—a flash of wolf behind the beard—and drops to his knees. His hands make quick work of my jeans, button popped, zipper down, the fabric dragged off with such urgency that the pockets turn inside out and catch on my boots.
Lane yanks them off, tossing them somewhere into the undergrowth, and then he is at my thighs, spreading them with both hands, mouth hungry and unashamed.
The first contact of his tongue is enough to make me gasp.
The air is so thick with moisture that every nerve is awake, every patch of skin alive to the smallest change.
Lane’s mouth is perfect—rough and gentle, slow at first, then ramping up as I grab his hair and guide him to where I need him most.
I lose the ability to be quiet. The noises I make are animal, ugly, but Lane only works harder, as if he is determined to wring every last sound out of me.
When I come, it is not like the first time, or the second. It is bigger, messier, a flood that leaves me shaking against the table, legs useless and slack.
Lane stands, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and kisses me again. I taste myself on his tongue and bite his lower lip, just to see if he’ll flinch. He doesn’t. If anything, it spurs him on.
He fumbles with his own jeans, too impatient to bother with the button. His cock is heavy, flushed, leaking already. He strokes it once, twice, and then lines up, lifting me onto the table with a single effortless motion.
“Ready?” he asks, eyes dark and wild.
I wrap my legs around his waist, pull him closer in answer.
He enters me in one long, slow push, filling me completely. The shock of it, the stretch and burn, is exquisite. I dig my nails into his back, wanting to mark him, wanting something that will last longer than the hour.
Lane fucks me like it’s the only thing keeping him alive.
Each thrust is deep, measured, designed to undo me.
The table wobbles under us, seedlings shaking in their trays, water spilling onto the concrete.
He doesn’t talk at first, but now, with every snap of his hips, he mutters things into my neck, voice cracked and desperate.
“Wanted this since the day you walked in. Fuck, you’re so tight, Nora. Never gonna let you go. This is what you do to me. Make me crazy. Make me want to ruin you. This cunt is mine. So perfect for me. So perfect for this cock. I’m never going to stop fucking you. You were made for this.”
Each filthy promise lands somewhere between threat and prayer, and I answer them all with yes, yes, please.
He pulls out, turns me, bends me over the table. The metal is cold on my breasts, a shock that makes me clench around nothing. Lane’s hands grip my hips, spreading me wide, and he slides back in—harder, deeper, all the restraint gone.
He lasts longer than I expect, but when he comes, it’s with a guttural moan that rattles the glass overhead. I feel the heat of him inside me, a final possessive claim that leaves no room for doubt.
We stay like that for a minute—bodies tangled, the smell of sex and sweat and green things heavy in the air. Lane leans forward, pressing his forehead to my shoulder, breathing hard.
“You’re ours. Whether you want to be, or not. You are,” he says, and the concern in his voice almost breaks me. He means his, and Larkin’s. It’s supposed to be the three of us and neither of us question it.
We right ourselves, slowly, limbs reluctant to uncouple. I find my jeans, pull them on, and Lane shrugs into his sweat-damp shirt. He looks at me with something like wonder, as if unsure how this is real.
I step into his space, wrap my arms around his waist, and rest my cheek on his chest. His heart is pounding, wild and beautiful.
“This changes things,” I say.
He nods. “I hope so.”
We stay like that for a while, until the light shifts and the condensation on the glass begins to run in rivers, pooling at our feet.
I am not sure what happens next. But for now, we are together, our breath clouding the air, our bodies marked by the memory of each other.
Outside, the frost is melting. Inside, the greenhouse is quiet, waiting for whatever I decide to do.
Would a life of passion with Lane and Larkin really be so bad? Even if we’re bound here? We’d be bound together.
I breathe in Lane’s scent.
I have never felt more claimed, or more free.