Chapter 11
Eleven
I wake to gold light bleeding through the white marble.
Not dawn. There is no dawn in the House of Ruin. Just that endless silver twilight. But the marble walls are veined with gold now, glowing faintly in the darkness.
Croesus.
I sit up slowly, heart already racing. I feel him, closer than he's been in days. Not just watching from a distance. Here. In the House of Ruin. In Seraph's territory.
The gold veining pulses brighter, and then he's stepping through the mirror like it's water instead of glass. One moment the surface is solid, the next it's rippling around him, and then he's standing at the foot of the massive bed, turned toward me with those molten gold eyes.
He looks wrecked.
His suit is rumpled, which is unusual for Croesus, who's usually pristine. His black hair with its gold veining is disheveled like he's been running his hands through it. And his expression... God, his expression is raw. Desperate. Vulnerable in a way I've never seen him.
"Raven," he breathes, and just my name in his voice makes my chest ache.
"You can't be here." I pull the silk sheets up to my chest even though I'm wearing the modest nightgown I'd gotten when I first arrived. "If Seraph finds you—"
"I don't care." He moves closer, sits on the edge of the bed. Not touching me. Not yet. "I can't stay away. The binding won't let me."
Through our connection, I feel the truth of it. How our binding pulls at him constantly, making him aware of me every second. Making distance physical pain. He's been trying to give me space, trying to respect that I'm serving Seraph's house now.
But he's failing.
"I'm sorry," I whisper.
"Don't." His hand finally touches my cheek, and the contact makes us both inhale sharply. The binding flares, gold and warm and familiar. "Don't apologize for surviving. For learning. For doing what you have to do."
"But you're hurting."
"I'm always hurting." His thumb brushes across my cheekbone. "That's what greed is. Constant hunger. Constant need. Never satisfied. Never enough." His eyes meet mine. "But with you, it's different. With you, the hunger has a name. A face. A purpose."
"We shouldn't—"
"Let me have this." His voice drops. "Let me have tonight. Let me touch you. Remember what it feels like to not be separated by houses and politics and the fact that another angel is teaching you things I should have taught you."
The jealousy in his voice is raw. Real. And I feel it echoing, his need to reconnect. To reclaim. To prove that what we have is real despite the distance, despite Seraph, despite everything.
I should send him away. Should tell him this is too dangerous, that Seraph will know, and we can't risk it.
But I don't want to.
I miss him. Miss this. Miss the certainty of his presence and how our connection used to feel simple instead of complicated.
"Okay," I say quietly. "Tonight. Just tonight."
The relief that floods through him is overwhelming. He leans forward, presses his forehead to mine. "Thank you."
Then he's kissing me.
It's gentle at first. Tender. An apology and a question and a plea all at once. His lips are warm against mine, not cool like Seraph's, but body-temperature, human-warm despite being an angel. Familiar. Safe.
I kiss him back, hands coming up to frame his face. Let myself sink into it. Into him. Into the connection we've built over months of fighting and fucking and slowly, impossibly, falling for each other.
His hands slide to my waist, pulling me closer. The sheets fall away, and then I'm pressed against him, feeling the solid warmth of him through the thin fabric of my nightgown.
"I've missed you," he murmurs against my mouth. "Missed this. Missed touching you without feeling like I'm stealing you from someone else."
"You're not stealing me. I'm yours." The words should feel true. They used to feel true. "The binding—"
"Is permanent. I know." He pulls back just enough to look at me. "But you're in his house. Under his protection. Learning from him. I feel you responding to him in ways you never responded to me."
The accusation isn't angry. Just... sad. Resigned.
"It's not the same," I start to say.
"Make love to me," I whisper instead, needing to stop thinking. To stop comparing. To just feel what I used to feel. "Please."
He doesn't need to be asked twice.
His hands slide under my nightgown, lifting it up and over my head. The cool air of the chamber raises goosebumps on my skin, but his hands are warm as they map familiar territory. My ribs. My breasts. The curve of my waist.
He's touched me like this dozens of times. Knows exactly what I like. Exactly how to make me respond.
"You're beautiful," he breathes. "So fucking beautiful. I think about this constantly. About you."
His mouth closes over my nipple, and I arch into the sensation, my fingers threading through his hair—
The door opens.
