Chapter 6 #2
Carefully, I lifted one hand toward her hair before letting the strands slide slowly through my fingers. Silk against scarred knuckles. Soft enough it almost didn’t feel real. Emerald shifted slightly at the touch, pressing closer unconsciously while a quiet breath left her lips.
Fuck.
My hand stilled briefly in her hair while warmth spread slowly through places inside me that had spent years frozen solid. The gentleness scared me far more than violence ever had.
Emerald shifted again with a soft breath before her lashes fluttered slightly.
I watched confusion move slowly across her face while consciousness pulled her out of sleep piece by piece.
Her brows pinched faintly as she stared at my chest beneath her cheek like her brain couldn’t quite process what she was seeing yet.
Then realization hit. Her entire body locked up instantly.
“Oh my God.”
The horror in her voice dragged a rough laugh from my chest before I could stop it. Emerald launched upward so fast she nearly tangled herself in the blankets completely, blonde hair flying everywhere while she scrambled backward across the mattress like the bed had suddenly caught on fire.
“What the fuck?” Emerald asked, her voice rough from sleep. Blue eyes snapped toward me wide with panic. “We slept together!? ”
I stared at her for one long second while amusement curled dark and slow. That seemed to make her even more alarmed.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, one hand flying to her mouth dramatically. “We did sleep together. You’re laughing. Men in movies always look smug after sex.”
“You watch terrible movies.”
“Nikolai!”
I leaned my back against the headboard watching her spiral with entirely too much satisfaction. Her oversized shirt had twisted during sleep, one side slipping off her shoulder while her cheeks flushed deeper by the second. Cute. Dangerous fucking thought.
Emerald looked down at herself suddenly before grabbing the blankets tighter. “Why are my clothes still on?”
“You think I’d fuck you in a shirt covered in cartoon cherries?”
Her mouth dropped open immediately. “You noticed the cherries?”
“I notice everything.”
Heat climbed her throat instantly, pink spreading slowly across her skin while embarrassment collided violently with offense in her expression.
“You are impossible. ”
“And you’re loud in the morning.”
“I’m having a crisis!”
“You’re having an overreaction.”
She pointed accusingly at me from across the bed. “You let me sleep in here!”
“You grabbed my hand.”
The memory visibly hit her because she froze for half a second before looking away too quickly.
“Oh.”
“You asked me to stay.”
“Well clearly I was emotionally compromised.”
Another laugh nearly escaped me at that. Christ. I couldn’t remember the last time another person entertained me this much without eventually making me want to put a bullet through their skull.
Emerald glanced back toward me carefully. “So…” She hesitated. “Nothing happened?”
I held her stare intentionally before answering. “No.”
Relief flickered across her face so quickly she probably thought I missed it. Unfortunately for her, I noticed everything. Then again, maybe relief wasn’t the right word .
The second my eyes dragged over her flushed cheeks and sleep swollen lips, my mind immediately pictured exactly what would happen if I ever actually had her beneath me in this bed.
The image hit hard enough to tighten every muscle in my body.
Emerald spread across dark sheets while those blue eyes lost focus beneath me.
Soft thighs trembling while I— Fuck. I dragged one hand across my jaw slowly.
Her eyes narrowed immediately. “Why do you suddenly look angry?”
“I’m not angry.”
“You absolutely are.”
“That’s just my face.”
She snorted softly before glancing around the room again, still visibly trying to recover from waking up wrapped around me. Then suddenly her expression changed.
“Oh my God!”
I already hated that tone. “What now?”
Her eyes widened further while heat crawled visibly across her cheeks. “Did I say anything weird in my sleep?”
Mischievously I said, “You screamed my name once.”
Silence crashed into the room. “I did not.”
“You did. ”
“No, I didn’t!” Emerald replied defensively.
I watched humiliation and panic collide across her face while dark satisfaction spread low in my chest.
“You sounded desperate too,” I added calmly.
“NIKOLAI!” A pillow slammed directly into my face. I caught it easily before it fell while Emerald looked seconds away from throwing herself out the nearest window.
“You are actually evil.”
“Probably.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re enjoying this way too much.” That part was true. Emerald groaned loudly before covering her face with both hands. “I’m never speaking again.”
“Impossible.”
“I hate you.”
“No,” I said evenly. “You don’t.”
Her hands lowered slowly. Our eyes locked across the bed while the teasing shifted into something heavier without warning.
The memory of her mouth against mine in the hallway sliding back between us hard enough to change the air entirely.
Emerald swallowed once. My gaze dropped automatically toward her lips.
Fuck…
“You’re staring again,” she said softly.
“So are you.”
Heat spread across her face once more while her eyes flicked away briefly before returning to mine. The room suddenly felt smaller. Emerald looked back toward me with that same dramatic expression returning out of nowhere.
“Wait. If we didn’t sleep together…” Her brows lifted suspiciously. “Why am I sore?”
I stared at her. A dark grin pulled slowly at my mouth before I could stop it.
“Emerald.”
