Chapter Nine
I THOUGHT I WAS IMAGINING it at first.
A click. Soft. Then the door sliding open.
Kidnappers!
My heart bangs against my chest, and I’m wide awake even with my eyes still closed.
I stay very still, because still is what you’re supposed to do when there’s a threat, right?
Still and quiet and playing dead. That’s what the nature shows say about prey animals, and that’s definitely what I am right now—the prey animal of a very rich family that a very desperate criminal has decided to break into in the middle of the night.
Of course someone would try to abduct one of Icelle’s family. They’re so loaded that a ransom from them would probably be enough to feed a small coun—
A hand covers my mouth.
NOOOOOO!
My eyes fly open, and I’m all ready to scream and struggle for life and—
Arkane?
He’s seated on the side of my bed, his hand over my mouth. The curtain is drawn but not fully, and a strip of moonlight falls across the foot of the bed. I can’t see his eyes clearly, but I can feel them on me, and that’s somehow worse.
He lifts his weight off the mattress—and lowers it again.
Aah!
He’s now right on top of me, still silencing me with his hand, and his face is brooding and beautiful and bloody grim.
Why do I have this really bad feeling I’m suddenly in trouble?
He doesn’t speak right away. He just hovers, his weight braced on one forearm, and I can feel him everywhere—the warmth of him through the thin cotton of my sleep shirt, the solid line of his body pinning me gently to the mattress, the calluses on the hand that’s covering my mouth.
Every inch of me is pinned to the exact spot I’m lying in, and my body has already decided it does not, in fact, want to move.
Which is a problem.
“I had to wake Icelle up just to figure out what’s going on.”
OH.
“My mother introduces you as my girlfriend, and it freaked you out. Is that it?”
All I can do is stare up at him because I honestly don’t know how to answer that.
It wasn’t that.
But I can’t say any of that.
“You think I’m too old for you.”
His voice is low. Formal. So, so formal, and that’s what breaks my heart even more because I know, for him to speak like that now of all times—
I know he’s hurting, and it hurts me, too.
But I have no chance to tell him that, with his hand still over my mouth, and—
“Shall I prove how wrong you are?”
And now I have myself to worry about, and I’m already struggling before he’s even done speaking. Because I know. I just know the moment he—
No no no no no.
His lips have replaced his hand, and it’s exactly what I was afraid of.
The moment this happens, it’s all over.
And the moment he kisses me, I knew it would be like this.
Deep.
Hard.
No-holding-back demanding.
And it’s impossible to resist.
I’m not even surprised to hear myself whimper against his lips as my body softens under his in surrender.
I can’t even muster the energy to get mad when I hear him release a rough low growl in satisfaction, like a predator claiming its prey.
There’s just no point wasting energy on lies.
It is what it is, and there’s at least one truth that we can both agree on.
I’m his.
Completely.
Absolutely.
Irrevocably.
He’s marked me for life, his claim reaching all the way to my soul, and that’s why all I can do is wrap my arms around him with a sob as the kiss deepens. All I can do is kiss him back as the whole world melts away.
His hands do what they expertly do, and my clothes disappear layer after layer, and I’m once again shaking under his burning gaze—
“Look at me.”
And the moment my eyes lift to his is the same moment his hand slips down, and a gasp tears out of me.
Oh.
Oh—
I was not ready.
He gives me no warning. He gives me no time to adjust, no careful build-up, no mercy.
Just the sudden presence of his hand there—warm and certain and demanding in a way he wasn’t the first night—and my body jerks against his like a string being pulled tight, and a small helpless sound catches in my throat.
“You’re mine, Tiara.”
His voice is low and rough in a way I’ve never heard it.
“Say it.”
I don’t want to.
I don’t have any plans to.
I can feel my mouth opening anyway, working on something that isn’t quite a breath and isn’t quite a word.
But when I actually feel him about to withdraw his hold—
“P-Please—”
How shameful it is that it’s the threat of not touching him that makes me start losing my mind?
“Then say it!”
I don’t want to.
I don’t.
I don’t.
But the moment I feel cool air replace the heat of his touch—
“I’m yours.”
The words come tumbling out, and they hang in the air between us—quiet, small, impossible to take back. I can hear the shake in my own voice. I can hear how much it cost me, and I don’t know if he can hear it too, but I know from the way his face changes that he heard at least something.
Triumph glitters in his eyes.
And I don’t know—I just don’t know what to feel anymore about anything. I can’t even think. Because he’s good as his word, he’s touching me again, and this time, his fingers are moving me, claiming yet another part of my body.
Oh—
His eyes don’t leave mine as my own body starts to move.
I find myself clutching his shoulders as pleasure starts to build, tightening and tightening and tightening, and my head tips back against the pillow, and my legs are trembling against the sheets, and somewhere in the dim corner of my mind I can hear myself making sounds I don’t recognize—
A cry spirals out of my throat as his touch reaches all the way inside of me, so, so deep that he’s still a part of me as I shatter.
Arkane.
I collapse against the pillow, my chest heaving. He’s above me, watching me come back, and his eyes are on mine.
I really am his.
I feel the truth of it, the same way I felt it last time.
But this time there’s a second thought right behind the first one, and I can’t stop that one either.
But what about him?
Why am I not as sure that he’s also mine?