“Not yet you’re not,” he muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Come with me.” He grabbed my wrist and dragged me back the way I’d come. Whisper grunted in welcome as Lucien carted me toward the centre of the living room where the massive chandelier shone the brightest.
Placing me in front of him, I waited for him to let me go.
He didn’t.
His dark gaze locked on mine, piercing and intense. I swallowed hard as his fingers tightened around my wrist. My pulse slowly climbed, the longer we stared at each other.
Whisper glanced between us, nudging my hip with his nose, breaking the spell between me and his master.
Lucien let me go with a cough.
My cheeks burned.
Nervousness made me blurt, “What are you doing?”
His lips tightened, hard and unamused. “Teaching you something.”
“Teaching me...” I studied him, trying to ignore how good he looked dressed all in black, how severe and deadly. My traitorous heart skipped a beat that had nothing to do with him dragging me back here.
My mind fled back to last night and the accusations Evelyn and Lydia had hurled.
“You expect us to believe he’s that generous to you for no reason?”
“What is it about you that he finds so tolerable?”
Their voices stuck in my head like a thorn...because they had a point.
Why was he so generous to me that he’d willinglybledhimself? What made me so different, apart from being able to ease some of his pain?
“What are you thinking?” He leaned forward, his spine curving until our faces were close. His nostrils flared as if scenting all the things I wouldn’t reveal. “Tell me. Why have you gone...sad?”
“Sad?” I backed up, unable to handle his scalding intensity. “I’m not sad.”
“Are you angry that I haven’t let you leave?”
The way he said it...the way he swooped back to his tall height with a callous sneer—like he was guarding himself. His words were sharp, but his eyes were pained.
My heart crashed against my ribs in shock. Delusion.Definitelyhad to be delusion.
The way he exhaled sharply, straightened too quickly, his careful mask slamming back into place—it hurtled me back to the almost-kiss we’d shared in my room when he’d thrown me on the bed and used me as a strange sort of painkiller.
I’dfeltthings that night.
Istillfelt those things but...I’d thought they were one-sided.
However, the way he watched me—the way the air went thick and tingly the longer we stared.
I stopped breathing.
He...he couldn’t feel the same, could he?
The thought was utterly absurd, yet...there was something...
The longer we stood there, just the two of us—like it had been for over a month—I began to wonder.
