A hand closes over my mouth.
The world snaps tight.
Cold seeps into my lips as the scent of him floods my senses—wet earth turned open, crushed moss, rain caught in dark soil. Another arm bands around my middle and drags me back against a chest that does not yield. My spine meets him. The hold is firm, unbreakable. My heart slams against his hand. I try to gasp but my cry dies against his skin, swallowed by his palm.
I struggle to draw air through my nose. His hold tightens. My back presses fully into him. I feel the shape of him along my spine, the stillness in his body, the terrible patience in it.
His breath brushes my ear. It carries the chill of night inside it.
"You’ve been dreaming of me."
His voice moves through me like a blade drawn slowly from its sheath. A shiver rushes through me.
"Shall I show you why?"
Before I can wrench free, he pivots us in a single motion. The room spins, my heels scrape against the floor. Firelight streaks across the walls and settles on the basin hanging beside the hearth. Its metal surface trembles with reflected flame.
Two shapes swim there, warped by the curve of metal. Mine floats pale and wide-eyed, stretched thin by the curve of the bowl. His looms behind me, folded around my shape. Shadow pours from him and spills over my shoulders. Dark hair falls across his brow, brushing my temple. His hands glow faintly against my skin, long fingers splayed, bloodless and certain.
The fire finds his eyes and kindles them red. The colour blooms in the basin, deep and living. It stains the curve of his gaze, spills across the thin metal until it seems the whole room is watching me through it.
His hand lifts from my mouth. Air rushes in, but I do not scream. I draw it through parted lips and feel his fingers linger. They follow the line of my jaw, tip my chin, drift down the column of my throat. My skin tightens beneath it. Every place he touches wakes in a single flare, alert and trembling.
His thumb finds the hollow of my throat and rests there. My pulse leaps against it. He feels it. I see it in the basin—the small flutter beneath his fingers, the way his gaze draws in as he watches it beat, a trapped bird beneath his hand.
He leans closer. His face shifts in the trembling metal as I watch his mouth open. Firelight breaks across, and something inside it changes. White glints where no light should catch. His teeth lengthen, fine to a point, unfolding with a quiet, terrible grace. The sight strikes through me. My breath falters. My stomach knots hard enough to ache.
The points hover at my neck.
Heat gathers there, a tight, aching focus. I feel the faint brush of his breath. It pools beneath my skin, spreads in slow circles. My heart hammers so hard it hurts. Each beat drives blood against the place where he waits. I feel it there, exposed and throbbing.
My neck tilts back before I understand the movement. The line of my throat opens to him. I watch it happen in the basin, my reflection baring itself with helpless clarity.
His lips stop a breath away.
"Say the word," he murmurs. "And I’ll taste you now."
My fingers close around his arm. I do not remember lifting them. They grip hard enough to feel the strength beneath his clothed skin. The fire snaps behind us. Its light shudders across the basin. His teeth gleam there, suspended above the frantic beat in my throat. My skin stretches toward his waiting mouth, aching for the contact I dread. The heat of him presses along my back. It seeps into me and settles low in my belly, heavy and insistent.
Terror beats against the inside of my chest. It tangles with something darker, heavier. The wanting coils through me, slow and deep. It draws my body toward him in small, helpless movements. I cannot pull away. I do not move. I stand caught between the urge to flee and the deeper pull that keeps my throat lifted, my fingers locked around him, waiting.
Before his mouth can close the distance, something tears loose inside me. A bright, violent surge that floods my limbs and finds my hands. Light spills outward. It moves through me in a silent rush, white and blinding, thick as breath in winter. The room shudders. The basin ringsagainst the wall. The door slams open as if struck from within, and he is hurled back through it, his body lifted and thrown into the storm.
He hits the ground outside hard enough to shake the threshold.
The wind rushes in, cold and wet. Rain lashes across the floor. I stagger back a step, my lungs dragging in air that burns.
For a moment I can only stare. He lies sprawled in the mud beyond the doorway, dark hair plastered to his face, pale hands braced against the earth. For a moment he does not move. Then he turns onto one elbow.
Blood slips from the corner of his mouth. It runs bright against his jaw, washed thin by rain. He looks down at it, almost curious, before he wipes it away with the back of his hand. Then his eyes lift to me, meeting mine across the distance. The red has dimmed, banked low, but there is no fury in his face, no snarl.
His mouth curves slow, almost tender, as if I have shown him something he has long been waiting to see.
My gaze drops to my hands.
They tremble in front of me, fingers still splayed, skin humming with the echo of what passed through them. I turn them slowly, watching the firelight slide over my palms. They look the same.
"Raveena?"
