I want you to burn.
I want to watch you die, Dray.
In answer, he pushes the tip of his nose that bit closer to mine, a warning.
I grit out, “If you really want to know…” His fingertips dig even firmer into my bones. “I’ll tell you—but only if you stop.”
“Stop,” he echoes, and I swear the corner of his mouth curves, an almost smile. “Stop what, Olivia?”
“This.”
His grip tightens and forces my mouth apart. “This?”
I flinch as his other hand slaps to the meat of my thigh, just at the hem of my skirt, and firms.
His whisper sends chills through me. “Or this?”
The pad of his thumb brushes over my flesh.
The answer shudders out of me, “All of it.”
“I don’t like that deal.” The smile breaks free, and it’s lazy. “It isn’t balanced. But I can work with it.”
The hand on my thigh tightens even more, the indents of his fingers leaving the promise of bruises to come.
“Let’s strike terms,” he says, and brushes his lazy smile over my parted lips. “I will stopthis… and I will stop my—” That grin twitches against my lips, wider for a beat, like he thinks it’s all so funny, “—disfavour. But on two conditions. First, you tell me what you know about your father’s grievances with books on deadbloods.” He plants a ghost of a kiss on the corner of my mouth, a mouth I would clamp shut if his hand wasn’t forcing my lips apart. “Second, if you do not ask for it.”
A scoff catches in the back of my throat.
Ask for it…
When do I ever?
His smile falters,darkens.
“Do you need clarity?” His face draws back from mine, and the sheer cruelty of it strikes a bolt of ice through me. “I will be…kinder,” he says, and his teeth bare for the quickest of moments, as though it pains him to even say it, “so long as you behave.”
His hold on my jaw eases, fingers softening, until he’s merely holding my jaw as gentle as a loving caress from a man as evil as hell itself.
My answer comes strained, “Your idea of me behaving is not my own idea of it. It never has been.”
His smile fades. “No better time to learn than now. Perhaps your father has been too easy on you.”
The breath I draw in through my flaring nostrils does little to steady the flurry of rage in my chest.
That’s a fucking threat, and not just one meant for the halls of the academy. It’s one he doesn’t think I’ll understand, that his reach will go beyond Bluestone, past graduation, and he will be worse than Father ever has been.
My mouth trembles.
His hand drops from my jaw—and grabs onto my waist.
My heart is sinking, slow and heavy, all the way to my wormy gut. The bite of my fingernails digs so deep into the wood of the table that I’m certain it will leave permanent dents.
And he watches it, the rage battling the fear, the tears fighting against the curl of my mouth, he watches it all flash and fight over my face, in my eyes, as though it’s a performance, theatre.
He pulls me flush against him. “What do you want, Olivia?”
I feel him.
