Instead, I whisper, “Fuck you.”
His grin is wicked, feral—the look of a man who has already won the war. “You will.”
I don’t breathe when he says it.You will.
It hangs there, heavy, obscene, like a hand around my throat, tightening with every second of my silence.
I force myself to laugh, a brittle, jagged sound like broken glass against my tongue. “You’re out of your mind.”
Peter doesn’t flinch. He just tips his head like he’s studying a specimen under a microscope, like I’m pinned under glass and twitching while he holds the scalpel, deciding where to make the first cut.
“Maybe.” His voice is low, smooth, too calm. “But tell me, Darling—why does that scare you less than wanting me back? Why is my madness the only thing that makes you feel alive?”
My skin prickles, a thousand needles of shame and need. I grip the table until the wood digs into my palms. If I let go, I’ll reach for him. If I let go, I’ll lose.
“Move,” I whisper, though I don’t make space for him to go.
He doesn’t. He stretchesfurther, his knee brushing mine under the table. Just a touch. Barely there. But my body jolts like he branded me with white-hot iron.
I try to pull away. The booth traps me. His thigh follows, relentless, pressing lightly against mine. It isn’t enough to be obscene—but it’s enough to remind me who owns the air in this room.
“Stop.” My voice cracks. I hate it.
His hand moves. Not fast. Not forceful. It’s a deliberate, predatory slide across the wood until his fingers hook—light, almost casual—around my wrist. He doesn’t squeeze. Doesn’t pin. He just rests there, warm, steady, his thumb dragging once, twice, across the inside of my pulse.
And my pulse betrays me. Slamming. Racing. Screaming in my veins like a choir of the damned.
His mouth curves, slow and cruel. “You always shake right here. Right under my thumb. You’re singing for me, aren’t you?”
I jerk my hand back. He lets me. The cold absence of his touch burns more than the heat of it did.
“Don’t,” I hiss, voice sharper than I feel inside.
“Don’t what?” His smirk deepens. “Don’t touch you? Don’t follow you? Don’t see you?” He leans forward, his breath brushing my cheek, his words silk-wrapped knives. “Darling, I’ve been breaking that rule since the first time you said my name and your voice shook with the weight of it.”
My throat locks. “I never?—”
“You did.” His eyes pin me, cold and blue and brutal as a winter sea. “You said it soft. Likea secret. Like you thought no one was listening. And I haven’t stopped hearing it since.”
I can’t look away. I can’t breathe. The space is too small. He’s too much.
“I shouldn’t want this,” I whisper.
His hand moves again. Not to my wrist this time—up, slow, until the backs of his fingers graze along my jaw. Barely there. A whisper of touch. It’s nothing. It’s everything. It’s a declaration of war.
My body goes still, traitor-frozen, my skin begging for the contact even as my mouth prepares to spit venom.
Peter smiles, sharp and wicked, like he just won a game I didn’t know we were playing. “But you do. You want it so bad you can taste the copper in the back of your throat.”
The words burrow into me, heat and shame and hunger all at once.
And I hate him.
And I hate me more.
His fingers graze my jaw once more, and before I can snap at him, he does it again—slower, deliberate, the rough pads of his knuckles tracing down to the hollow of my throat.
I stiffen. “Peter?—”
