Chapter 59 Jasmine
There’s a ritualistic calm that comes with dressing up. From cleansing every inch of skin to the final sweep of plum lip stain, from perfectly filed nails to slipping on heels as sharp as they are high. Every choice I make is a statement.
Especially the dress.
Weeks ago, while preparing for something very different with my four bonds, Kace and I rummaged through the mound of clothes and found the long ivory box wrapped with velvet bows.
We peeked inside, and I dismissed it immediately. But now it’s, as the French might say, the pièce de resistance.
Whilst getting ready at Kacey’s, Sai sent me regular messages. Cute and sweet, dotted with a little begging, ending with updates of Kane’s death glare since Amon joined them. Then Julien texted to say both Sai and Kane had to be removed for Amon’s safety. Poor guy.
The final text was from Ezekial a few hours ago, letting me know he’d stayed and would wait until I was ready.
Now, as evening settles in, I’ve just texted Zeek when a knock sounds at the door. I smile, tugging on a long leather jacket that hides everything but my bare calves and heels.
I open the door with a shadow, and when Ezekial sees me, even with the jacket, he curses under his breath.
“You don’t even know what’s underneath?” I smirk.
“That makes it worse,” he murmurs, holding out his hand for me to take. When I do, he presses a gentle kiss to my knuckles, then flits.
The second we slip out of the shadows, he says low in my ear, “I’ll go get changed.” His lips brush my cheek, but in his rush the mental wall he’d created slips. “Restrain yourselves.”
He’s gone in a blink and I smile, smug.
The living room stares back at me, the room where, not so long ago, Kane told me they would be my enforcers, and a bloodied bag of kneecaps once sat on the table.
Now, that very table is laid out beautifully. It gleams beneath black and chrome dishes, intricate silver candelabras with red candles, and a bottle of wine with waiting glasses.
There’s even music, soft piano, classical and wordless. And the smell, something rich and earthy that has my mouth watering. I follow it to the kitchen, stopping in the doorway at the sight that greets me.
With a towel slung over one shoulder, sleeves pushed up to reveal those strong, dark forearms, Julien kneads something as I step—
“Mon ame, if you come any closer, the food will not be finished.” He maintains his steady movement, never looking back.
“Anything I can do to help, chef?”
I smile when he stops kneading, tilting his head back with a quiet laugh edged with a groan. I’d purposely tried my practised French accent for the chef.
He shakes his head, before his hands continue with renewed vigour. “You could taste the wine for me. It’s on the table.”
I’ve never seen a man cook from scratch, and I find my gaze drifting to Julien’s capable hands, the veins in his forearms, his broad shoulders, how his shirt strains against the muscles…
“Mon ame, please.” He whispers something in French that sounds like a curse. “You’re a distraction.”
“You haven’t even seen me,” I tease, low and sweet.
“I can feel you, that alone undoes me,” he says without turning. “Be merciful… taste the wine.”
Although provoking my calm and charming Julien is dangerously fun, I don’t want to ruin this. Not when I can see how much effort they’ve put into everything already.
With one last look at those beautiful hands, I head back to the dining room.
I take off the jacket, placing it over the back of a chair before pouring a glass of wine, some French red with a name I can’t pronounce but try under my breath—Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
I don’t often drink wine, always finding it too dry or too sweet.
But after one sip, I hum in appreciation.
Seems they’ve got good taste in this too.
The room is quiet save for the soft music and the rhythmic tap of my heels as I walk. Glass cradled in my hand, I pause in front of the large fireplace, drawn to the canvas hung above it.
A splatter of abstract lines on white, clearly Sai’s work, one I remember admiring the first time I saw it.
At a brief glance, it’s a chaos of blacks, blues, reds and greys. But the longer I look, the more a subtle pattern reveals. My eyes narrow, head tilting as I try to decipher it—
“Fuck.”
The mental barrier Ezekial had placed—back when I revealed I could hear them—is gone.
I smirk smugly into my glass, pretending I don’t hear the words meant only for the others. I keep studying the lines of paint, the way the blur of colours bleed into a violent, violet centre.
“It’s barely a scrap of silk, Red.”
I smile at the familiar taunt wrapped in a gritty rasp. It’s a distant echo from The Inferno, when he used to mock my little dresses.
“I used to hate that nickname,” I murmur, back facing him as I run the rim of the glass over my bottom lip.