Her eyes narrowed immediately. “What?”
“If we had,” I said calmly, “you wouldn’t be able to walk straight right now.”
Emerald went completely still. I watched heat climb slowly up her throat while those blue eyes widened slightly, and Christ, the reaction alone nearly ruined my restraint.
“Your legs would still be shaking,” I continued evenly, letting my gaze drag over her where she stood, “You wouldn’t have made it out of this bed by yourself. ”
The image hit me instantly. Emerald beneath me, flushed and breathless while my hands held her hips still against the mattress. Soft thighs trembling afterward while she tried—and failed—to stand. Dangerous fucking thought.
“You are actually unbelievable,” she whispered, though the heat crawling across her skin betrayed exactly how hard those words landed.
“No,” I said quietly, eyes locked onto hers. “I just know exactly what I’d do to you.”
Emerald looked absolutely wrecked by the image those words painted inside her head, and the realization slammed straight into my bloodstream.
Mine. The thought arrived dark and immediate. Possessive enough to scare the shit out of me.
Emerald’s mouth parted like she wanted to say something sharp, something sarcastic enough to regain control of the moment, but nothing came out. That alone nearly fucking destroyed me.
The realization finally caught up to her, she spun toward the door so fast she nearly tripped.
“You’re insane,” she muttered under her breath, voice embarrassingly unsteady as she yanked the bedroom door open. “I’m taking a shower.”
I forced myself not to watch the sway of her hips as she disappeared down the hallway .
The second the door slammed shut, the room dropped into a suffocating silence. I dragged a hand slowly down my face, every muscle in my body wound so tight it bordered on violent. The scent of her still clung to the sheets. To my skin. Sweet and warm and entirely too fucking tempting.
My head fell back against the headboard as I exhaled once through clenched teeth.
This was becoming a problem. Not the attraction.
I’d accepted that disaster already. It was the fact that I was starting to lose control around her.
The thought alone had me shoving out of bed before I could make an even bigger mistake.
Cold shower. Immediately.
By the time I stepped beneath the freezing spray a few minutes later, water cascading down my shoulders in sharp waves, Emerald was still the only thing inside my head.
Those fucking blue eyes. The way her breathing had changed when I told her exactly what I’d do to her.
Christ.
The water was a physical assault, a thousand frozen needles hammering the tension from my shoulders. It didn’t work. The cold was just a background hum against the furnace in my skull, behind my eyes, low in my gut. Emerald.
I braced my palms against the slick, frosted glass of the stall, head hanging, breath clouding in the air.
The single bulb overhead buzzed a steady, irritating frequency.
A dying fly trapped in a cage of wire and glass.
I focused on it, trying to count the spaces between the sputters.
One. Two. An image flashed: Emerald in a white dress she wore to dinner the other night, the way the fabric had whispered against her skin as she made her way across the floor to me.
“Damn it!”
My voice was a graveled thing, lost under the spray.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but that was worse.
Darkness was just a blank screen for my brain to project onto.
Her laugh, low and knowing. The challenging arch of one perfect eyebrow.
The way she’d lean over the corner in the kitchen, the scent of her filling the space between us.
My hand moved of its own volition, a rough desperate friction under the punishing cold.
This was pathetic. This was a ritual of defeat.
Every time I tried to scour her out, the memory just dug its claws in deeper, purer.
I wasn’t thinking of softness or affection.
It was possession. It was the fantasy of her breath catching, not in romance, but in shock.
In the sheer, yielding force of my want.
The image was crude, violent in its clarity: my hand fist in that long, soft blonde hair of hers, baring the line of her throat, her wide, startled eyes finally, finally seeing me.
I traced the patterns on the tile with my eyes, following the pattern as an escape route. My eyes lost in a maze the same way as my emotions were.
A sound tore from me, part groan, part curse.
The water wasn’t cold anymore. It was nothing.
My blood was a drumbeat, a war chant. The words mine, echoing from my lips.
My body went rigid as wire. Release was a wave of obliterating heat, immediately followed by a hollow, yawning cold that had nothing to do with the water.
For a second, there was silence in my head. Beautiful, empty silence. Then the buzz of the light rushed back in. The drip of the faucet. The chill reclaiming my skin. And beneath it, the rustle of thought starting again, like rats in a wall.
I got nothing. No relief. Only a deeper, more profound hunger, and a gutful of shame that tasted like copper. I slammed the knob off. The silence was abrupt, ringing. Water dripped from my hair onto the tiled floor. I stared at the drain, watching the last suds circle, and vanish.
“Pathetic,” I spat.
I shoved the door open, the metal screeching in protest. The bathroom air was colder, clinging. I grabbed a towel from the rack, the rough fabric scraping against my oversensitive skin. I avoided the mirror above the sink. I knew what I would see; the eyes of a man haunted by a living woman.
As I entered my room, I went and sat on the edge of my unmade bed, the foam conforming to my body. My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I glanced at the screen a name that made my stomach instantly turn. Malrik Drax.