I gesture toward the bed, overflowing with a fluffy, new down comforter that looks like it was made of actual clouds. She pulls the covering back, and amethyst-hued sheets greet her on the mattress.
“I couldn’t resist.” I smirk.
She shakes her head, her arms wrapping around her torso. “No more games, Charade. If you’re going to kill me, just do it. Isn’t that what’s you bought?”
“You’re too valuable for that.”
“Then what?”
She wobbles on her feet a little. I dart forward just in time to catch her arms and guide her to sit on the edge of the bed. She flinches even as I release her. Then I see the patch of crimson blooming in the tattered blue material on the leg of her jeans.
“You’re bleeding.” The shadow of her gasp ghosts across my lips, and I realize how close our faces are. For the first time, I can see the flecks of gold glinting in her irises. Purple shadows sinking into the skin just below. The swell of broken blood vessels mar her cheekbone.
I forget for one moment exactly who we are. What we have done to one another. The tips of my fingers graze over the soft, heated skin at her neck, her pulse dancing a frantic pace against the pads. Her tongue darts out to wet her lips, and I swear mywhole being narrows down to that one movement and its arc across her full lower lip. My hold shifts so that my thumb can follow it.
Her palm strikes the pressure point in my arm, a dull numbness quickly following.Son of a?—
She rears up, counting on the momentum to help swing her knee into my ribs. Too bad I’ve recovered by then.
I let her momentum carry us until she’s straddling me, and then I roll us again, limbs tangling as I end up on top. Her elbow slams into my sternum. I groan at the sharp pain, but it doesn’t faze me. My legs find purchase on either side of her hips. She bucks, but she’s weak. Too little to dislodge me. My good arm grips one wrist then two, and I pin them above her head.
“Don’t. Touch. Me.” Her face is red, tears leaking down her cheeks.
Scowling, I release her, pressing my palms instead to the mattress on either side of her head. “If I wanted to hurt you, we both know I could have done it a long time ago.”
To my surprise, her hands stay where I left them and she stills below me. Her eyes close as I brush the moisture from her cheek, her throat bobbing as she swallows.
“Every mark they put on you, every scar—I’ll make them suffer tenfold.”
“Why?” Her voice is shallow, hushed. She opens her eyes and peers into the depths of my mask. I feel it then, deep in my bones—she could be the one to finally understand what’s beneath.
My phone buzzes against my thigh, and I withdraw before pulling it from my pocket.
STOP MOONING AND HELP US. -F
“Stay here,” Sighing, I pull a white and red box from a drawer in the bathroom. “And don’t do anything stupid.”
“Charade.” She looks up at me, still lying in the place our scuffle left her. “You can’t keep me here forever.”
The first aid kit bounces as it hits the cover beside her. “That’s the best part.”
6
KAYE
My chest aches with the absence of power humming through my veins. I reach for a power outlet not too far from the bed and wait for that special coil of myself—my power—to pass through my skin and draw on the electricity in the wall. But after a minute of waiting for a reaction, I have to accept it. That piece of myself, wherever it lies dormant within, is cut off.
I’ll have to find another weapon for now.
The dresser drawers are bare. Nothing under the bed either. I roll my shoulders, tension tightening my back as I press my ear to the door.
Silence.
For such a beautiful house, I’ve seen tombs more lively.
The lock clicks when I twist the knob.
Woodgrain bites into my palm as I shove the nearest window open. Chilly night air seeps through the opening smelling of summer and dew as I duck out.
