She doesn't argue again.
I hold her in the darkness, feeling her heartbeat slow, feeling her body grow heavy with approaching sleep. The marks on her wrists, the flush on her skin, the scent of sex hanging in the air—all of it evidence of what we've done. What we've become.
She's mine now. Truly mine, in a way that contracts and coercion could never achieve.
And I'm hers, in a way I never expected and don't fully understand.
Everything has changed.
I don't know what happens next.
But for the first time in my life, I'm looking forward to finding out.
Chapter 17 - Poppy
I wake to unfamiliar light.
For a moment, I don't know where I am. The sheets are too soft—silk or something close to it—and the mattress is too large, stretching out around me like an ocean. The ceiling above me is high and shadowed, nothing like the cracked plaster of my apartment.
Then I feel the warmth beside me, the weight of an arm draped across my waist, and everything comes rushing back.
The summons. The confrontation. The kiss that shattered every wall I'd built.
The belt around my wrists. His hand in my hair. The things I said—please, yes, I'm yours—words I can't unhear, can't unsay, can't pretend didn't come from my own mouth.
My body aches in places I didn't know could ache. Between my thighs, yes, but also my wrists, my scalp, the curve of my ass where his palm landed again and again. Evidence. Proof that last night wasn't a fever dream.
I wish it had been.
I turn my head slowly, carefully, not wanting to wake him. Gabriel is lying on his stomach beside me, his face turned toward mine, one arm still possessively anchoring me to the bed. In sleep, the sharp angles of his face are softened somehow. His lips are slightly parted, his breathing slow and even. Dark hair falls across his forehead, making him look younger. Almost innocent.
He's not innocent. He's a murderer, a stalker, a man who systematically destroyed my life to bring me to this exact moment. I watched him kill someone with these same handsthat touched me last night—hands that are currently resting against my bare hip, warm and heavy.
I should be disgusted. I should be terrified.
Instead, I'm studying the curve of his mouth and remembering how it felt on my skin.
What is wrong with me?
The question has been echoing in my head for weeks, but now it's louder than ever. More urgent. Because whatever was wrong with me before, last night made it worse. Last night, I stopped fighting. I surrendered to the very thing I should have been running from.
And I liked it.
God help me, I liked it.
I need to leave. I need to get out of this bed, out of this house, away from him before I do something even more reckless. Before I lose whatever shreds of myself I have left.
Slowly, carefully, I lift his arm from my waist and slide toward the edge of the bed. The silk sheets whisper against my skin as I move. My dress is somewhere on the floor—I can see a glimpse of blue fabric in the moonlight still filtering through the windows.
I'm halfway out of bed when his hand closes around my wrist.
"Running away?"
His voice is rough with sleep, but there's an edge of amusement beneath it. I freeze, my heart suddenly pounding.
"I need to go home."
"Do you?"
