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Inhaling, I pushed into the shack, a flurry of movement catching my peripheral vision, forcing my heart to pound. For half a second, I thought I’d been caught sneaking back, but Jesse’s inept guards merely laughed over some ridiculous anecdote, their backs to me as I slid inside, unobserved.
To my relief and simultaneous horror, Dahlia was alone in the double bed we shared. Jesse’s fae healers had either given up or retired for the night, my sister’s waxen face as white as the undressed pillow against her golden hair.
A single candle burned down to the wick near the window, casting a glow along the paneled walls of the house, and I rushed to my sister’s side, crouching to peer at her face.
“Come on, Dahlia,” I murmured, cupping her face in my palms. “Wake up!”
To my surprise, her eyes fluttered open, and I found myself looking into her brown irises. My chest exploded.
“Oh, gods!” I choked, reeling back slightly. “You’re awake!”
Weakly, Dahlia gasped, struggling to sit up, but the effort was proving to be too much.
“Where were you?” she rasped, blinking her thick, dark lashes as she looked around. “I-I was worried you’d left me.”
Aghast, I gaped at her.
“Are you kidding?” I demanded angrily. “Of course I didn’t leave you.”
Relief colored her face, and she allowed herself to fall back on the flat pillow.
“Good,” she whispered, her eyes half-closing.
“Come on, Dahlia,” I urged her. “You need to get up. We need to get out of here.”
“Okay,” she mumbled, her words slurring. “I… I’m coming.”
Dismayed, I stared at her, realizing that she was falling unconscious again.
“Dahlia!” I grabbed for her. “Don’t go back down!”
“Mmkay.”
My pleas were useless, her lids falling to close over her chocolate eyes, identical to mine. As quickly as she had woken, she had succumbed back to unconsciousness. I stared at her, my mirror-image, but with an opaque complexion and shallow breathing. A part of me wanted to shake her awake and beg her to run with me, but logically, I understood that we wouldn’t get far, not with Dahlia in the state she was in. She needed time to recover from the injury our father had inadvertently inflicted upon her when he’d ended our mother’s life. The stray bullet was now dislodged from Dahlia, but the wound was still infected.
Frustration built up inside me, a wrath toward our father, toward Jesse—even toward Atlas, who had refused to do anything to help us.
“Don’t worry,” I whispered to my twin, sliding into bed beside her. “I’ll get us out of here. We won’t marry Jesse. He won’t claim us. I promise.”
Dahlia moaned in her sleep, and now I allowed the tears to fill my eyes. Who was I kidding? We were totally and utterly screwed.
Chapter4
Atlas
Getting back to work was an impossible task after the doe-eyed woman left. I didn’t need to be told she’d been escorted off the property. I could feel it inside me, the distance growing between us, a pull yanking me toward the window of my office on the highest floor of the casino to stare into the black night.
I couldn’t see her, of course. It wouldn’t have been difficult to find her if I’d wanted to, and as the minutes ticked by into hours, I found myself wishing I hadn’t let her go. I could have kept her in confinement longer. I was well within my rights. She’d stolen from my casino, after all. I should have held her, made her suffer the consequences of her actions.
I had a million different delicious ways I could punish her.
But I knew that wasn’t what it was about at all. It was about those huge doe eyes and pouty lips that made my cock hard every time I dared to think about them. I couldn’t even sit still without my balls tensing as I imagined the damage Bianca Barrett could do with the flick of her chatty tongue.
Don’t be an idiot. She’s sexy. Lots of women are. But lots of women are not attached to Jesse.
I tried to tell myself that was her appeal in the first place—her attachment to my enemy—but that was an outright lie. I’d been drawn to her gorgeous face, the innocence oozing from her rambling, buttercup mouth from the second I’d laid eyes on her.
It didn’t matter. I couldn’t do anything about it or her predicament.
