Nicholas had the fire pit lit. The orange glow of the flames softened his profile, throwing the shadows of his bare torso into relief. He was feeding something into the fire—she thought, from the way their glossy surface reflected in the light, that they might be photographs.
There was something so very gothic about that: a man destroying relics of the past with fire. She twisted her wedding ring as she watched him, not sure what to make of his behavior. If he was the tortured, brooding master of the house, what didthat make her? Not the wife in the attic, but the one he’d slash his way through hell and back to save.
Her face softened, fascinated by the way he carried himself when he thought he was alone. No airs or attempts at intimidation, just a man who moved confidently in his own skin.
A man who was desperately in love with her.
On her way out the door, she stopped by Nicholas’s nightstand and reached inside the drawer, tucking the small foil-wrapped packet she’d retrieved inside the bodice of her nightgown.
Walking down the steps in the dark, she noticed the ghostly spaces where photographs of Nicholas had once hung on the wall. He must have removed them—or his father had. There had never been any there of her. Only the spider sculpture and the blue jellyfish sculpture and windows that looked out onto a property that was slowly beginning to fall to ruin.
She remembered Nicholas’s offer to let her redecorate the way she wished. She really didn’t want to touch the house, but the bare grounds and the driveway could use some love. A pop of color amidst all that white.
Jay walked from the righthand staircase out to the sunroom. In the light of the moon, she thought the wicker furniture looked a lot like bone. She couldsmellthe fire now, not just the smoke, and she thought it smelled rather awful. All those chemicals—breathing in god-knew-what just to make a point.
Nicholas looked up as her shadow stretched over the tile, and his eyes widened briefly before he turned back to the fire. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I smelled the smoke.”
“Pull up a seat then.” He tossed in another photo.
“I’m almost positive those fumes are toxic.” She pressed against him with one arm looped loosely around his waist from behind. She felt his body tense as she stretched to rest her chin on his shoulder. “Don’t you have a paper shredder?”
“I thought you’d appreciate the theatrics of it.”
“While I was asleep?”
He shrugged. “In absentia then.”
“I told you how I feel about bonfires.”
“Yeah, you did.” He watched the edges of one of the photos blacken and curl. “Want to tell me your dreams?”
“I don’t remember my dreams anymore and I have everything I want.”
She saw his cheek lift. He tossed in the final photograph and then the folder, for good measure. Gently, he extricated himself from her hold, turning to look at her with the reflection of the fire gleaming in his pale eyes. “If that’s the case, what do you want from me?”
“Come over here.” She tugged at his hand and he followed her to the planter—the same one where he had gotten down on his knees and begged her not to leave him before trying to pay her ten million dollars just so she could do exactly that.
You beautifully twisted man, she thought.Oh, how I love you.
“I can’t leave the fire,” he said, sounding amused, though the looks he was giving her in her thin lace dress made her feel as if she were curling up at the edges just like those blackened photos.
“Sit,” she said, and he did, his mocking half-smile becoming considerably more satisfied as she straddled his lap. The scent of jasmine suffused them both as they kissed, and even withher knees bruising on the tiled edge of the planter, she was as conscious as she always was of just how brutal a man he was beneath the streamlined tailoring of his expensive clothes.
She covered his hands with hers, pressing to keep them pinned against the ceramic. They both had long fingers, but his were broader, and stronger. She could feel the flex of the tendons as he looked at her with those hooded eyes. “You’re not going to be able to hold me down.” He tugged on her lip with his teeth. “I’ll fight back.”
Jay’s breath came a little shorter when kissed her again, sitting up a little as he did. She grabbed onto one of his shoulders to restabilize, and put her other hand over his chest.
“Fuck—” He arched into her touch when she rocked against his hips, a low, satisfied sound emanating from his throat as she slid her palm over his pectorals, and over the ridges of his abdomen. “What do you think you—” A shudder ripped through him as she thumbed his waistband, his belly hitching as she teased the dark line of hair that thickened beneath his navel. “Jay.”
There was power in this. Making him want. Making him wait. All his life, he’d been given everything he ever wanted. Everything but her. And she had been on the outskirts of his orbit all along, oblivious, until she tried to leave, and he collided into her world with a violence that set her entire horizon ablaze.
Can I watch the world burn with you?he had asked, when he was the one holding the match.
But now she wore the world at her throat.
“Yes, Daddy?”
