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She whimpers so loud I have to cover her mouth with my hand. “Quiet,” I remind her. “There’s a whole store full of people out there.”
You fucking asshole, you absolute monster…
“Yes.” I smile at her in the mirror. “Say please.”
I move my hand just enough to let her talk.
“Please,” she breathes.
I let my shadows go again, harder this time, faster, all of them at once. She grips my forearm with both hands and keeps her eyes on the mirror, just like I told her.
“Look how pretty you are when you come on my shadows,” I whisper.
She comes. She watches herself do it. Her whole body shakes against mine, her eyes locked on the mirror, on my glowing eyes over her shoulder, on the bite on her neck. She’s not making a single sound behind my hand, and I’ve never been so hard in my fucking life.
When she finally sags back against me, I kiss the mark on her throat. “We’re getting that one too,” I murmur.
She laughs, wrecked and breathless, and I pull my shadows back.
When we walk out of that dressing room twenty minutes later, she’s wearing the red dress and a pair of heels that cost more than a year of her old rent. Twelve sales associates are lined up at the register with forty-six bags between them. She hands the manager the black card with a shaking hand.
She doesn’t even look at the total. Good. She’s going to be spending a hell of a lot more.
Chapter Seventeen
KISHA
There are forty-six bags sitting on the floor of my new closet, and I haven’t opened a single one.
I can’t. Every time I look at them, I hear the lady at the register say the total out loud before Nik gave her a look that shut her right up, and my soul leaves my body all over again. So instead, I’m standing in front of the mirror in the only thing I’ve taken out so far: the gold sequin dress. The one that’s “only for the house.”
It’s so short my ass is basically a suggestion. It shimmers every time I breathe. I look like a disco ball that got a sugar daddy, and honestly? I look fucking good.
Two weeks ago, my wardrobe was leggings, three hoodies, and the one going-out dress I’d been rewearing since sophomore year. Now I’ve got a closet bigger than my whole dorm room, a bridge view, and a monster who paid off my student loans like they were a parking ticket.
Mama always said I had champagne taste on a Top Ramen budget. Look at me now, Mama.
“Are you planning on coming out of there, or should I come in?”
His voice rolls through the bedroom, deep and lazy, and goes straight down my spine. I don’t even have to look. I can feel him leaning in the doorway, watching me admire myself like a fool.
“I’m unpacking,” I lie.
“You’re staring at your ass in my mirror.”
“Our mirror,” I correct, and turn around to give him the full view. “You said it’s ours. You can’t take it back now.”
Nik’s in the doorway in nothing but black sweatpants, his huge arms crossed over that ridiculous chest, his shadows curling lazy around his shoulders. His eyes drag down my body slow, from my face to my bare legs and all the way back up. By the time they get back to my face, they’re glowing.
“Turn around again.”
I do, because I’m weak, and I let the sequins catch the light. When I look back over my shoulder, he hasn’t moved, but his jaw’s gone tight and the shadows on the walls are a lot darker than they were a second ago.
“Like what you paid for?” I ask sweetly.
“Careful, Red.”
“Or what?”
