Visions of me pinning her down, ripping her dress, suckling on her damn pointy nipples, and feasting on her wet pussy fill my mind. I want to taste her honey at the source. I want to know what she sounds like when she comes apart with me buried deep inside her.
“Fuck. Stop, Lana. Stop. You’re drunk.” Sweat beads on my upper lip, but I can’t step away.
She hums again. Beethoven’s melody.Ourmelody. Her fingers reach for my buttons.
“I saidstop!” I wrench away with my last remaining willpower. “Are you that desperate for a man, you’d go for someone who treats you like shit?”
Lana flinches, her eyes widening with shock, then hurt. The intoxicated haze clears.
I want to take back the words, but they’re necessary. There can’t be any feelings between us. Unless it’s animosity.
“Ihateyou, Elias Kent. That,” she motions to the air between us, “was a drunken mistake. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
With my thoughts spinning, my inhibitions at a breaking point, I pivot, walk out of the room, and slam the door behind me.
It can never happen again.
Chapter 25: THE APOTHECARY’S BLOOM
“Can you not talk,or is this a choice?”
Ren shuts the car door behind me without answering. He’s in his usual super spy, deadly assassin getup: black leather jacket, black jeans, black boots—everything black. Aside from his wool gloves, the man seems impervious to the winter elements.
Tattoos snake up his throat, thorned vines I spotted on Elias’s arms. His mask hides half of his face, but those brown eyes are sharp enough to cut glass.
“Do you have a last name? Why don’t you take off your mask?”
He presses a hand to my back, urging me along. An icy December gust flutters my thick wool skirt. The sun peeks from behind the clouds, scattering shards of cool light across the snow-covered cobblestones of Waverly Street, barely ten minutes uphill from Elias’s house.
Or, I guess, my gilded cage now.
To the east, Ashbourne Heights gleams with old-money mansions with front-row views of Lake Michigan. To the west, darkness fades into Saints Hollow and its cracked bricks, flickering streetlights, and lingering ghosts.
The mysterious room on the third floor remains locked. I’ve stopped trying for now. I should just buy a hacksaw, but I’m sure the Shadow King won’t let me.
Elias Kent is a conundrum I can’t solve. He’s violent, a cold-blooded murderer who seems to have some sort of moral code. He’s cold one minute and hot the next.
He’s someone who’d say, “I hate you,” but would give me his coat and umbrella amid strong winds and heavy snow.
And that drunken incident in the library? My skin heats at the spotty memories. I can’t believe I came onto him. It was definitely the alcohol and not me.
Absolutelynot me, the rational me, that is.
Elias has made himself scarce these days.
Aside from the crude diagram of The Association’s org structure, I have found no more dirt on him or the Berishas. No mysterious phone calls or shadowy visitors.
His office? Always locked.
I want to scream at the top of my lungs. Not that anyone would care.
But at least my family is doing well at home. Maxwell has fully recovered, and he and Rex check in on me weekly. They promise me they’re looking into the Berishas and The Association. The girls still think I’m jetting across the world.
I want more than anything to go back. Away from this lonely house and its shadowy owner, away from the threat of violence and the uncertainty of my future.
So, to keep myself from going mad, I’ve started exploring the border of Saints Hollow and Ashbourne Heights.
