I shiver all the way to my toes.
Always.
“Yes.” The word is syrup slipping off my tongue, heated like the dull ache between my legs. One that has its own desperate heartbeat, screaming for him to pin me to this wall with a different part of his body—
Breath crumbles out of me.
“Well,” he rasps, then swallows. “I’m greedy, too.”
He whips back, forging a hollow chasm between us, luring long tendrils of my hair to chase his presence.
He storms toward my bedside table and snatches something off the surface. I don’t realize what it is until he rounds on the hearth and those dancing flames reflect in his platinum glare as he fires my needle.
Shadows frolic across his sculpted face, highlighting his foreboding expression, brows drawn so close they’re almost meeting in the middle.
I study him while my lungs battle their confounds.
It’s so strange to see him crouched in my room, firing my needle—not dancing around the act butinvolved.
This is what I’ve always wanted, for there to be no door between us. And the fact that he’s here, now?
It’s a bucket of icy water dumped atop the angry flame threatening to turn my heart to ash.
He waves the pin through the air, retrieves my half-filled goblet from my bedside table, and stalks toward me. I swallow, our gazes locked as he lifts my hand and drags it close.
I’ve forgotten how to breathe. How to move or function or eventhink.
My fist is unfurled, one stiff finger at a time, and he picks his target—my pinkie finger—stretching it out like he’s flattening the coiled petal of a pretty bloom.
I usually avoid the pinkie, only because it’s small, the skin so soft and delicate.
“That one hurts the most,” I whisper as he works his thumb up and down the base until the tip is red and aching.
“I know,” he murmurs, piercing the flesh.
The sharp, sobering sting makes me wince, and I watch a droplet of blood bulb to the surface. Rhordyn slips the needle between his teeth as the cherry tear blooms and blooms until it’s dribbling down the side, threatening to drip.
He dips my finger in the water, blushing it rosy pink, tainting it with my need to give to this man. With his strange compulsion totake.
Lids sweeping shut, I try to ignore the smell of blood distilling the air while a question bubbles in my chest again—desperatefor freedom.
Tonight, I’ve lost the energy to keep it contained.
“Why do you need it?”
His tightening grip bunches my knuckles.
Silence stretches, finally shattered by the scrape of Rhordyn’s commanding voice. “Look at me.”
Slowly, I open my eyes, assaulted by a vision nothing short of punishing. He’s all hard angles and bitter resolve—a beautiful nightmare made flesh.
There’s death in those silver eyes.
“This, Orlaith. Thisright hereis why we have the door.”
My pathetic heart drops so abruptly, my next words come out choked.
“No. I just want to knowwh—”
