“If you wanted my attention,” he hummed, his eyes dropping to my mouth as he stepped even closer, “You did not need to resort to such extreme measures.” The knife slowly dragged down, down, toward my lifted and proudly on display cleavage.
Right when he began to tease the top of my breasts with the knife, my nipples hardened. The knife was still coated in his own blood, and when I noticed some of it leaving a trail on my skin, that’s when I fully registered what he was saying.
“Excuse me?” I asked with a pant. I swallowed around nothing, my throat dry.
The corner of his mouth lifted, and his eyes locked on mine again. I watched in real time as his pupils kept expanding and contracting, almost filling the entirety of his golden irises as he leaned even closer, dragging the knife back up my chest, teasing the side of my neck.
“Stunning,” he whispered, ignoring my question. “…mine.” His tone changed to a low growl with the claim, and my knees almost buckled from the dominance he manifested with it. The one word from him melted parts of me I didn’t realize needed to thaw. My shoulders instinctively dropped. My jaw unclenched, and my lips parted.
Towering over me with his massive body, he studied me with an intensity that made me shiver. I had never, ever, felt so small. I was vulnerable, dressed in flimsy skirts and a corset that was feeling too tight. My nipples were probably poking holes through the leather, and I fought the urge to check.
But then I realized what he said.
Mine.
“Oh…” I breathed as I watched him lean down, his eyes on my lips. His intention was clear. I waited until his breath was able to fan my face. I considered letting it happen for half a second. Stealing at least one taste of him before I put a stop to this madness. My sudden, surging hormones were begging me to lean into him in return. He got so close that his face was blurry, before I finally forced myself to speak, “No.”
He froze; his lips close enough to ghost over mine. He stared at me, and I wondered if I was blurry in his vision, too, or ifHyvenmerians didn’t deal with blurry vision when in proximity as humans did.
But then his lips pulled back into a smile, and my confusion surged with my libido.
“No?” he asked with his devilish grin, softly dragging the knife along my jaw.
He still had the knife. The one I stabbed him with. This man was holding me against a wall at knifepoint. And yet my clit was throbbing.
Your arousal isn’t real. It’s just his sinndra. His sinndra.
I needed to get out of here.
“No.” I repeated and swallowed around a dry lump in my throat. “Actually, I should leave.”
Surprisingly, he nodded his agreement, but then he said, “With me.”
I snorted, surprised thatthatwas my reaction as he used the tip of the bloody blade to admire my dangly hoop earrings, creating a new wave of fire under my skin. His grin twitched, as if he found his own amusement in my reaction.
“No thanks.” I slowly shook my head, dislodging the blade from my earring with the movement. “I?—”
“Should leave with me,” he interrupted, taking the final step that closed the distance between us. Our chests were now completely flush together. His feet bracketed both of mine, drowning me in his body heat as he removed the blade from my skin, twirled it in his grip, and tucked his arm behind his lower back.
“No.”
“Why not?” he asked, leaning in to brush his lips against my jaw. I tilted my head back, hating myself just a little bit as I gave him more room to explore my skin.
“That’s—” I bit back a whimper as his lips gently nipped at my earlobe, before trailing up the shell of my ear. “That’s not how this works.”
His chest rumbled against mine, sending a new wave of shivers down my body as I clenched my thighs together even tighter, my underwear completely ruined.
“Then, tell me,” he whispered, his hot breath fanning my neck. “How will this work between us, Vanessa?”
Ohgod.
It was unfair how seductive he made my name sound. I didn’t remember my eyes falling closed, but I fluttered them open at the sound of him deeply inhaling my hair, as if breathing me in affected him as much as breathing in his scent affected me. It took every muscle in my body to hold perfectly still; to not start grinding against him like an animal in heat.
Then I realized something. I’d never once introduced myself to him. Alarm bells started going off in my head right when Audrey’s voice broke through our intimate moment.
“Vanessa?”
That was Audrey’s voice, and it made me jump.
