Page 59 of The Tower

She didn’t know he’d been in Elysium, and he intended to keep it that way.

But she was damn sure going to know him in this world.

Eighteen

Sleeping Beauty

The comforter was light, filled with down so that it slid silently over her bare skin as he pulled it off, leaving her clad only in the yellow and orange light that streamed in through the window. She looked younger in sleep, as if the harshness of the world hadn’t yet caught up to her.

Except it had. To Sasha, the world had always been a hard, dark place.

Only one of many things they had in common.

She was curled up on her side, her knees up, one hand tucked under the pillow, her breathing slow and easy. He moved closer, his fingers drawn to touch her as if he was a magnet and she was steel, and it was a matter of physics—not choice—to move, to touch, to stroke.

The caress was light, little more than a feather-soft touch on her smooth, pale skin. She would be pale, of course. With both agoraphobia and her fear of heights, he knew she went outside only when she had to. And even if she’d wanted to, her father would never let her use a tanning bed. Fairy tale princesses were pale and blonde, after all.

She sighed, the sound barely a whisper of breath, but he pulled his hand away, caressing her only with his eyes as he memorized every plane and curve of her body.

He shouldn’t want her like this.

He’d been raised to hate her, so perhaps that’s why she’d always fascinated him. When your despised father tells you the name of your vilest enemy, isn’t that the one to whom you’re drawn?

At thirty-four, he was eight years older than Sasha, and he could remember the day his father stormed into the residential kitchen in Grimm Tower where the whole family had been staying for a summer in the city.

Elias had slapped a newspaper down open to a picture of a woman and a newborn under the headline JUST ONE DAY OLD—THE HEIRESS TO THE REED FORTUNE.

His father had told Liam and each of his brothers, including five-year-old Leo, to look at the picture of the little bitch and the bitch’s mother. It was those two whom the Grimm boys needed to destroy because the Reeds were untrustworthy, vile, and despicable.

It was that last word Liam remembered most distinctly. He knew it only from Daffy Duck.

Two years later, he’d asked his father what exactly the Reed family had done, but all Elias would tell him was that Victor Reed was the vilest kind of man—and dangerous, too. Considering what Liam knew of his own father by the time he was ten, he figured that Victor Reed must be monstrous indeed.

When Elias finally told him—with quite a bit of glee—that Victor had killed Liam’s mother, Liam knew that his opinion of Victor Reed was dead on the money. And that opinion hadn’t changed over the passing years.

No, his fingertips danced softly over Sasha’s hip, then stroked the curve of her ass. The daughter of his vilest enemy moaned and shifted, and Liam froze, unsure if he wanted her to wake or to stay lost in sleep. Either way, he craved her. Already his cock was hard simply from looking and stroking. He’d go mad if he thought about being inside her.

So why torment himself? She was his, wasn’t she? She’d agreed to everything.

Everything.

And so far, he hadn’t even come close to taking payment. Besides, considering the rescue from her father’s goons, he figured Sasha owed him a little extra.

The thought made him chuckle. As if she heard him, she rolled over, now on her back, her head turned against the pillow held tight in one arm.

He’d been wrong about his cock. It hadn’t been hard before. That had been a poor excuse for an erection.

Now he was fucking hard.

And damned if he wasn’t going to take what was his.

He shed his clothes silently, never taking his eyes off her sleeping form.

Finally, he would claim her. Mark her as his.

He’d almost come earlier just from the way her cunt had tightened around his fingers as if begging him to stay inside her.

He wanted her to wake up with him buried deep inside her. To hear her soft moans and loud cries of pleasure, so familiar from his forays into Elysium. But those had been stolen moments. These would be real.