Page 89 of Twisting Beauty

Revulsion and something far more dangerous collided so hard it made my head spin. This was wrong. Wrong enough to make my skin prickle and my breath catch. He shouldn’t be touching me like this. I couldn’t let him touch me like this. Couldn’t let him seduce me with heat and reckless need when he was still the same boy trying to expose me.

I jerked against his arm on instinct, trying to break free, panic giving me a burst of strength.

It was useless. He was stronger, all that solid, unyielding weight behind me turning the effort into nothing. The failure only made the panic bite deeper.

“Sleep,” he growled into the back of my hair. “You can go back to hating me tomorrow.”

I hesitated, my voice cracking. “If I stay, it’s not because I trust you. It’s because I don’t have the strength to fight you tonight.”

“Fair play.” He tugged me even closer to him, a position we fell into so easily like two puzzle pieces.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” I whispered, even as I melted into him.

“Of course not.”

“I still don’t like you,” I muttered, no bite left.

“Feeling’s mutual.”

I lay there, rigid, staring at the dark wood of the far wall while the fire crackled and settled, the only other noise in this room besides his violins.

He wasn’t going to seduce me. He wasn’t going to drag his mouth over my skin or use my nakedness against me the way some dark, traitorous part of me had braced for.

The realization should have eased something. Instead, irritation flared, hot and sharp and humiliating. I was angry at him for not touching me. Angrier at myself for the need pooling low in my belly anyway, aching and unwelcome.

My pulse had also turned traitor on me, running fast and stupid in a way that had nothing to do with the nightmare I’d just climbed out of and everything to do with the boy who had caged me in his bed.

His chest rose and fell against my back, slow and even. Every place his body touched mine was too warm. His arm across my waist was possessive and heavy.

It was too much, too close. He felt too safe for it to be real.

I was furious at myself. At my own body for registering every point of contact and for wanting too much.

At him for lying there like this was nothing.

The fire burned. The room was quiet. Somewhere outside, wind moved through the grounds.

“Why?” I whispered at the wall.

Why did you pull me out of that lake?

Why did you bring me here, to your room, and not Rua’s?

Why haven’t you turned me in to Alistair?

He didn’t reply.

His breathing stayed even and I thought that was my answer. Thought that he’d fallen asleep while I lay here cataloging every place he touched me like a complete eejit, and I was going to have to spend the rest of the night awake and pissed about it.

Then his voice cut through the dark.

“I’m not finished with you.”

I woke rested, stretching lazily into the lingering warmth of the sheets where Lorcan had been.

His pillow smelled of woodsmoke and whiskey, and the faintest sound of violins stirred at the back of my skull. I stayed there with my face pressed into the fabric, breathing him in, for just a moment.

He pulled me out of that lake.