I lifted it back up, smoky red rivulets catching in the light. This was his blood? Goose bumps shuddered on my skin.
The author wore her husband’s petrified heart as a necklace.
It meant more to me than all the diamonds and jewels men had gifted me. This was something I’d told Grim once, years ago and never again. Yet he’d remembered.
I gingerly placed it back in the box to get dressed. It still shocked me how prepared he was, how similar this was to my closet at Crowne Hall.
I dragged my fingers through rows of pink, the fabric cascading off my fingertips like a waterfall. This was what Gemma Crowne was supposed to wear.
I pulled out a black dress. The front dripped down to my navel, exposing the sides of my breasts. It fit like snakeskin and shone like black scales. For a finishing touch, I put on the necklace. The red diamond teardrop fell right between my breasts.
I gave myself a final once-over in the mirror.
Sexy. Gothic. Intimidating. Not somethingAmerica’s Princessshould wear. SomethingIwould wear.
Grim and the Horsemen were already downstairs. They talked about something I couldn’t hear. Raze shoved Lock and then they laughed. They looked sinful in their black tuxedos. Illicit and expensive. There was something dangerous to it, different from all the black suits and tuxes I’d grown up with. An undercurrent of power rippled, like they were escaped demons and the fabric barely contained their true nature.
My foot hit the steps and Grim spun at the creak, eyes locked on me even as the Horsemen continued their conversation. The look in his eyes could sear the clothes off my body.
The moment my foot touched the bottom floor, Grim snaked his arm around my hip and dragged me into a rough, consuming kiss.
When he pulled back, my body and mind still swirled with him. My hands on his chest, I stared at the silky black fabric, dazed. Dizzy. Couldn’t think. He squeezed my hip, as if trying to drag me back into the present. I curled my fingers into the silky black fabric on his chest and he lifted the necklace at my neck. Playing with it.
I think I heard someone say toget a room, but I could barely focus.
“Are we doing this shit or are you going to spend the night eye-fucking?” Lock asked.
Grim released the pendant, soothing it against my skin, palm lingering on my chest. Together, we walked down to the garage. Grim held the front door open for me as the others got into the back. I caught their gazes in the rearview, the first time I’d been in the car slamming into me.
Grim grabbed my hand, dragging it into his lap.
We arrived two hours past the party’s start time. Spotlights lit up the sky. A red carpet that led around the houseto the garden had been draped over the cobblestone. Paparazzi lingered behind velvet ropes.
“Okay,” I said as Grim maneuvered past the valet, into a more clandestine area. “Wraith and Raze, you will already be in the maze by the time he enters. Once he enters, Grim and Lock will follow close behind. The way to get to the right location?—”
“Left, right, left, left, right,” Lock said, yawning. “We know, princess.”
I worked my mouth.
It was less that they were ignoring the potential consequences of what we were doing, and more that they were okay with it. Okay with their life crumbling. With dying.
For me.
We sneaked past the paparazzi and stopped just before the garden. Nerves shimmered in my blood, but this time not for our plan. Soft laughter and the clattering sounds of a party drifted around the corner. My cage. The world I’d lived in as an idea, not a person. I glanced down at my black dress. This world was like footprints in the snow. It was not that I wanted to go back, but I knew the steps so easily?—
Grim dragged me by the back of my neck into a brutal kiss, interrupting my panic spiral. His other hand knotted in my hair, tongue diving into my mouth.
With the hand in my hair, he tugged my face back, angling me to get deeper access to my mouth. When I opened wider, his growl was my praise. He kissed me until I couldn’t think. Until I couldn’t remember where I was or anything but him and his teasing, torturous tongue. His hand tugged at my hair just enough to make me gasp as his tongue stroked, gentle and punishing. Pain and pleasure swirled into perfect glissando.
I melted into the intoxicating dichotomy.
I stopped trying to hold myself up and let him keep me steady. I melted. Melted into him, into his grip on my neck, the other in my hair, keeping me possessed. Safe.
“Good girl,” he praised against my lips when he felt me slacken into his touch, submitting.
A cough sounded.
Everything came rushing back—where we were, what we were doing. The string quartet and low hum of conversation was like water breaking through a dam.
