“You say that a lot.”
“Only when I don’t know what to say.” I’m flabbergasted and filled with something I don’t dare try to define.
His eyes rake over me appraisingly. “Let me see it,” he commands, grasping my hand and pulling it gently toward him. It’s dark in here and we’re heading away from town, so I don’t know why he’s bothering.
“It’s covered. How did you know I got a tattoo?”
“I told you. I’ve been driving around. I saw you go inside the shop.”
“And you waited for me?”
He doesn’t reply to that for a few moments, and he doesn’t release my hand either. He’s holding it as he drives us down a dark, winding street, his headlights the only illumination out here now that we’ve left the town walls.
“I figured you might need a break. You never get one.”
“I didn’t think that was allowed. Indentured servant and all.”
His thumb drags over my knuckles. “Does it really still feel like that for you?”
“No.” It feels like magic and everything I’ve been dreaming of for the last two months since I met him. For my whole life. It feels like everything my dad told me I should find, and I frown at that thought. Because, no, the king of Messalina is not what he told me I should find.
“Tell me what you got.” He releases me, and I clasp my hands together, my skin tingling. I can’t stop staring at his profile, barely illuminated in a blue glow from the dash. He is very much a man, and in so many ways, I am still very much a girl. The distinction between us isn’t a turnoff though. If anything, it’s far too erotic and delicious for me to delve into.
“My father reminded me of something today when I saw him that I haven’t always been the best about doing. He said, ‘Choose your heart and follow its passion.’ I had that inked in a pretty scroll and an open book with little sparks of light coming out of it.”
“What are the sparks of light for?”
“Possibility. Endless possibility.”
With both hands on the wheel now, he clutches it tighter. “Sounds like you” is his only reply, but it’s low and a bit tense.
I want to ask him why he left the palace. Whyhecame for me. A man who holds so much fear at the prospect of leaving his home, of allowing his children to leave the home.
“I wasn’t sure if you might reconsider…coming back to the palace,” he says softly, almost as if reading my thoughts. “I know when you left your father’s and I know you didn’t immediately go to the bus.”
“How do you know that? Come to think of it, how did you know where I was?”
“Tracking on your phone, Bellamy. You gave Javier your phone when you first took the job so he could install apps on it. Remember?”
“Yes. He said those were security ones. Like a panic button.”
“And a tracking app. If you were ever taken, or are with mychildren and something happens, we’d need to know immediately where you are.”
I scowl. A deep resonating scowl, and all that delicious ooey-gooeyness I was reveling in because he came to find me just imploded. “That’s an invasion of privacy.”
He nods in agreement. “Yes. You work for the king of Messalina and his family. I thought you knew it was on there. You agreed to it when you signed the forms.”
I fold my arms over my chest only to wince slightly as my new ink rubs my sweater. I flip my wrist but continue to sulk a bit. I mean, I get the rationalization behind it, and I did sign all kinds of paperwork I clearly didn’t read as closely as I should have. But it feels intrusive. Especially when he used it today. But…ugh. Fine! He stalked me here and I don’t even care the way I’m trying to.
“Why would you think I wouldn’t return to the palace? I work there. All my things are there.”
“We forced you into this position from the start, and then when you left your father’s and walked around and didn’t return my text, I got worried.” He frowns. The man always frowns. Even when he smiles, I swear it’s still there.
“How long were you watching me on the tracking app or whatever?”
He locks eyes with mine for the briefest of moments, intense and raw. In it, I see more than I ever have before. This thing between us is growing. It’s multiplying. I don’t even know what you’d call it. It’s nothing real or discussed. It lives and breathes in the shadows of our minds. We’re fighting it. But I’m losing the battle day by day, and it seems he is, too.
I want to push him over the edge and have us both dive into the abyss. A place where there is no end.
