“You.”He finishes for me, circling his fingers tighter around my bones, skimming his thumb across my lips.
I needyou.
I shiver involuntarily, loving the sensation of his unguarded hands on me.
If this was a different place, another time, I could get lost in it. In him.
I shake my head once, as if I can focus better that way. As if I don’t lose all semblance of rationality when he cradles me in this manner. “Sullen.” I swallow thickly.
There is a scuffling noise behind me, and I jump, but don’t look away or pull from him. I don’t ask him to repeat what he just said, even though I want to hear it a thousand times. Maybe while he fucks me. Maybe while he breathes the words into my mouth.
“Where are we going?” I ask instead.Where could we possibly go? How can we get out of their reach?
He angles his head and I find myself struck once more at the beauty of his face. The lines and slopes of bone beneath his skin. I don’t allow myself to look too closely at the cut across his cheekbone, oozing blood from Stein’s weapon.
But in my mind, I see him looming behind his father, a satisfactory smirk on his lips as he choked Stein Rule.
Heat flares in my low belly. I curve my fingertips into his chest, stepping closer as if compelled.
“Is there somewhere else?” he asks quietly, never looking away from me. “For her?”
Confusion threads through my thoughts but before I can ask him to clarify, Sanford speaks at my back. “Don’t make a hero’s mistake, Sullen Bram. Leaving her behind will agonize you both.”
His dark gaze cuts to Sanford. A small line forms between his brows. “You wanted me to give her up,” he says, a dangerous edge lining his words. “You tried to separate us,remember?”He doesn’t speak a threat, but his tone conveys the same thing.
“That was before.” Sanford sighs, a rattly sound in his chest. “It is far too late for that now. You will get through this, or you will die together. I can see it, in the both of you.”
Sullen’s jaw jumps but his deep brown eyes lower to mine.
He doesn’t disagree.
Neither do I.
Chapter 13
Sullen
Climbing the ladder to emerge from the trickery of a well is agony.
After I throw down the green velvet travel bag my alleged grandfather managed to secure for us and carried through most of our escape onto the forest floor, I dig my fingertips against the cobbled stone and pull myself up.
The ache and ice along my stomach screams, but when I leap over the stone circle of the fount and drop down into the damp, thick grass and dead leaves surrounding it, my gaze finds her, and I swallow all of the pain.
She has her arms crossed over her chest, her body hunched in my shirt, cerulean eyes seeming to glow in the thick, rain-dipped forest surrounding us. A trickle of water drops along my spine and I straighten, clenching my teeth as I remember I am without a shirt.
I don’t dare look down.
I can’t bear to see myself.
My only consolation is the night around us, crickets and other creatures echoing in the darkness. The cool temperature is welcome, after the strange stifling nature of the undergroundtunnel with its bizarre green lights and, as we made our way deeper, the stench of rotting meat.
I did not ask.
Neither did Karia.
We do not want to know what the monsters have done here.
Thinking of her flinching away from me as I touched her face sends unpleasant bats beating angry wings inside my gut. It was because of Stein; because he almost hurt her.
