“Put your hand in mine.” There was something in the way he said it, as if the order was laced with concern. Like he was dealing with a cornered animal that needed taming.
I started to shake my head, not above pleading with him, when he told me sternly,
“Anyone but me touches you, and they die…now give me your hand, my Inanna.”
I swallowed hard, and against my better judgment, I placed my hand in his. After which he helped me from the car, and the moment my heels touched the ground, he shifted position,stepping in behind me. The size difference between us became impossible to ignore. Even in my heels, he towered over me, his presence enveloping instead of just sharing the space. His hands came around me with careful slowness, his arms wrapping easily about my frame until I was fully encased against him.
I could feel the solid warmth of his chest against my back, and the unmistakable strength in his abdomen and arms as they curved around me. It was not crushing. It was controlled…completely intentional.
A cage made of flesh, so that this little mortal couldn’t run.
Then his palm rose and gently covered my eyes, startling a breath from me.
“What are you doing?” I demanded quietly.
He leaned down, his breath brushing the shell of my ear as he murmured,
“Trust me.”Those two words settled into me before I could resist them.
Then I felt it.
A subtle ripple in the air, like static before a storm, brushed across my skin and lifted the fine hairs along my arms. The temperature shifted slightly, not colder, not warmer, just charged somehow. The sensation made me shiver instinctively against him.
“No need to tremble in my arms,” he murmured quietly. But before I could respond, his hand dropped away from my eyes.
I blinked once, twice, trying to make sense of what I was now seeing…or should I say not seeing.The warehouse was gone. And in its place stood something so breathtakingly out of place that, for a moment, my mind refused to process it.
Rising before us was a sprawling manor of dark stone and arched windows, its architecture both ancient and impossibly pristine. Vines curled elegantly along carved pillars, and lanterns glowed warmly beside a grand entrance. A pair ofwrought iron gates framed a sweeping path that had not existed seconds ago. It looked less like a hidden home and more like something drawn from legend, a castle concealed within the bones of the city itself.
“How…?” I breathed, unable to tear my gaze away.
“How is this possible?”I whispered in astonishment as he stepped beside me now, no longer restraining me against him but close enough that his presence still felt like that of my captor.
“People see what I allow them to see,” he said simply.
“Nothing more,” he replied smoothly, and my mouth gapped.
“Hiding in plain sight,”I whispered.
A faint smile touched his lips.
“Precisely.” He took my hand again, this time not to steady me but to guide me forward.
The great doors ahead were nothing like the battered metal slab I had once pounded on. They were tall, intricately carved, polished to a deep sheen that reflected the lantern light like molten gold. My pulse quickened.
“So, shall we see how comfortable your gilded cage truly is?” he said lightly, though the edge of something darker threaded beneath it, and my look said it all.
His eyes glinted with amusement.
“After all, every rare bird deserves a home worthy of her,” he added, lowering his voice as he guided me toward the entrance, earning a low growl from me that only made him laugh in return.
But then, as we got closer, I couldn’t help but fixate on his words, asking myself, if this was my cage…
Did that make me his…
Human pet?
25
