We’re so close to one another, and to my surprise, he places one palm flat against the wall behind me, then the other, caging me in. Still, he doesn’t touch me. Never. His gaze drops to my chest, to the hard outline of the bars under pink fabric. “Pull the straps down. Show me what’s mine.”
My hands obey before my brain catches up. The leotard peels away; cool air hits flushed skin, and my nipples tighten painfully around the silver. He drinks in the sight, and I know that even if he won’t touch me, he wants me. That much is obvious.
“Touch them,” he commands. “Slow. Then hard. Don’t close your eyes. Look at me while you do it.”
I roll the bars between my fingers: twist, tug, and twist again. The sting shoots straight down to the swollen, forbidden place between my legs. My breath stutters.
“Good,” he praises, voice rough. “Again. Harder. Imagine my teeth.”
I do. God, I do. My hips rock forward, chasing friction that isn’t there. He watches every involuntary jerk, every shudder, with his pupils blown wide.
“I wouldn’t just toy with those bars, Arianette.” His hand runs down the front of his pants, cock throbbing at the seam. “I’d sink my teeth in, biting down on your flesh, waiting for you to scream.”
A rush of warmth pools between my legs. He looks down and inhales deeply.
“You’re dripping down your thighs,” he says, conversational and cruel. “I can smell it. You’re not allowed to touch that pretty newpussy piercing yet, but you’re going to come just from this, aren’t you?”
“Yes—” It’s half sob.
“Then do it. Come for me, Hex. Right now. Quiet.”
I pinch and pull one last time, so hard my vision whites out. The orgasm slams through me, silent and brutal, thighs clamping together around nothing while I sag against the wall. He doesn’t move to catch me; he lets me ride it out on my own, shaking, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes.
When the aftershocks fade, he steps in close enough that his hoodie brushes my bare breasts. Close enough that I feel the heat of him everywhere except where I need it most.
He reaches down, tugs my straps gently back into place, fingers lingering on the collar at my throat. The gentle movement… well, it’s unexpected, but the goosebumps that spread across my skin aren’t from arousal. It’s trepidation. Hunter doesn’t touch me for a reason that I don’t understand, but my body is sure of one thing: he isn’t safe.
“Fix your face and get yourself together,” he says. “I got a text from Graves. You’re going out with the King tonight.”
“I’m doing what?” I ask, knees still shaky. But he’s gone, melting back through a service door I didn’t even see, leaving me wrecked and trembling in the dark.
10
Timothy
I fastenthe last button of my charcoal shirt and slide into the slate-gray suit coat Graves holds out for me. The fabric is heavy, expensive, the kind that whispers money and menace in the same breath. My reflection in the mirror is all hard lines and hollowed shadows. My mid-forties look good on me.
“You don’t have to take her,” Graves says, voice low, handing me my wallet like he’s handing me a loaded gun. “It may be too soon.”
Too soon.
The phrase rattles around my skull like loose change. Too soon after the fire that destroyed Strong Manor and killed Owen Hexley. Too soon after the cage she was kept in, just feet from my bed. Too soon after the river ritual, when my Barons dragged her out shivering and half-drowned, water streaming down her body, and she looked at me with those wide, reverent brown eyes, as though I were both salvation and damnation in one breath.
I still see it when I close my eyes. She didn’t cry. She didn’t look away. She looked at me like I hung the fucking moon.
Arianette wants this life.
I’m just not the man to give it to her. Not for real. And I sure as hell don’t think she has the mental fortitude for it. I’ve seen the result of that particular journey.
“Societal propriety doesn’t give a fuck about my personal timelines,” I’ve dressed for war in dining rooms before. “It’s expected that I show off my new bride.”
Graves arches a brow. “When do you do what’s expected?”
I meet his eyes in the mirror. “When it can get me closer to what I want.”
Tonight, the mayor is hosting a cocktail hour at his brownstone, but everyone knows the real currencies traded in those rooms are whispered rumors and blood-oath promises. I need ears inside that house. I need favors called in. And a beautiful, young, obedient wife on my arm is the fastest way to remind the old guard that the Baron King is still a man to be feared, not pitied.
Graves produces the mask: matte black, high-cheeked, crowned with gold-tipped horns that curl like smoke. The House of Night’s formal attire. I slide it over my face; the weight is familiar and comforting. It hides the worst of the exhaustion.
