Chapter 9 #3
“My mother missed you,” he adds, disinterested, then wanders to the window.
He cares so little about the conversation that he picks at a ball of lint on the sleeve of his black sweater before he looks out at the icy winds gathering over the mountains.
“She hoped you would join her in her tradition this year.” The crystalline blue of his eyes reflects sharply off the window. “She had the sweater custom made for you.”
My heart sinks.
Not because I disappointed Amelia, but because she is so obviously part of the Grooming Olivia brigade now.
Each New Year, the Sinclairs wear custom designer sweaters.
Last year, it was a set of cream Prada sweaters with moons stitched in golden threads around the cuffs.
The year before that, they were all black, the collars threaded gold and silver, and the hems delicately inked with the family crest.
But two things stay the same:
It’s always sweaters—and it’s only ever the Sinclairs who wear them.
Dray is dropping too many hints for someone who doesn’t want me to know yet. He’s dropping atomic bombs.
Still, I need to pretend.
Not for my family, not for their wishes, but to buy myself as much time as possible, so I can scheme my ass out of this engagement.
I make a face at the window, knowing his eyes are on me in the reflection. “Why would she want me in the tradition?”
He only considers my faint outline for a beat, then, “Perhaps she’s expanding to the Cravens.”
A lame answer.
One he doesn’t put much effort into—because Oliver must’ve been right.
Dray just doesn’t think I’m smart enough to put the puzzle together, even when he hand-delivers me each piece.
“Why weren’t you in attendance?” he asks.
“I was grounded.”
His sigh is soft. It fogs the glass, like the mist beyond, gathering over the snowy mountains. “Your fits are becoming more frequent and volatile. Why is that?”
Dray manoeuvres around the secret he thinks he’s keeping. He thinks I will dismiss him knowing about my ‘fits’ as something Oliver shared with him. Not a communication he’s obviously receiving from my father.
I let him believe that.
The mirror flickers under the warm glow of the lanterns.
Dray’s reflection glimmers in that warmth. It highlights the bridge of his nose, the shape of his cheekbones, the bow of his pink mouth. Yet it darkens his hair into a moody blond, casts him in shadows that suit him all too well.
“It was the book,” I confess. “The Impact of Deadbloods.”
For a beat, he doesn’t react. But then the oddity of my answer sinks in, and he turns around, settling a faint frown on me.
“It was clear when you asked to borrow it that it was something to avoid mentioning to your father.” He leans back against the windowsill, hands slipping into his pockets.
“But I assigned that to the taboo nature of the book, the company on Rugby Sunday—and that you were sneaking around our library. To be grounded and disinvited from New Year… Now, that is either extreme, or I miscalculated the matter of the book.”
The glower I aim at him is accusatory, like this is all his fault.
And really, it is his fault.
If it wasn’t for my life suffering under his regime, then his hand stealing mine into marriage, maybe I wouldn’t have exploded the way I did, then I wouldn’t have been in so much trouble.
I fist my grip on the bag strap. “If you want the book back, you’ll have to ask my father. I don’t know what he did with it.”
Dray’s slow blink is dangerous.
The tension in his jaw dimples for a beat. Then, “I have read that book many times over. I would deem nothing in it to be off limits to you.”
I grab the thick book, the one too big to fit into my bag, then push back from the table. “You and me both.”
I make it a step before his hand shoots out for my bicep—and he halts me in place.
His grip is firm, fingers like rope coiled around my muscle.
The gleam of his eyes hooks me. “Why would your father punish you for it?”
“It wasn’t about the company that day. I’m just not allowed books like that.”
“Books like what?” he enunciates each word, slow and deliberate, like I’m the problem here.
I fight the urge to roll my eyes. “Deadblood books.”
His dark eyebrows knit. “Why would you not be allowed that reading material, Olivia?”
My lips part—and I pause.
The answer sits on my tongue, motionless.
Then, slowly, I lower my lashes and narrow my stare on him.
Dray’s grip tightens.
The blood will soon be cut off from the rest of my arm if I don’t give him what he wants.
An answer.
But that’s the thing.
That’s what I stumble on.
He wants the answer.
I might not have found a way to leverage my knowledge yet, but here is another right in front of me.
Leverage.
“What’s the matter?” I tilt my head. “Can’t figure it out on your own?”
Famous last words.
The book hits the ground with a loud thud, the bag strap slips from my loose grip, and the nook of the library is a whirl of shelves and books all around me—
Before I’m shoved onto the edge of the table.
