Almost.
He sauntered towards me, hovering over where I sat. “It bothers me that you want to risk your life, and that you are so insistent on throwing it around like it is worthless.” He took the book from my hands and tossed it to the floor. “It is far from worthless. Your life is the most valuable thing I have the pleasure of owning.”
My eyes dilated. “You don’townme,” I scoffed, scrunching my forehead.
Sebastian chuckled a deep, seductive sound. “Really? Because I think I recall you agreeing that you were mine last time you had my cock in your mouth.”
My entire body stilled at the filth of his words.
“I’m calling your bluff right now, because there is no way I was speaking while I was doing…that.”
A cocky smirk settled upon his lips. “No. But you nodded when I made the claim, and then if I remember correctly, you took me even deep?—”
“If you think you're getting any today, then you're dead wrong,” I snapped, fighting back every temptation the view of his abdomen was granting me.
He shrugged with a tantalizing wink. “Hykah blood doesn’t do it for me, anyways. Not really my kink.”
My eyes rolled in tune with the shake of my head. He was right though—I smelt like rotting Hykah.
I palmed his chest, pushing him away so I could stand up, then started for the washroom.
His voice paused me in my tracks.
“You know I love you, right?” His expression softened, and all of the teasing vanished from his tone. “I just want to keep you safe. Ineedto. And the idea that you feel like we would be better off without you…it breaks my heart, Maeve. If something happens to you—by your own hand or anyone else’s—I—” He had to stop when his voice started to break.
I nodded through my regret at even coming up with the plan in the first place. “I know. I love you, too. I just feel so guilty abouteverythinglately that I can't help but think that the only way to fix it is by doing what Beaumont wants—to an extent, of course. I’m not letting him turn me into one of those things no matter how hard he tries.”
He stepped towards me, and I let him take my hands in his. He held them to his chest, where my own pulse matched the beat of his heart.
“Please don’t feel guilty for being a victim of your own mind. It’smeyou're talking to. If anyone understands how you feel, I do. Do you think I haven’t thought about what the world would be like without me in it? Because I have. In fact, I did often until I met you.”
“The world would not be better off without Crown Prince Hawthorne,” I taunted amidst my sniffles.
Sebastian smirked. “The world would not be better off without your stubbornness and attitude.”
A genuine smile found its way onto my face.
“And as for all the other stuff that has happened,” his thumb ran over the veins on my wrist, “you don’t need to feel any guilt for that, either. Give all that pain to me; I will happily take it from you.”
My lips knitted to the side and my gaze deepened on the details of his skin. “I really, really love you, Sebastian.”
He smiled a glorious, life-altering smile. “I really, really love you. And I would kiss you right now, but you have Hykah blood right above your lips.” He dropped one of my hands to poke the spot he spoke about.
I stole a kiss anyway, then made for the washroom.
“Oh, and in regard to owning you,” he called out after me, making my heart flutter as I turned around. “When you’re ready, I’ll show you exactly what parts of your body I meant.”
I was soexhausted after our Hykah endeavor that I fell asleep in the bath, my cheek squished against the side of the washbasin. Sebastian had scooped me out at some point, drying my body before tucking me into bed and taking up residence beside me.
I only knew this however, because when I awoke during the middle of the night with my skin coated in a panicked sweat, I realized that there was no clothing surrounding my body.
Sebastian startled and shot upright at the pitch of my shriek. “What’s wrong!”
My breathing hitched, my lungs seemingly drying up. “Bad dream,” I forced out.
He scooted against the headboard and pulled me into his lap while keeping me covered with a sheet. “About?”
I could hardly even remember what the nightmare was about, but my body remembered. It clung to the feeling of terror and linked it to my brain, stacking it with an overwhelming urge to panic.