We both freeze.
Seraph stands in the doorway, backlit by that endless silver light from the corridor.
His platinum hair is slightly damp, like he's just bathed.
He's wearing a robe of white silk, loosely tied, and his expression is.
.. unreadable. Those mirror eyes reflect us back at ourselves, me half-naked on the bed, Croesus's mouth still hovering over my breast.
"Well," Seraph says, his voice perfectly pleasant. "I didn't expect visitors tonight."
Croesus pulls back slowly, deliberately placing himself between me and the door. Through our binding, I feel his protectiveness flare, his possessiveness, his refusal to back down even in another angel's territory.
"Seraph." His voice is cold. "This doesn't concern you."
"Doesn't it?" Seraph steps into the room, and the door swings shut behind him with a soft click. "This is my bedchamber. She's sleeping in my bed. In my house." He begins untying his robe with unhurried movements. "I think that makes it very much my concern."
"What are you doing?" I ask, pulling the sheet up to cover myself.
"Preparing for bed." He lets the robe fall open, revealing the perfect planes of his chest, the sculpted lines of muscle that shouldn't exist on something that looks so ethereal. "It's late. I'm tired. And this is where I sleep."
I bite my tongue to snap at him. He’s slept in here only a few times since I arrived and we were both always fully clothed, usually with me too exhausted to notice.
"I'm not leaving," Croesus says flatly.
Seraph's smile is sharp as a blade. "I didn't ask you to."
The tension in the room spikes. Through both bindings, I feel them: Croesus's possessive fury and Seraph's cool amusement, circling each other like predators over prey.
Over me.
"You want me to leave so you can have her to yourself," Croesus says. "It's not going to happen. Not tonight."
"I want nothing of the sort." Seraph shrugs the robe off entirely, letting it pool on the floor. He's wearing nothing underneath. "I simply want to go to bed. In my bed. If you choose to stay, that's your prerogative."
"Seraph—" I start.
"Did I interrupt something?" He moves toward the bed with that predator's grace, each step deliberate. "Please. Don't stop on my account."
Croesus's jaw tightens. "You're trying to provoke me."
"I'm trying to sleep. If watching you fumble through an attempt to reconnect with what's slipping through your fingers amuses me in the meantime..." He settles onto the far side of the massive bed, arranging pillows behind him with casual ease. "Consider it a bonus."
Through our binding, I feel Croesus's rage spike, hot and bright and desperate. He wants to fight. Wants to drag Seraph out of this bed and prove that I'm his, that nothing has changed, that the connection we share is stronger than whatever Seraph is building with me.
But he can't. Not here. Not in Seraph's territory, where his power saturates every molecule of air.
"Fine," Croesus says through gritted teeth. "You want to watch? Watch me make her scream for me."
And before I can protest, his mouth crashes into mine.
The kiss is different now. Harder. He's proving something, to Seraph, to me, to himself. His hands grip my waist almost painfully as he pulls me against him, claiming my mouth with an intensity that steals my breath.
Through the binding with Seraph, I feel his attention sharpen. Interest. Curiosity. And underneath, buried but present: heat.
He's aroused.
Watching another angel kiss me, touch me, and he's aroused by it.
The realization makes something twist in my stomach. Something complicated and confusing and not entirely unwelcome.
"This is what you want?" Croesus murmurs against my lips. "Him watching? Knowing?"
"I don't—I didn't ask for this—"
"But you're not stopping it." His hand slides between my thighs, cupping me through the thin silk of my underwear, and I gasp at the contact. "You're not telling him to leave."
He's right. I'm not.
Because through both bindings, I feel everything. Every emotion, every reaction. Croesus's intense love and Seraph's calculating fascination. How hey're both focused on me, wanting me, even as they hate each other.
It should feel wrong.
But it feels like power.
Croesus pulls back, and there's a new edge to his expression. A challenge. He stands beside the bed and holds Seraph's gaze as he reaches for the buttons of his shirt.
"You want a show?" His voice is low, dangerous. "I'll give you one."
He undoes the first button. Then the second. Slow. Deliberate. Each movement a declaration.
Through Seraph's binding, I feel something shift. His amusement wavers, replaced by something more complicated. He's watching Croesus now, not just me, and there's heat there too. Reluctant. Unwanted. But undeniable.