In that suspended moment, watching as the lights from the city danced across her skin, Greyson recognized a truth. There were aspects of her he was beginning to love. Not romantically, not sexually, but something more fundamental—her resilience, her fury, her refusal to bend. His whole life he’d bent for the Heart, his loyalty lying with no one and nothing, but her—she knew who she was and had no shame in that.
For one wild, insane second, he allowed himself to imagine taking her away from all this. Not just her—his mother too, Lira, Callum. Finding some way beyond the Heart’s reach, beyond New Found Haven itself.
The fantasy dissolved as quickly as it formed. There was no running from the Heart, from his father. There was no escape. No path that didn’t end in blood. The only way forward was compliance or resistance, and Greyson was done complying.
“We should go out,” he said suddenly as he stood, needing to offer something, anything.
Shadera turned to him, confusion breaking through her numbed expression. “What?”
“Out. Into the Heart. To the Entertainment District. You should see more than this apartment. Have something before—”
“Before I become your property,” she said dryly.
“Before we lose all our freedom,” he corrected softly. “We can go to Callum’s clubs. They’re safe from my father’s surveillance. You could drink yourself unconscious and I can check on Lira.”
Shadera studied him, suspicion warring with the curiosity in her expression. “Why would you offer that?”
Because I need to see you alive before they kill your spirit. Because I want to witness you uncaged while it’s still possible. Because I hate what I’m a part of, what I’m doing to you.
“Because,” he started instead, “the last time you were drunk here, you nearly burned the place down. I’d like to keep our home intact.”
Our home.
He hadn’t meant to say that. It was his home, not theirs.
A smile flickered across her lips, there and gone so quickly he couldn’t be sure he’d seen it at all. She considered the bottle in her hand, then set it aside.
“Fine,” she said, unfolding her legs from beneath her. “But I need to change first.”
She started to rise, wavering slightly as the alcohol hit her system. Greyson moved without thinking, his hand reaching out to steady her. His fingers closed around hers, the contact sending an unexpected jolt through his nervous system.
They froze like that, hand in hand, neither pulling away. Her skin was warm, calloused—marked with the scars of a life lived in violence. So different from the soft, pampered hands of Heart women.So real.
His thumb moved across her knuckles, tracing the edges of the numbers tattooed there. The contact shouldn’t have felt intimate. It was nothing, a moment of balance, of steadying. But his hand refused to release hers, and still, she did not pull away.
Between one heartbeat and the next his fingers were moving, tracing upward, following the lines of her tattoos, the ridges of her scars. Each mark a story, each scar a survival. His touch was light, giving her the opportunity to pull away—to push him away.
She didn’t.
His fingers reached her shoulder, paused on the ridge of an old wound—a bullet, maybe, or a knife. Then continued their path upward to the curve of her neck where her pulse hammered beneath his fingertips. Fast, but strong. Like her.
Greyson’s fingers flexed around her neck and Shadera’s eyes fluttered shut. Something dark and hungry unfurled in his chest at thesight, at the realization that she might share his preferences for rougher handling. For the edge of pain with pleasure.
His thumb pressed slightly against the hollow beneath her jaw, testing, and her breath caught audibly. Not in fear—he knew fear intimately, could taste it on the air when present—but in something else. Something that mirrored his own suppressed hunger. He hardened against his will as her pulse responded to his touch despite everything between them.
“We should go.” He forced the words out, his voice rough with restraint.
For a moment, he thought she might lean into his touch, might acknowledge whatever current was flowing between them. Instead, her eyes snapped open as she jerked away.
She cleared her throat, eyes not meeting his.
“I’ll change.” The words were clipped and cold as she pushed past him, striding back inside and shutting the glass door behind her with more force than necessary.
Greyson’s feet remained rooted in place, his body humming with unwanted desire, with self-disgust, with confusion. He reached for the abandoned vodka bottle and took a long pull, letting the alcohol burn down his throat, hoping it might cauterize whatever wound had just been opened between them.
Chapter twenty-three
Four Hours