Power crackles behind me, sparks and shadows skimming my spine as he moves closer, voice lower. “And now?”
I take another slow sip, letting the wine linger on my tongue rather than answer.
Then I feel them all, and I swallow.
Every gaze lands like a touch. Warm. Hot. Cold. Electric. Dragging over my skin with an intense thoroughness yet reverence that steals my breath.
But I don’t turn around. Not yet.
Sai’s right about the fabric of the dress.
Silk, a deep maroon and a whisper of plum, just a shade or two darker than my hair and eyes with thin, delicate straps that tie behind my neck.
My favourite feature is the silver chain that drapes along my spine like spider’s silk, dripping with dark gems that cross at the centre, framing my fully exposed altered rune.
The fabric flows like liquid, moulding to all the right places until it ends an inch above the floor showing a false of black stilettos.
I feel their gazes all over me, tiny pinpricks of awareness soaking in everything. Somehow, the silence seems to sharpen, the building tension pulling taut. Which is my cue.
Slowly, I turn, sweeping my hair to one side, letting it fall over my shoulder, sleek and straight.
The strands brush just below my breasts, a thin veil of cover, because the front of this dress is as revealing as the back.
With a neckline plunging to my sternum and a slit climbing nearly to my hip, one slip, one tear in the wrong place, and the dress would fall apart.
Tonight, mercy is the last thing on my mind.
Julien breathes out slowly, like exhaling too hard might break something. His eyes sweep over me with an intensity that burns, trailing down and back up like he’s memorising every exposed inch.
Ezekial mutters something under his breath, a curse or maybe a prayer. His brows draw together, jaw tight, fingers clenched in fists.
Sai doesn’t move, but he smirks. The corner of his mouth lifts like I’ve started something he’s happy to finish.
Kane is the last to react, or to stop reacting, becoming still as stone except for his eyes, which trace every inch, lingering where the silk splits on my thigh.
I tap a painted nail—the same deep red of the dress—against the rim of my glass, trying to remain composed, because while I was preparing my armour, so were they.
They’re all wearing beautifully tailored suits. Dark. Devastating. Every inch designed for them. Each in their signature colour, like they’d planned it, like they knew I’d try to take control tonight.
Kane’s is all in black, of course, but softened.
The sides of his hair slicked back, the rest falling loose over his forehead in inky strands I want to push back.
His shirt is unbuttoned only once, just enough to tease a slip of smooth caramel skin, and a glimpse of the dark marking I know traces lower.
Julien’s sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, his dark red shirt stretched over those forearms I’ve just been fantasising about.
His black waistcoat hugs his chest, every steady, controlled breath making the fabric strain.
Then he starts to unbutton it. One button.
Then another. Slow and measured. Making my lips part with no sound until I have to look away.
Ezekial’s hair is pushed back by his own hand, silver streaks tangled through the dark like starlight caught in shadows.
His broad shoulders are doing unspeakable things to that dark grey shirt—tight in all the right places.
Someone really should tell him shirts aren’t supposed to fit like that. Or not.
Sai’s dark blue shirt is barely fastened with only a handful of buttons keeping it together, exposing the intense glowing marks across his pale chest. He wears a dark suit jacket, but my attention snags on something else… something around his throat.
A thick leather band collars his neck, and at the centre, a small silver disk hangs with indecipherable scrawl.
I swallow another sip of wine. Whatever game I thought I was playing… they’ve just raised the stakes.
I pull myself together with a small, sweet smile. “I really like this dress, Julien.”
“So do I,” Sai mutters, eyes trailing over my exposed leg.
“I’m glad, mon ame.” Julien pulls out a chair at the head of the table, tilting his chin to it. “Please.”
I take a sip of wine, before stepping towards them. I add a deliberate sway to my hips, which has their mental thoughts slipping through.
“You’ve fucked us, Julien,” Sai hisses, but they’re all still watching me.
“No one think anything. Just…” Ezekial gritted words fall as I walk past, his warmth spiking into heat.
“Do not look at the slit. Do not look at the—” then past Sai, the loud hum of his markings cutting off his words.
“The chain down her back…” Julien murmurs, his sentence ends in a shredded exhale as I slip by.
When my hand touches the table, the stone shimmers under my touch, accompanied by Sai’s mutter: “Do not imagine her on the table. Do not—”
“Stop.” Kane’s voice cuts in. Then. “Why would you buy her that?”