"You're bleeding," I say, leaning forward.
Before I can think better of it, I hook a finger under her chin and pull her towards me, drawing her wounded lip between my own and sucking gently. The taste of copper tantalizes my tongue. Her breath catches, body going completely still.
I know I should stop, but I can’t.
When I finally release her, I stay close enough that our breath mingles in the darkness of the car. Her eyes are wide, stunned.
"You don't know what you've done," I tell her quietly, the words coming from somewhere deeper than I’ve ever known. "You're mine now."
She blinks, confusion and something that looks dangerously like heat, flickers across her face.
I sit back, breaking the moment before I do something I'll regret. Or something I won't regret enough.
The estate gates come into view, iron rising out of the darkness like something permanent and unyielding. She watches them open, her breath catching just slightly. I wonder whatarrangement she thinks she’s made with me. I wonder what I’m going to turn her into.
The car rolls forward, carrying us both into whatever this is going to become.
Matilda
The kiss shouldn't have felt like that.
Except it wasn't a kiss.
Was it?
I keep replaying it in my head, trying to make sense of what just happened. His thumb on my chin. The way he pulled my lip free from between my teeth like he had every right to touch me. Then his mouth closing over the small wound I'd made.
You don't know what you've done. You're mine now.
The words settle under my skin like a brand, hot and permanent and impossible to ignore.
I press my fingers to my mouth, half-expecting to feel something different. A mark, maybe. Evidence of the moment. But there's nothing except the faint throb where I bit too hard and the ghost of his breath still warming my lips.
My heart is racing. Has been racing since he touched me. I don't know if it's fear or something else, and that uncertainty terrifies me more than anything else that's happened tonight.
He didn't kiss me. Not really. He just… tasted me.
Claimed me.
The thought makes my stomach flip in a way that has nothing to do with nausea.
I steal a glance at him. He's looking straight ahead now, jaw tight, one hand resting on his thigh while the other props against the window. Like nothing happened. Like he didn't just put his mouth on mine and say words that sounded like both a promise and a threat.
You're mine now.
What does that even mean?
I'm still wearing his jacket. It smells like him and I pull it tighter around my shoulders even though I'm not cold anymore. The shaking has stopped. When did that happen?
I should be mourning my brother, crying for my family, regretting every choice I made tonight. Instead, I'm sitting in the back of this car trying to figure out why the Pakhan's mouth on mine felt less like a violation and more like… inevitability.
Like he was right.
Like I am his now, and some part of me doesn't hate the idea as much as I probably should.
The car turns, and I watch the gates of his estate come into view. Iron rising out of the darkness like something permanent and unyielding.
You don't know what you've done.
