To defy.
To burn it all to the fucking ground.
“Please,” the word slips out before I can stop it. I don’t even know what I’m begging for.
Hayden tilts his head, watching me in a way that sends ice down my spine.
Then, slowly, he raises his other hand, his fingers brushing against my chin before cupping my jaw. His thumb drags down feather-light, like he’s committing the shape of me to memory.
If he weren’t so cold, so utterly terrifying, I might mistake it for tenderness.
But I know better.
Because beneath the rage, beneath the grief, something else stirs.
A sick twisting ache curls in my stomach, heat licking up my spine. My body betrays me, nipples tightening against the silk, breath catching in my throat.
I want to kill him.
I want to obey him.
I want.
I swallow hard as he releases me, turning toward the car, shoving me away as if he can feel it too.
The loss of his touch is jarring. The clashing thoughts racing through my head and body are infuriating. There should be no reason my breath catches when I think of him. I should feel unadulterated hate, but instead, my desire to please outweighs my desire to continue my fit.
My breath comes in a gasping inhale, my hands curling into fists at my sides.
I can’t tell what I feel more as I teeter between need and rage.
Then, without another word, I climb into the car.
Chapter five
Hayden Herron
1996
I shouldn’t be here, but I’m back again anyway.
That’s what keeps looping in my head, over and over, as I shut her bedroom door behind me with two fingers soundlessly.
It’s after three, and the manor is dead quiet. No one is awake at this hour, not even the staff.
Her room is dark, but it wouldn’t matter anyway. I know my way around. There’s a lamp on the far side of the room, near her bookshelf, emitting a warm yellow light, not enough to hurt your eyes, but enough to see everything. She is afraid of the dark, I’ve noticed.
Her bed is placed in the dead center of the room—expensive wood and bedding, like everything else in this place. The sheets are white, tight, and crisp, like in a hotel.
She’s pulled the blanket down halfway in her sleep. One shoulder’s out, revealing tempting bare skin I’d like to bite down on to hear her yelp.
She doesn’t stir.
There's a coldness to her room, evident in the blatant lack of any personal touch. The house is all portraits, heavy velvet, and money, and you can smell it. Yet her room’s cold in a clinical way. Stone floors. Everything is white or muted. The essence of her personality is evident in the built-ins for her books, featuring rows and rows of color-coordinated hardcovers.
It’s spotless.
Not a sock on the floor. Not a single hair in the sink. The staff keeps it like a museum, and she prefers it that way.
