Page 42 of Twisting Beauty

The door to Rua’s bedroom swung shut behind me and my shoulders dropped for the first time since morning.

No Lorcan in the hallway. No Lorcan on the stairs. No Lorcan at the dinner table lying in wait with that stillness of his that made rooms feel smaller. The manor had been quiet all the way from the ground floor up, and for once in this godforsaken house, quiet actually meant quiet.

The door slammed behind me.

My heart went off like a starting pistol and I spun.

Lorcan was leaning against the door with his arms folded and his pale eyes already on me, watching with patient attention.

“What are you⁠—”

He pushed off the wall and my brain stalled on the useless fact of how large he was, how fast, how little of the room was left between us.

His hands found my shoulders. His palms settled there, warm and steady through the fabric, and he walked me backward with slow, even pressure, almost coaxing, the way you’d guide someone you didn’t want to startle.

His woodsmoke scent reached me before I’d finished processing the hands, and underneath it that low orchestra of violins rose up through my skull.

The backs of my thighs found the edge of the bed.

He kept pushing until I’d fallen back. A gasp tore out of me as I landed, and my mind kept spinning uselessly, still trying to catch up even then, still trying to make sense of what was happening while he crawled over me, his warmth and weight of his body over mine.

His fingers moved to my hips with a lightness that felt obscenely misplaced, large hands adjusting my position farther into the middle of the bed as if this were ordinary, as if he weren’t six feet four of threat lowering himself over me, as if the careful way he was handling me made any kind of sense at all.

I couldn’t form a single word.

His eyes came up to mine, steady and deliberate, and held there for one second. One second of looking at me with that pale, unreadable attention while something hot began its slow slide down into my lower belly.

His hand appeared between us with a knife.

Sweet mother of God.

My brain un-fucked itself.

“What are you doing?” My hands shoved at him. “Get off⁠—”

“Hold still.”

He caught both wrists in one hand, his grip like iron, and he pinned them flat above my head with brisk efficiency.

The blade went to the waistband of my trousers.

My lungs seized up and refused to draw air. A cold, sick clamp seized the base of my spine and spread fast, locking my limbs, tightening my stomach, turning every muscle under his weight into a rigid useless mess while dread rushed hot and metallic through my mouth.

The fabric split with a dry, vicious rip. Then the other side gave way and cold air skimmed over the bared skin of my thighs as I lay there, pinned down by him in just my panties.

My lungs seized. My stomach pulled tight enough to hurt. Heat rushed up my chest while my feet turned numb, and the switchblade flashed in his hand, bright and steady, before it disappeared again.

Deargán had taken everything from me, but never like this. Never with steel at my skin.

Lorcan had already opened my throat once in a hallway and barely blinked after.

If I screamed, who in this house would come fast enough to matter?

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. My chest kept jerking for air but never filling enough. Beneath him, my body went dead rigid, every muscle pulled tight and useless.

His hand clamped down on my thigh.

Oh God. This was it.