40
I almost break down when I see Sin.
The full moon weaves bright, silver light through my window, painting him in shades of iridescence and divinity as he leans with his back against my wardrobe.
He looks exactly as he did hours ago, in a black polo and jeans, with his hair damp and clinging to his forehead.
“You didn’t stay,” he says quietly—roughly. “You didn’t wait.”
His burgundy eyes track me as I enter, and it feels as if we’re both holding our breaths for the single second it takes for my door to close.
He explodes forward then, in a flurry of movement, the heady scents of berry-sweet adoration and salty fear whirling around us, followed by the scent of him .
I inhale deeply, and he grasps my cheeks between his hands, his thumbs brushing sand from my skin as he hauls me against him.
“You didn’t wait ,” he repeats. “I thought… When we went back to the street to look for you, we thought you two had…”
He can’t finish the words, and his body shudders with devastation.
I lean into his touch, depending on it to keep me standing.
In this moment, I can’t feel my limbs, my pulse, anything.
I am numb. I am numb, and I am scared, and I am so angry .
I clutch the hem of his shirt, nearly tearing it in two.
“Evie,” I whisper. “She—”
“I know,” Sin interrupts. “Instructor Shepherd informed the maids so as to begin preparations for another week of mourning. I overheard him.”
I want to cry. I want to weep . Evie deserves that.
She deserved more than being murdered because of a fucking crown.
But the tears don’t come, and my eyes won’t burn.
I hardly feel Sin’s touch as he scoops me into his arms and cradles me against his chest. His hand tangles in my hair, and his lips sweep across my temple.
“It was my mother, wasn’t it?” he says softly, those words my mother falling from him like petals plucked off a rose. I nod in lieu of speaking. Maybe it will break his heart less. His eyes clench shut, and he inhales a ragged breath.
“It’s not your fault,” he says, forcing his eyes open. “I swear to you—we couldn’t have done anything to stop her tonight. You couldn’t have known .”
I hate that he’s telling the truth. I want it to be a lie. If I could have controlled this, if there was a way to go back in time… “I despise it here,” I say, and my voice sounds little more than a breath. “We have no power.”
“One day,” Sin vows, setting me on my bed. “One day, we will.”
More honesty—but I don’t believe it. Queen Sybil won’t allow us to win.
I am no one. I am no one, and yet she still wants me.
As I tell him all that happened in the throne room—how the queen demolished our plans—he kneels at my feet, gazing up through those thick lashes, his red eyes blazing, and I—I can’t voice it.
I won’t voice it. The queen threatened him already; I can’t damn us further by admitting the depth of my feelings for the golden prince. I shouldn’t be with Sin at all.
Oona is not the only one you love.
Her screams still ring in my ears, and those screams…
They cannot become Sin’s. I will not allow it.
If the queen thinks I don’t care for him anymore, perhaps she will leave him alone.
But he breathes, and his heart beats in time with mine, and I feel that tug from his soul—the piece of him that’s so similar, so familiar , to mine—and I don’t think I can do it. Not tonight.
“Are the others okay?” I ask finally.
“Yes.” Sin takes my hands in his and squeezes. “We arrived minutes after you. We chased the werewolf, but it vanished. None of us recognized the scent. When we returned to find you, you were both gone.”
“It was a trap,” I say. “She… she just wanted Evie. I don’t think she planned for the rest of us to be there.
She tricked Evie and me at the beach. She disguised her scent somehow and crept up behind us.
And then she… she…” I start to shake, and my eyes widen against the memory, against the onslaught of pain that ensnares me.
“Don’t say it,” Sin says. A pause, and then, “It’s going to be okay.”
Lie.
He’s lying. I’m lying. This moment—the two of us in the dark of my room—it’s a lie in and of itself.
We could never have been together. Evie’s death changes nothing; it only emphasizes the complexities of his mother’s schemes.
He still gazes at me with painful yearning, with fatal longing, and we both know we can’t take it further.
To protect ourselves, our loved ones, we can’t be this .
Sin and I… We don’t exist as an us , and we never will.
My heart splinters, cracking and shifting after tonight’s harrowing events. I should… I should send him away. I should crawl backward and lie on my pillow until I fall asleep and tomorrow starts anew. Sin stands then, as if he can hear my train of thought, and moves to leave.
But—
The worst, most selfish part of me reaches for him.
I seize his wrist and tug him back to me.
He hesitates for one second, and his eyes have never been redder.
Molten and infinite. I hold on to him, my chest rising and falling with shallow breaths and reckless indecision.
I hate this court. I hate what I’ve become.
And I might… I might never find another moment of joy again.
The queen could take everything from me. She will take everything from me.
“Tonight,” I whisper, and the word is unexpected to even my own ears. “What if we just had tonight?”
He doesn’t speak; he reacts. With fearsome strength and wicked speed, he twists out of my grasp and captures my wrists.
He pins them above my head with a burning hand as he settles on top of me, pressing us deeper into the raven-black sheets of my bed.
His lips claim mine, and I gasp. It feels punishing, this kiss.
Not the heated frenzy of a wildfire or even the slow crackling of simmering tension.
This kiss is primal. It feels like devastation.
It tastes like goodbye.
I hook my legs around his hips, reeling him further into me as my back bows from his every touch.
His free hand finds the belt of my robe, loosens it with a sinful pull, and exposes me.
He pauses then, to stare down at my body with the starving gaze of a man lost at sea.
