My breath catches in my throat, chest rising too fast again. But I lift my chin. Straighten my spine. No running, no pleading. I’ll stand my ground.Whatever happens, I’ll take it. As long as she’s safe, Ezzy’s safe.
His gaze finds mine, furious, unflinching as my fingers twitch toward the hilt of Ezzy’s blade. But then?—
Something shifts, just for a second, a flicker behind his mask—not rage, not even disappointment.Grief?
He swallows hard. His voice comes low, almost gentle.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “This will be over soon.”
Wait—what?
But I don’t get to ask, because suddenly he’sthere.
One hand snaps around the back of my neck, rough and unyielding. The other grips my waist as he yanks me forward?—
And then his mouth crashes into mine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The sound of the room rushes back the instant our lips collide.It swells, closing in until the only thing left is him—the heat radiating off his body, the solid weight of his hand, thetasteof him flooding my mouth.
Smoke and something sharper, like burnt sugar laced with old-blood privilege.
I drown in it, bittersweet and lethal, my stomach coiling tight and heavy, and my knees nearly buckle before I can lock them.
What is he doing?
What am I doing?
I should shove him off. Draw a blade, carve a lesson into his ribs.He’s the enemy. An officer. A Veirmont. Why the fuck isn’t my dagger in his gut already?
Because my Threads are empty.
I’m empty.
And his mouth is on mine—and all I can feel isfire. The rasp of his lower lip drags against mine, the scrape of his stubble catching at the corner of my mouth. There’s no gentleness. No hesitation. Just demand. Like he’s set on ripping out the treacherous part of me I only face in my dreams.
And god help me, my ribs lift forward before the rest of me can protest.
This wasnotthe plan. I was supposed to get a new duck, then baithim. Let him think he’d broken through just long enough to get what I needed.
But when I try to shift, to slip away, his hand is quicker, flattening over the curve of my lower back, rough through the thin fabric, before it anchors, pulling me into him.
No escape. Only heat and muscle, and the crush of his mouth, relentless, pressing into me, twisting resistance into something else—somethingwrong. Because the pulse that followsisn’tfear.
I brace to shift again, but he just catches the back of my neck, fingers drag up into my hair as his lips move across mine, harder, deeper.
A shiver darts down my spine.
It should terrify me.
It should make me shove him away, strike, do something, anything.
But I wasn’t ready forthis.
Hell, I don’t even know whatthisis.
All I know is the taste of him—danger wrapped in secrets—and the way my Threads respond like they’ve been caged,starving,since the moment I saw him in the courtyard, finally sinking their teeth into something they have been forbidden to consume.
