“You’re not okay?”
He shrugged.
“You don’t know?” I whispered.
His fingers strayed to the vitalsync core that was dull and dead over his heart.
My phone hurled itself around in my hand, reaching its furious crescendo.
Lucien’s gaze locked on it and everything he was feeling shut down. His unreadable mask slipped back into place as he crossed his arms, and ordered, “Answer it.”
Chapter Twenty
––––––––
FAT LOT OF GOOD MY ORGASM did me.
My body was on a damn roller coaster—burning alive in the bathroom only to find solace in Rook’s arms. I hadn’t planned on having my second ever release while still wearing my goddamn pants but...it’d happened.
Again.
And I couldn’t even care about the damp discomfort left behind because all that ashy, violent heat justwent away. She didn’t just calm me physically, she calmed me emotionally—dousing me in ice and cocooning me in snow, allowing me to breathe without setting fire to the bed.
For a few grateful moments, I found a pocket of existence that didn’t come with suffering but then...him.
“Well?” I hissed. “Are you going to answer it?”
Rook clung to that hated little device as if it might detonate in her palm and reveal everything she didn’t want me to know.
Back in Cinderkeep, I didn’t care who she was in the outside world.
I had no way of imagining her life before me or what she got up to outside my walls. I’d become so insular—so cut off from the rest of humanity—that I couldn’t picture what life looked like out there, so I literally had no drive to ask.
But now?
Now I wanted to knoweverything.
I wanted to tear her history wide open and rifle through every interaction, relationship, and secret.
“Do it,” I seethed, making Whisper chuff as if reminding me to contain my temper. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to stop ringing until you do.”
Her gaze landed on mine, her lips thinning with determination. “Just remember...Dillon is like an older brother to me.”
So what?
He was still a man and she wasmine.
I would happily slit his throat if he thought he could take her away from me—related or not.
My hands balled as heat flooded through my veins. Instinct urged me to go to her. To touch her. Kiss her. To bind myself to her so she could keep me cool enough that I didn’t burn the bed and breakfast down.
“Oh God, here we go...” Sucking in a deep breath, she stabbed her finger onto the green symbol and tossed it onto the mattress as if it was a live grenade.
She cringed away as if it truly was about to erupt—
“ELARA SNOWFLAKE! WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN?!”
Whisper growled, not liking another male’s voice bouncing off the walls.
