25 #2
“I know that you think you’re right. But, Sin…
” I search for the words, even as he clings to me, and I cling to him.
That’s just it, though. I’ve never liked Sin because of his title or ranking—in fact, those parts of him are the parts that I admire least. I like him because he’s strong and he’s kind and he’s warm.
Because he’s good. “You’ve been my friend since you first carried me to my room.
You said that your instinct was to protect me from this place. ”
“Because this court ruins us.”
“Not everyone,” I argue, brushing aside a strand of his hair. “It hasn’t ruined you.”
“I’m… I’m not enough. To change it. To make it better.
I can’t do it alone.” His grip relaxes abruptly, and he moves as though to push me away.
But he needs me. Sin and I—we need each other.
We’re the same. Two kids desperate to right the wrongs of a wicked world.
I pull his face down to mine, and it devastates me to find the sadness I felt minutes before his entry darkening his own gaze.
“We’re doing the best we can,” I whisper. “I’m learning. I’m growing stronger. And you… You’re close to completing your Ascension.”
“What about after?”
I think about it, but there isn’t an answer that will please us both. “We survive. No matter what happens.” I move a hand to his cheek, and he grabs my wrist, holding it there. His eyes blaze with the few secrets we can’t speak. Sin’s hand slips from my wrist to my throat. He strokes it softly.
“We survive,” he agrees. He looks from my lips to my eyes. “Vanessa Hart, I—”
“Don’t,” I hasten. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t say it aloud.”
Don’t break my heart.
“Does what I want matter at all?” His thumb sweeps over my pulse, immediately revealing my yearning. He feels good. He feels right . If we were two people who’d met anywhere else, I would fall in love with him as easily as I would drift to sleep at night.
“War,” I remind him. “Prince.”
His touch hardens, and he lifts my chin. His lips just barely graze mine. A breath away. He tastes like mint and rain and roses. So close. Desire courses through me. But I can fight it. I can repress it. Sin touches my lips, and I whimper.
A growl rumbles through him then, brutal and sudden. “Fuck their war, fuck their laws, and fuck this court.”
He kisses me, and his lips are violent. Scalding.
His hands grip my throat, my hair, and he hauls me farther atop him so that I straddle his waist. My hands can’t stop moving—up his shirt, over his chest, down his muscles.
He is heaven. He is perfect . And right now, he’s letting me lead.
I run a tongue tentatively over his lower lip, savoring the clean, sweet taste of him.
This moment can’t be real.
It shouldn’t be real.
Sin and I can’t exist like this, touching each other, kissing, moaning .
It’s gone too far, and we have to stop. He is Prince of the Wolf Queen’s Court.
And I… I am just Vanessa Hart. A girl Bitten and scorned.
We have to stop. But I can’t bring myself to do so.
His hands find the hem of my shirt, and he lifts it up enough that his palms glide over my hips and up my sides.
His fingers brush the underside of my breasts.
I shiver. The world unravels before us, and it feels infinite.
I’ve never had this. Never been with anyone in this way.
The other boys—ones whose names I can’t remember or bring myself to care about—were chaste kisses, juvenile crushes. This is… this is ruin .
“Sin,” I breathe against him.
“Say it again,” he pleads, breaking off the kiss to trail his lips over my jaw.
He nips and bites, and I arch into him with abandon.
“Don’t stop saying my name.” I moan, and his tongue flicks out to a sensitive spot beneath my ear.
“Fuck, you’re so sweet, Vanessa. I have wanted to do this since I first held you in my arms.” Another kiss.
Another bite. “Even when I could scent the rage burning through you, even when I knew you hated me, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.
” Another kiss, and I writhe atop him. “I can’t stop thinking about you.
It’s constant. In meetings, during breakfast, in lessons—I’m thinking of you , Vanessa.
You have made my life so much harder than it needs to be. You have wrecked everything.”
Honesty. So much honesty, and combined with the rush of heady pleasure, I can’t do much else but murmur his name again—he sweeps his thumb over the tip of my breast—and again—his tongue plunges into my mouth.
He devours my every moan, and maybe he devours a bit of my soul as well because I can’t help admitting, breathless and licentious, “I… I like you, Sin. I shouldn’t, but I do. ”
He withdraws an inch. Enough for me to see the whole of his handsome face awash in moonlight. “You’re beautiful,” I murmur, raising a gentle hand to his cheek. He kisses my palm.
“You,” he says, gazing at me while his lips trail up my wrist, “are breathtaking.”
I thread my fingers through his hair, hardly daring to breathe. The moment feels too delicate—like a dream, and I could be seconds from waking up.
“Well, isn’t this adorable?” My door slams open, and Evie enters with a single, floor-shuddering stomp. Just like that, the dream becomes a nightmare. “The crown prince all tangled up with a mutt .”
I leap off Sin, quick as my reflexes allow me, and crash onto the ground.
An abandoned nail from earlier slices into my hand, but I don’t wince.
Fear implodes in my chest. I suck in a harsh breath as Princess Evelyn Lee stands in my doorway, shadowed in the darkness, her red eyes molten and enraged.
“Couldn’t do better than this ?” Evie asks Sin, crossing her arms, her claws almost cutting into her own flesh. “You know, I took you for a royal pain in my ass, but never for a fool.”
“I suppose even princesses make mistakes,” Sin says casually.
He lounges in the chair, his body relaxed like he’s not embarrassed at all.
Not terrified . I don’t know how to act, however, sprawled out on the ground half naked.
Words fail me, and a wash of humiliation heats my veins.
The nail still stings my palm, but I hardly feel it.
I rise onto my knees slowly, tugging my borrowed shirt as low down my thighs as the fabric allows.
Evie glances at me and sneers in disgust.
“If you’re done on the floor, Queen Sybil has called us to the throne room.
” She licks the tips of her fangs. “Might want to change first, though, Mutt; I can see your nipples.” Then to Sin, she says, “Next time you fuck someone, pick a better pedigree. We want a mistress, not a mongrel.” Turning on her heel, Evie tramps down the hall without another word. I gape at Sin, who merely shrugs.
“Trust me,” he says, “that could have gone a lot worse.”
And while he’s telling the truth, I still don’t believe it.
Evie just caught me in the lap of her soon-to-be intended.
There’s no way she lets me off with a few insults and a hair flip.
I rip the nail from my hand and rise to my feet, loathing how my legs have started to tremble.
How my knees threaten to fold. If there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that I saw death in her eyes, and I can’t blame her for it.
Sin is hers.
If I wasn’t her target before, I definitely am now.