His fingers dig into my jaw, his thumb over my lips. “For a smart woman, you are so fucking stupid sometimes.”
I clench my teeth as Sylvan licks my ear, sensations overwhelming. Lust, anger, annoyance, desire,love.
“You could never be undesirable to me.”Faust tilts his head, leaning close, his lips hovering over mine.
I speak around his finger on my mouth. “No. You don’t understand. I bloat so easily. It looks like I’m nine months pregnant?—”
“You act like that deters us,” Sylvan says softly.
I roll my eyes even as my blood heats. “Yeah. Okay. You don’t understand.” I look at the table.
I refuse to think of Nolan.Did you do this to my head?But it wasn’t just Nolan, was it? It’s the pressure all women feel, like we have to contort ourselves into specific shapes to be desirable. I don’t know a single woman who hasn’t been, at least momentarily, crushed under the weight of it.
“Maybe not,” Faust says, and his tone is low.
I lift my eyes to his as Sylvan holds me close with his arm around my shoulders.
“But I do know I want a happy woman. I want a strong woman. I want a woman who chooses what she wants and takes it. I want a woman who tells the world to fuck off.Youare all of those things. Whoever convinced you to make yourself small, I’llspend the rest of my life clawing their voice out of your pretty little head.”
And as he holds my gaze, his dark eyes locked onto mine, and Sylvan my rock behind me, I almost believe him.
FIFTY-FOUR
NEVE
“Iknow you’re not wearing your glasses so maybe you didn’t see it, but…” Cynthia knocks her engraved tumbler against my own, some sort of raven etched across the pristine, heavy glass. “It looked a hell of a lot like you were cuddled up between FrostbiteandFaust Darling over there on that serpent green couch in the rich people shit living room.” She swallows the rum and pineapple juice chilled with ice.
Despite the sheer size of Castle Darling, the common rooms—kitchen, living room with the TV (there aremultipleliving rooms), even the bathroom right outside of it—are extremely warm. The gas fireplaces dotted along the lower level like other people might drop socks probably help.
Ormaybe it’s the matching drink to Cyn’s I have in my hand. The one I bring to my lips now and let burn down my throat. It’s my second one, and while I’m still clinging to some state of sober, it helps the draftiness in other parts of the castle, like walking down the darkened corridors. Or staring at Cynthia now as she pops a brow, expectant.
I take another drink. The pineapple is organic, the rum Appleton, and the ice comes from a compartment on the outsideof the door.Rich people shitisn’t wrong. I know this house was an inheritance, but having wealthy people in your family to inherit from is a luxury neither Cynthia nor I have been afforded.
“How worried should Tasia be about getting back her forward?” Cynthia presses as she nudges me with her shoulder. She’s trying to distract me, and it’s working.
I take another drink, leaning against the matte black counters. It’s like Castle Darling was made for me, an extension of Darkmouth, a few streets away. All this time on the same campus as Faust, and I never knew my own throne was here.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I know howIam, using sex as a weapon to cut off emotional ties. And while I feel like I’m slipping, I don’t want to. I’m too experienced with this kind of sabotage. A master at it, if you will.
Besides, where does Nolan fit into all of this? The shredded textbook, the fact he hasn’t been found, the quiet manhunt? Nolan is many things, and maybe he’s crazier than I realized, but he’s not a serial killer.
Which means someone on this campus is, and who is to say it couldn’t be the two boys who took me out, fed me, and both kissed my shoulder right in front of the waiter whose eyes lingered on me a little too long?
“Tasia better watch herself,” I say, my tongue loose from the alcohol, or maybe just the giddiness from Cyn, being with Tylone tonight in this house, and how free of judgment she seems for my choices. “If she tries again, we’re going to have problems.” No doubt Karter will report on everything she’s seeing tonight if Tas asks, but in my mind, that’s a good thing. Let Tasia know to back the fuck up.
Cynthia’s brows rise and she takes another drink in our quiet corner of the kitchen. Night has long fallen, and snow builds against the windowpanes. In here, it’s like we’re in our own little world.
Cyn swallows. “Good for you,” she says, and it sounds like she means it. “Now let’s talk about Darkmouth. Do we have a hostile takeover situation?”
My stomach twists. She doesn’t know about my meeting with Detective Lincoln. The shredded textbook. The fact Nolan seems to be hiding which, yes, makes him look guilty. But I’ve read about cases where innocent people run when the evidence feels stacked up against them and they have no one they can trust to hear them out.
The fact Nolan has been in Ontario since Canadian Thanksgiving without telling me makes me feel clammy, but it doesn’t mean he did anything. He could have been going through his own shit, and he’s always so attentive to mine, I just never thought to ask.
“What are you not telling me?” Cynthia asks, her tone sharp. I have a better poker face in front of quite literally anyone else. But with her, with this drink in my hand, the late hour, all the shit that’s gone down over the past few weeks, I amtired.
“Yes, Neve.” Sylvan’s voice is a cold purr from the back of the kitchen. My eyes jump to his as he leans against the doorway, his arms folded, his light gaze locked on my own. “Tell her all the secrets you’re keeping.”
