He feels it instantly, pulling back just enough to see my face. “What is it?”
I stare at him; the pieces snapping into place with sickening clarity. The mask. The voice. The brass tooth catching the light.
“Oh my God,” I breathe. “It was you.”
His expression shifts—confusion first, then understanding, then something rawer.
“Roxy—”
I shove lightly at his chest, needing distance, needing air. “You—at the masquerade—you…”
Lightning flashes through the window, cutting the room into gold and shadow. His features look dangerously familiar and make my stomach twist. But there’s a seriousness there.
He steps forward once, cautiously. “It can’t be…there’s no way.” But his eyes narrow, dragging down my body as if pulling the past into the future.
“How could I forget?” My voice cracks, part fury, part disbelief. “Six years, and you—” I can’t even finish.
The air feels thick enough to drown in. I back up toward the door, shaking my head. “I need to think.”
He doesn’t stop me. Just stands there, rain-slick and silent, watching.
Outside, the storm breaks wide open.
Inside, my pulse does the same.
Chapter 10
Makari
The storm breaks open around us, and a roar of rain slams against the roof, but all I hear is her breathing.
Roxy stands a few steps away from me with her back pressed to the wall like she’s bracing for impact or trying to disappear into the timber. Her hair is damp, clinging to her throat. Her chest rises and falls in angry, uneven pulls.
I saw it hit her.
The recognition.
The memory.
Me.
Her lips part, and something inside me snaps painfully, like a bone breaking clean.
I take a step forward. She takes a step back; instinctive and sharp. Her shoulders hit the wall with a soft thud, and she stares at me like she’s looking at a ghost, or maybe the monster behind the man.
My voice comes out low. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was you.”
“You didn’t orchestrate this?” she asks, voice high. “You didn’t find out who I was, and?—”
I shake my head. “How could I have? Don’t you think I would’ve found you sooner, hunted you down, so you’d stop haunting me?”
Her mouth snaps shut. She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to. I see it when her gaze drags down my chest, then jerks away. I see it when her hand trembles and then clenches into a fist. It’s like she’s fighting her own body.
I should stop. I know that. But there’s a current rushing through me that hasn’t stopped once in six years. I’ve thought of her ever since that night in the vault. The white satin bunched around her thick thighs. The way I lost myself in her, and found myself all over again when she wrapped her body around me.
“I didn’t know,” I say again, voice rougher than I intend.
She lets out a breath that sounds like a laugh formed from disbelief. “And you didn’t remember?”
