Page 55 of Reign

I’d laugh in a man’s face for flowers.

Still.

Something.

Maybe he thought I tricked him.

The thought comes out of nowhere and lands heavier than I expect.

I did hide it.

I didn’t tell him, and once it was happening, I wanted it too much to stop.

My stomach twists.

Maybe he was angry.

I remember his face when he saw the blood.

All that satisfaction gone in an instant.

I close my eyes.

He smiled at me. Laughed against my mouth. Told me tighter like he couldn’t get close enough. Every time I pulled him closer, he answered by giving me more.

Then he saw the linen, and the entire moment changed for him.

Maybe that’s why I can’t let it go. Before the truth changed his face, I affected him.

Not politely. Not only at the edges.

Completely.

I open my eyes again and glare at the ceiling.

This is pointless.

I’m not going to see him again.

Even if I wanted to, which I absolutely do not in any meaningful, emotionally compromising sense, he lives in another city, runs a criminal empire, and owns a private sex club for people who probably know exactly what they’re doing.

I don’t know exactly what I’m doing.

I barely know what I like.

Well.

That’s not entirely true.

I know I like his voice.

I know I like being told what to do in that low, velvet way that makes my spine straighten before my brain catches up.

I know I like the way he smiled when I challenged him. Like my mouth wasn’t something irritating he needed to correct. Like every argument only made him more interested in what I would do next.

I know I like the moment all that polished control fell away—and the way he looked at me afterward, like he would let me do it again.

And I know, with humiliating certainty, that a place like Elite or Obsidian should probably scare me more.