She turned.
The cuffs bit at her wrists as she pivoted to face the wall. Cold stone met her damp front. Her breath caught.
And then his body covered hers. Big. Hot and relentless.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he growled, voice right at her ear, lips brushing skin as if he hated himself for wanting it.
Her eyes fluttered shut. She couldn’t speak. Could barely breathe.
“You barge into cemeteries like you own the place. Mock my authority. Drive me half mad with those bloody opinions of yours. And every time you do”—his hands slid over her hips, curved there like he’d been sculpted for it—“I think about this.”
“The cuffs?” she managed, dizzy.
“The way you look when you’re dripping wet and mouthing off like youwantto be punished.”
A gasp caught in her throat.
He pressed closer, lips dragging down the side of her neck, voice wrecked and velvet-dark. “I should arrest you. Drag you in like I’m meant to.”
“But?” she whispered, her head spinning.
His hands smoothed down, over her stomach, her thighs. He gripped them through her skirts like they were his to claim, like he knew every sinful thought she’d had about him and wanted to punish her for each one. “But I want to ruin you more.”
Thea gasped as his hands skimmed up, bold, calloused, unhurried. When they cupped her breasts through the soaked fabric of her bodice, she nearly melted right into the crypt wall.
“Bloody hell,” Alaric rasped, pressing his mouth to her neck, his breath ragged and hot. “You’ve got no idea, do you?”
Her breath caught.
“What I think about when you glare at me in my own bloody station. When you open that mouth and argue,” he said, rough and reverent all at once, his thumbs brushing over the peaks like he was memorizing the weight of her in his palms. “I think about shutting you up like this. Your back against a wall, your wrists cuffed, your body mine to claim.”
Her knees nearly buckled. “I should hate you,” she whispered, lips trembling, heart a frantic thrum in her chest.
His tongue swept along the edge of her ear, sinful and slow. “You don’t.”
“I might,” she breathed, barely hanging on.
He chuckled, low and aching. “You won’t when I get you home and make you scream for me.”
She made a noise then, something wholly indecent and furious with need, and he grinned against her skin like he’d won a war.
CRASH.
Something clattered to the ground behind them. Sharp. Hollow. Like a tombstone had cracked. Or a shovel had dropped.
They both froze, his breath still hot on her neck. Her hands still bound. Her skirt still bunched in one of his fists.
“What was that?” she whispered, head tilting.
“I’d say divine punishment and bad timing,” he muttered, straightening slowly, “but I suspect a specter just lobbed a gargoyle arm from your family plot. Probably your mother. She’s never liked me. Or a tree branch fell, pick your story.”
*
Blackwood family plot
Beyond the veil…
Gran gasped. “Celeste,did you just throw that?”
