Chapter Nine
ITHOUGHT I WAS IMAGININGit at first.
A click. Soft. Then the door sliding open.
Kidnappers!
My heart bangs against my chest, and I’m wide awake even with my eyes still closed. I stay very still, because still is what you’re supposed to do when there’s a threat, right? Still and quiet and playing dead. That’s what the nature shows say about prey animals, and that’s definitely what I am right now—the prey animal of a very rich family that a very desperate criminal has decided to break into in the middle of the night.
Of course someone would try to abduct one of Icelle’s family. They’re so loaded that a ransom from them would probably be enough to feed a small coun—
A hand covers my mouth.
NOOOOOO!
My eyes fly open, and I’m all ready to scream and struggle for life and—
Arkane?
He’s seated on the side of my bed, his hand over my mouth. The curtain is drawn but not fully, and a strip of moonlight falls across the foot of the bed. I can’t see his eyes clearly, but I can feel them on me, and that’s somehow worse.
He lifts his weight off the mattress—and lowers it again.
Aah!
He’s now right on top of me, still silencing me with his hand, and his face is brooding and beautiful and bloody grim.
Why do I have this really bad feeling I’m suddenly in trouble?
He doesn’t speak right away. He just hovers, his weight braced on one forearm, and I can feel him everywhere—the warmth of him through the thin cotton of my sleep shirt, the solid line of his body pinning me gently to the mattress, the calluses on the hand that’s covering my mouth. Every inch of me is pinned to the exact spot I’m lying in, and my body has already decided it does not, in fact, want to move.
Which is aproblem.
“I had to wake Icelle up just to figure out what’s going on.”
OH.
“My mother introduces you as my girlfriend, and it freaked you out. Is that it?”
All I can do is stare up at him because I honestly don’t know how to answer that.
It wasn’t that.
But I can’t say any of that.
“You think I’m too old for you.”
His voice is low.Formal.So, so formal, and that’s what breaks my heart even more because I know, for him to speak like thatnowof all times—
