I wasn’t sure whether he appreciated this, whether he was impressed, or whether this only made him even more suspicious of me than he already was.
“I know your body, Velvet,” he breathed after a while, and my heart jumped, almost all the way out of my mouth. My skin crawled, my toes curled, and heat poured all over my insides, gathered between my legs. “But maybe I just imagined it. Maybe it’s all in my head from the unholy amount of minutes I’ve spent analyzing you.”
My eyes squeezed shut and all those drawings I’d made with my own hands flashed in my mind’s eye, details of him that I knew by memory butshouldn’t.
Had I spent an unholy amount of minutes analyzing him, too? It felt like I always was now—but before?
“Maybe.” March’s voice pulled my eyes open. “But I still need to see. I still need to confirm it.”
No,my mind told me.
It was okay. He was out there and I was in here and we were together, just…not close. And this was okay.
“I don’t trust you,” he said next, and that made those gears and cogs go wild in my stomach again, even though I knew this. I always knew this—hedidn’ttrust me.
“Which is funny because you’re keeping me grounded.” His voice faded away. “The only thing…”
But he never finished the sentence.
I waited, seconds and minutes, my whole being focused on what he was going to say next, but he never did. He just sat there on the other side of the door with me, and he listened to my silence, and I listened to his.
My eyes had closed by the time I heard him standing up. My heart jumped again, this time for sure demanding to be let out of my body altogether. I jumped to my feet, too, and I strained my ears, and I pressed one to the wood of the door to hear better.
A sigh, long and deep.
March must have been leaning against the door still because he pushed himself off, and the wood groaned just slightly.
Then came his footsteps as he walked away, one and three and six.
A door opened.Hisdoor, next to mine. His bedroom door.
It was impossible to keep myself in control. Impossible to stop my body from moving. Impossible to remind myself of all the reasons why this was wrong.
Before I knew it, I’d unlocked the door and I’d pulled it open, and I was standing by the threshold while March stood by his and watched me.
Unblinking, breath held, body frozen for a good moment.
Words popped into my head—stay; go; don’t come back; don’t come out of that room again—and they all died on my tongue.
March moved.
His door slammed closed. His boots slammed against the floor. His lips slammed onto mine.
I surrendered.
35
His hands were on my face, mine wrapped around his wrists. He pushed me back with ease, and my legs moved in perfect rhythm with his. I was inside my room again, and the door swung closed behind him, and March didn’t stop. He kissed me and pushed me and pressed his body against mine until the back of my knees hit the edge of the bed.
Then he let go of me, lips and face and all, and watched me fall.
My body could have been possessed.
I was wearing that same nightgown again, black with lace and velvet, and the way he looked down at my body underneath it could have been a figment of my imagination. March stood there at the edge of the bed, his legs between mine, and he breathed deeply, heavily, like he’d been running for hours as he analyzed me. He was wearing a red shirt and black pants, and his hair was all over the place—he must have already bathed. He pushed it back with his hands almost roughly,like he didn’t want a single strand to fall in his eyes just now.
The parts of me that tried to make mestopthis before it went too far faded so quickly, along with the parts that insisted this was just a game to March. That he was using me somehow, that he had openly told me he didn’t trust me.
But then he climbed on the bed.
