“Did you sleep on the top?”
“Of course,” he said, mock-offended. “Adamar never could stand heights.”
Her hand found the corner of the sketchbook. She looked at him—his jaw tightened. For a moment, he almost told her to leave it shut. But then he gave a silent nod.
The first page—a charcoal drawing of the tattoo on his side.
“You…”
“The morning after he died.” Viktor’s voice came low. “I sat here alone. Watched a raven land at my window. It just stood there. Silent. Like it was daring me to break.”
He shut his eyes, remembering.
Amerei only listened.
“I don’t know who moved first—me or the bird. But it took off in a single thrust, and I thought… if only I had wings, I could fly away too.”
His gaze shifted to the window, dark as the sea.
“It never left me. Not really. I’d see its shadow sometimes. So I sketched its feather. Paid the tattooist on Rand’s Cove twice the coin to keep his mouth shut and cut it into my skin.”
His mouth hardened.
“So no one could take him from me. Not again.”
Amerei didn’t look down at the sketch again. She closed the book and set it gently on the shelf.
Then she crossed to him, barefoot on the wood, and slid her fingers along his collar. Her eyes caught his, unflinching.
“And what do you need now, Tory?” she whispered, daring him to feel, daring him totake.
His gaze dropped to her mouth. Then lower. His body answered before his voice did. He stepped into her space, chest rising sharp against hers.
“I need…”
His voice was raw, almost breaking.
He drove her back until her spine struck the wall.
“I need to feel alive.”
Then he kissed her.
Not soft. Not slow.
Feral.
Her hands caught his jaw as he pinned her, one thigh sliding between hers. She gasped, his name breaking from her lips like prayer. His hands gripped her hips—starved, reckless.
“If I were in a dress,” she breathed against him, “you’d be on your knees right now.”
He froze for a heartbeat—picturing it.
Then a growl tore from him, low and hungry.
“I still might be.”
His thumbs slid beneath the waistband of her leggings, pausing just long enough to rasp, “Let me?”
