Chapter 9 #2
The Brand in his palm seared. He pressed it to her head, felt the heat, the pulse, as though the mark itself was alive to the act. His breath came ragged. “Not because of him. Not because of fear. Say it.”
She pulled back just long enough to meet his eyes, her lips wet, voice husky. “Because I wanted you.”
Then she took him deep again, and he lost the thread of speech. His hips jerked, a curse tearing from his throat. He was used to control, used to dictating every pace, every rhythm. But she wrecked him. She drew him to the edge with nothing but her mouth and the unflinching heat of her gaze.
When release hit, it was brutal, tearing through him in waves. He shouted her name, spilling into her mouth as his hand tightened in her hair. She took it all, swallowed it, her eyes locked on his until he sagged back, spent and shaking.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then climbed back up beside him.
He caught her face, stared at her like she was both weapon and salvation.
His thoughts churned, vicious and tender all at once—how close he was to losing control completely, how much he burned to brand her from the inside out.
He almost kissed her. Almost. Lips brushed, breath mingled, the moment stretched taut.
But he pulled back, grinding control into place, fighting the hunger that clawed at him.
“Then understand this. You’re mine now. Not because of your brother.
Not because of fear. Because the Brand chose. And because you chose me.”
Her breath shuddered. She didn’t argue. Didn’t speak at all. Just stared back at him, wide-eyed, shaken, while the Brand pulsed hot in both palms as if sealing the claim.
He didn’t let go of her hand. He turned her palm over, studied the lines as if the Brand had written a message there he could decode if he stared long enough. “When it burned into you,” he said, softer than before, “what did you feel?”
She swallowed. “Heat. And… certainty.”
“Certainty of what?”
“That I belonged to you.” The confession came out barely above a whisper. Her lashes lowered, as if the truth embarrassed her.
Something inside him answered to that, something old and territorial. He dragged her palm to his mouth and pressed his lips to the center of the lion. The mark went molten against his tongue. She gasped. It seared his own hand at the same time, the two Brands echoing like struck bells.
He tested it. He brushed the lightest kiss to her Brand and a match flared in his.
He nipped, gentle, and a spark shot up his arm and into his chest. He lifted his head and found her watching him like he’d just done magic.
Maybe he had. Maybe the Dantes had never told the Severins that the Brand was not only ink.
It was an instrument. A wire spliced between two bodies.
“Lie to me,” he said quietly.
Her eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Tell me you feel nothing.”
She didn’t. She told the truth. “I feel you.”
He nodded once and then did what he’d never allow another soul to see. He tested himself. “I feel nothing,” he said.
The Brand punished him. It bit like a live wire. He hissed and she jerked, eyes going wide.
“Leif.” Her fingers closed around his hand, panic flaring. “Don’t do that.”
He stared at their palms, at the way their skin flushed where lion met lion. “So it hates lies,” he said, voice gone gravelly. “Good. That saves time.”
She was quiet a long beat, studying him like she was learning more than he said. “You wanted to know who I was running from,” she murmured. “You pulled it out of me. But what about you? Who are you running from?”
“Myself,” he said without thinking, and the Brand stayed quiet. He almost laughed. “And my father. Or who my father is.”
Her gaze sharpened on that, but he didn’t let her chase it. Not yet. He wanted the bloodlines settled in his head. He wanted the calculus of this night to add up.
“Your father,” he said again. “If he’s not a Dante, not a Jones, then what does that leave?”
“A man with too much power and too little conscience,” she said. “A man who owns things he shouldn’t own. People he shouldn’t own.”
His spine straightened. “And your brother is his?”
“Yes.” The word was a thread. “And so am I.”
He parsed that carefully. “Full brother, or half?”
She lifted a shoulder, that tiny defensive movement he was learning to hate because it meant retreat. “Half.”
“So, despite that, he thinks you’re his responsibility.”
“He thinks I’m his possession.” The words had iron filings in them. “I’m not.”
Leif believed her. He’d already seen the way she refused to bow, the way she met his stare and didn’t look away when he used the voice that made grown men forget their names. She wasn’t tame. That was one of the million reasons he needed her.
He slid fingers into her hair and guided her closer, not a kiss yet, just the pressure of his mouth to her temple, the long inhale of her scent.
The night had her on it, and soap, and the clean heat of his shirt.
The very human urge to take her to bed seized him, to ruin her for anyone else, to leave his mark in places only his hands would ever see.
He didn’t. Control was a religion with him and he didn’t break faith easily.
“Why did you go to the Alabaster alone?” he asked against her skin. “If your brother was there.”
“I was supposed to meet someone who could help me disappear.”
He stilled. “Who?”
“A woman who cleans records. New names, new passports, apartments that don’t exist.”
“Do you have the name?”
“I have a number.” She lifted her head and he saw the shrewdness in her eyes. “I’m not giving it to you.”
“You will,” he said, not as a threat but as a fact. She glared. He let it slide because the next thing mattered more. “Your brother. Does he hit?”
“No.” The answer was immediate and the Brand didn’t stir. “He doesn’t need to. He removes.”
“Removes.”
“Options. Friends. Money. The ground under your feet.”
Leif filed that away. A strategist, then. A cleaner. He’d need to see that man’s books and burn the lines that made him powerful. He’d need to see what moved him and break it. It soothed some violent part of him to plan the work.
He dragged the pad of his thumb across her lower lip and watched her pupils dilate. “If he comes again,” he said, “I’ll end him.”
Her throat worked. “You don’t know who he is.”
“I don’t care.” The Brand didn’t so much as flicker.
Truth again. What she didn’t know was that he’d seen her brother.
And if he ever saw the bastard again, he’d nail him.
Leif forced his voice lower, gentler. “I care that you came into my life and branded me in my own bed and then ran as if I’d let you go.
I care that you’re sitting in my shirt and that your heart is beating in my palm.
” He turned her wrist and pressed their Brands together.
Heat flared, a matched surge that rolled up his arm and into his chest. “Do you feel it?”
She shivered. “Yes.”
“Good.”
He held her there until she was breathing the way he wanted, until the stubborn line of her mouth softened and she leaned in for a kiss he still denied her. He liked the way she chased what he wouldn’t give. He liked the want in her face when he put her barely off balance.
“Leif,” she whispered.
He almost gave in. He almost took her mouth and forgot every rule he’d ever made. He didn’t. He set her back an inch and watched rebellion flare for the pleasure of seeing it. “Tell me something true again,” he said. “Something you haven’t told anyone.”
She looked at their hands. When she spoke, the words were small and lethal. “I thought if I gave myself to you that first night, I could make the noise in my head stop.”
“What noise?”
“The one that says I’m already owned.”
He went very still. The Brand burned like a vow in his palm. “Does it say that now?”
“No.” Her eyes lifted, unguarded for a heartbeat. “Now it says I’m choosing.”