Dray’s hand abandons my arm for my jaw, and he pins me in place, that hollowness aimed down at me.
“You touch fire every day, and every day you cry that it burned you.” The warmth and mint of his breath tickles my lips. “When will you learn, Olivia?”
“I touch fire?” My words come out strained, the pressure of his fingers too tight on my jaw. “If you’re the fire, then the flames chase me.”
The tip of his nose ghosts over mine. “You could have saved yourself half the trouble you got into, if you just minded your place and tongue.”
My cheeks are roaring with the hot rage lashing through me. It reaches my stare, the wildness in my eyes, the savagery that I’m sure he reads as easily as words on a page.
I want to kill you.
I want you to burn.
I want to watch you die, Dray.
In answer, he pushes the tip of his nose that bit closer to mine, a warning.
I grit out, “If you really want to know…” His fingertips dig even firmer into my bones. “I’ll tell you—but only if you stop.”
“Stop,” he echoes, and I swear the corner of his mouth curves, an almost smile. “Stop what, Olivia?”
“This.”
His grip tightens and forces my mouth apart. “This?”
I flinch as his other hand slaps to the meat of my thigh, just at the hem of my skirt, and firms.
His whisper sends chills through me. “Or this?”
The pad of his thumb brushes over my flesh.
The answer shudders out of me, “All of it.”
“I don’t like that deal.” The smile breaks free, and it’s lazy. “It isn’t balanced. But I can work with it.”
The hand on my thigh tightens even more, the indents of his fingers leaving the promise of bruises to come.
“Let’s strike terms,” he says, and brushes his lazy smile over my parted lips.
“I will stop this… and I will stop my—” That grin twitches against my lips, wider for a beat, like he thinks it’s all so funny, “—disfavour. But on two conditions. First, you tell me what you know about your father’s grievances with books on deadbloods.
” He plants a ghost of a kiss on the corner of my mouth, a mouth I would clamp shut if his hand wasn’t forcing my lips apart. “Second, if you do not ask for it.”
A scoff catches in the back of my throat.
Ask for it…
When do I ever?
His smile falters, darkens.
“Do you need clarity?” His face draws back from mine, and the sheer cruelty of it strikes a bolt of ice through me. “I will be… kinder,” he says, and his teeth bare for the quickest of moments, as though it pains him to even say it, “so long as you behave.”
His hold on my jaw eases, fingers softening, until he’s merely holding my jaw as gentle as a loving caress from a man as evil as hell itself.
My answer comes strained, “Your idea of me behaving is not my own idea of it. It never has been.”
His smile fades. “No better time to learn than now. Perhaps your father has been too easy on you.”
The breath I draw in through my flaring nostrils does little to steady the flurry of rage in my chest.
That’s a fucking threat, and not just one meant for the halls of the academy. It’s one he doesn’t think I’ll understand, that his reach will go beyond Bluestone, past graduation, and he will be worse than Father ever has been.
My mouth trembles.
His hand drops from my jaw—and grabs onto my waist.
My heart is sinking, slow and heavy, all the way to my wormy gut. The bite of my fingernails digs so deep into the wood of the table that I’m certain it will leave permanent dents.
And he watches it, the rage battling the fear, the tears fighting against the curl of my mouth, he watches it all flash and fight over my face, in my eyes, as though it’s a performance, theatre.
He pulls me flush against him. “What do you want, Olivia?”
I feel him.
I feel it.
It presses against my core, firm and hard.
As though I can get away from him, I turn my cheek. It only reveals my neck—and the warmth of his mouth finds my sensitive skin there.
I steel myself against the breath that escapes me, a tremble that rinses through my whole body.
He murmurs, “An apology?”
My lashes flutter.
I find him in the window, his reflection, as he un-buries his face from my neck.
The softness of his mouth grazes along my jawline.
That lazy grin creeps back onto his face. “Would you believe it?”
The warmth of a tear rolls down my cheek. It is silent and solitary, and it curves to the corner of my mouth—right into his path.
Dray tastes it.
It lingers over his soft lips, between my flesh and his, and he pauses over it for a beat before his tongue slowly, softly trails over it—like he cherishes it.
A ball lodges in my throat, thick, and it’s choking me, choking back the tears stirring in me.
My lashes shut as his mouth brushes over mine. His hand comes up to my cheek and guides my face to align with his.
I don’t fight it.
Not this time.
I just go numb against the soft kiss pushing against my lips, like a stamp.
He murmurs, “You accept the deal as it’s offered?”
Kinder, as long as I behave.
No manhandling, as long as I don’t ask for it.