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I give Snow a nod, and she lets out a little sigh of relief.
“I won’t, I promise.”
“Elijah,” Wynter chimes.
“Yes, Wynter.”
“If you so much as lay a hand on my sister that she doesn’t want, I promise I won’t miss when I shoot you this time.”
I chuckle. While I’ve always been obsessed with the youngest Saint James, I can see what my cousin sees in her. “I understand.”
We say our goodbyes and when the line goes dead, Snow stares at me, unasked questions floating across her gaze. She doesn’t understand why any of this is happening, and to be fair, I haven’t offered her any answers.
“Why am I here, Elijah? Are you sure this isn’t some fucked up way to get back at my brothers? Because I’m not going to be a pawn between you and my family.” She crosses her arms across her chest defiantly. Her knees brush against mine, the contact making me want to bend her over the table and fuck her until she can’t breathe without feeling me.
“I already explained this, Snow. You’re here because you’re mine. You’ve been mine for a long time, and you will continue to be mine from now on.”
“Don’t I get a say in this at all?”
“No.”
“So you’re just as bad as my brothers then? I’ve just been moved from one prison to another, is that it?”
I growl, my patience wearing thin. She’s pushing my buttons, and she fucking knows it. Before she can think to move, I rise from my chair and bend until our faces are only an inch apart. Her nervous breath whispers across my cheek and I swallow down the groan that claws its way up my throat. I promised myself I wouldn’t force anything on her, that while I’m a monster, I don’t want to be that kind of monster, but I underestimated how fucking hard it would be to be close to her.
“Right now, you might feel like a prisoner, but I don’t trust you at the moment. If you want freedom, you’ll have to earn it. You’ll have to show me you’re not going to run back to your family and tell them I took you against your will. You’ll have to prove to me you’re not going to run from me.”
She lets out a nervous breath as if having me so close has taken the anger from her body and replaced it with fear. “Why?”
“Why are you mine?”
She nods in response, and I reach forward to brush my thumb across her cheek. The softness beneath the pad is intoxicating, but then I always knew she was going to be impossibly soft. An angel tainted by my darkness.
“Because the first time I laid eyes on you, I knew you belonged with me. Everything I’ve done for the last ten years has been to get ready for a time when I could have you, and now you’re here, you’re not going anywhere.” I push off the chair and stalk away from her. The longer I spend breathing the same air as her, the more likely I am to do something I shouldn’t.
Snow’s chair scrapes back across the floorboards as she follows me. “So, you’ve decided that I’m yours. You’ve decided I’m going to spend my life with you, but what if that’s not what I want? Are you going to take me against my will? Because that’s the only way you’re ever touching me.”
My head snaps around and before either of us realizes what I’m doing, I’m backing her into a wall, knocking the wind out of her lungs on impact. I press my body against hers, making sure to angle my cock against her belly so she knows how her fire affects me. I wrap my tattooed hand around her neck and almost groan at the sight. Good and evil. Light and dark. An angel and her devil. That’s what we are together, and what we’ll always be. I tighten my hand just enough that she can drag in a breath, but she can’t speak. What I have to say to her doesn’t require a response.
“Make no mistake, Snowflake. This is happening. You are my woman, and you are going to be my woman for the rest of our lives. There’s no running from me, because I’ll fucking find you no matter where you go. There isn’t enough money or power on this earth that could keep me away from you. I’m not going to take you against your will. I’m going to tease and deny you, and when you can’t take it anymore, you’re going to beg for me to fuck you. You’re going to beg for me to take away the ache, and the moment you beg, the moment those words leave your pretty red lips, you’ll have made a deal with the devil.”
I tear my body from hers before she can respond and walk straight out of the dining room toward my office. She got under my skin. But then I expected that. That’s what Snow Saint James does, but this time it will be her own downfall.
13
Snow
Istare at the empty doorway long after Elijah walks through it and a door down the hallway slams shut. My breath is uneven, my body shaking with what I can only assume is fear because the alternative is so wrong I can’t even bring myself to think it. I did not like it. I didn’t like his hands on me, or the way his tattoos looked against my creamy skin, or how his green eyes flared with lust as he made it impossible for me to say a word, or how he was barely able to drag himself away from me, his restraint fraying at the edges.
“Are you okay, dear?” Mary asks, her brows furrowing when I startle.
It takes me a moment to get my thoughts straight and to find my voice before I can reply, “Yeah, of course.”
She watches me for another moment before moving to the table and gathering our barely touched plates. “Did you have enough to eat?”
“I’m not that hungry. I think it’s whatever he drugged me with,” I mumble, using the wall behind me to support my weight. Part of me feels bad for lying to her, but she told me she wouldn’t stand for Elijah hurting me, and if I can make her think he’s not treating me well, maybe she’ll help me escape. Hell, I’ll settle for her giving me a phone to contact my brothers to come get me.
Mary moves toward me, her hand moving to my forehead. “You don’t feel warm, but I don’t want to take any chances. I want you to hop back to bed and have a nap. I told him those drugs take too long to work their way out of the system.” She shakes her head, her hand wrapping around my arm and guiding me from the room.