He trails his hand from the pool of silk at my side to my belly and carves a path between my breasts, over my throat, and down.
Down. He can’t stop touching me. I can’t stop staring at him.
He’s beautiful. He’s everything . I whisper his name, and his gaze snaps to my face.
“You’re an angel,” he says. “A fucking angel .” He kisses the hollow of my throat, his tongue hot and wet, and I moan.
“I want to worship you, Vanessa. I want to touch you, taste you, memorize your soul . I want your secrets. I want to know you, in whatever ways a mortal could possibly know—could possibly understand—one of their gods.”
His fingers curl between my thighs, and finally he releases my wrists.
I jerk forward, a wave of pleasure cresting over me, and twine my arms around his neck.
The robe slips farther away from my body.
And I don’t care. I don’t care that moonlight reveals the entirety of me. I want this. I want him .
“Sin, you are—”
“Don’t,” he demands roughly. “I can’t bear to hear it.”
“But—”
His fingers move inside me, working me toward the edge of release.
“I won’t recover from it, Vanessa. If you say anything, I’ll vow myself to you forever.
I’ll burn this castle to the ground. I’ll murder anyone who threatens to harm you.
I will damn myself for you.” I shudder, clinging to him as release sweeps through me violently, moaning and gasping and barely able to breathe under the adulation of his stare.
“For you ,” he repeats, a razor-sharp edge to the confession, “Vanessa Hart. You have turned my world upside down. You have wrecked me.”
“Please,” I whisper, the intensity of his fingers too much now—far too much, and yet still not enough.
I paw at his shirt, desperate for him to take it off.
He does. He does, and he is gorgeous . The moonlight doesn’t do him justice.
Only the sun could, only the brightest golden rays of light should illuminate his magnificent, strong body.
“ Please ,” I beg, desperate now, “I want you, Sin.”
He brushes my hair from my face, his hardness pressing deliciously against my core, and I writhe against it as his lips and teeth mark the rest of me.
All of me. I may have wrecked Sinclair Severi, but he has devoured me.
I don’t know how I existed before him. I don’t know how I’ll exist after tonight.
No one else has ever compared to him—to his goodness.
To his rightness . I whimper, and he kisses up from my thighs to my lips, positioning himself right there .
And, oh god , I want it. So badly. More than I’ve ever wanted anything before.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Vanessa,” he says, and the truth of those words adds another layer to the pleasure sizzling in my veins.
“It’s okay.” I undo the button of his jeans, sliding the zipper down slowly.
“I’m safe.” And it’s the most honest statement I think I’ve ever said.
A war is raging around us, and we are losing, but Sin…
He’s the one good thing in my life. He’s the candle in the darkness.
He’s the stars in the night sky. He is hope and justice and passion.
“I’ll always be safe as long you’re near. ”
He growls at that, discarding the rest of his clothes in a frenzy, and that wolf inside of him bursts forth as his kisses return to fraught hunger.
Mine do too. I can’t kiss him hard enough, taste him fast enough.
I breathe, and he’s everywhere around me.
The mint in the air, the heat on my skin, the sugar on my tongue, the pounding in my heart.
I moan his name, and finally— finally —his hips rock slowly as he moves inside of me.
“Sin,” I whimper, and the sting of pain overrides the rest of my thoughts for a split second. Inch by inch, he fills me, and it’s… so much. Too much. Again, not enough. I want more . “Please… more ,” I gasp, shocked at the heavenly feeling of him. Of us .
I could love you , I think suddenly. I might love you.
He feels so good. Too good. I rake my nails down the muscled contours of his back—my claws break through then, in an incandescent haze of sensation that builds and builds—and he growls once more, a sound of deep approval and deeper need.
“That’s it, Vanessa. You are… so good.” He kisses me, and his own claws impale the pillows on either side of my head. His pace remains slow, controlled, but his muscles tense as if he’s barely hanging on. His red eyes flash. All Alpha. All prince. “So perfect.”
I match his pace, meeting him thrust for thrust. Once the sting vanishes, I force him to move faster.
Harder. I need more. And he hitches up my legs, holding them prisoner between those wicked black claws as he plunges inside me again, again, again.
He smirks, and the sight of it makes my stomach clench and my thighs tighten.
“There’s my good girl,” he purrs.
A wave of pleasure hits me then, and this time, it threatens to drown me. Threatens to drown us both. I muffle my screams against his lips and ride out the storm with him. But tonight can’t last forever.
He can’t stay.
Brushing my hair aside, he presses a kiss to my forehead before hoisting my spent body in his arms. Then he carries me through the portrait to the bathroom. To the tub. And though it’s a bad idea—the worst idea—I just can’t help myself. “What are we doing?” I ask him quietly.
He turns on the tap with a sad smile, filling the porcelain with glittering lavender bubbles. “Right now? We’re taking a bath.”
It doesn’t answer my question. Not really.
Tonight can’t last forever.
When he leaves my room an hour later, holding his shirt in hand, his chest gleaming with soap and silvered moonlight, he gazes at me from the doorway. It looks as if he’s trying to memorize this moment. As if he’s trying to memorize me.
I do the same.
I’ve fallen in love with Sinclair Severi, Crown Prince of the Wolf Queen’s Court, but he is not mine. He can’t be mine. I curl up under blankets that smell like him and shut my eyes. And when I fall asleep, I dream only of him.