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Technically, there was little he could do to me against my will that I wasn’t already offering freely. My body and my magic, served up on a plate in return for Bren being left alone.
It was the right thing to do for the family. But that didn’t make it any less awful for me. How much magic was he going to take? And as far as the other side of things went, what exactly was he planning to do to me?
It wasn’t like I was entirely naïve about sex or had never been touched—I’d had a few fumbles with schoolmates who’d got past Bren’s over-protective radar—but I’d never gone all the way. I wasn’t saving myself for marriage or anything, but I was fairly emphatically saving myself for something a little more romantic than this nightmare.
I swallowed hard. It was too late to back out now. I couldn’t let Bren down, let the family down, be that weak. But Gabriel’s eyes were burning into mine and magic was radiating off him with an intensity I’d never felt before. My vision started to blur.
Before my thoughts could send me cowering to the floor, I put my trembling hand in his. Everything happened within an infinitesimal fraction of a second. Our skin touched. The connection with Brendan broke. And we left my family’s sitting room and reconvened in what I could only assume was Gabriel’s bedroom in Thornber Manor.
SIX
The Thornbers were different to us. We lived in town and were a part of it. Our house had belonged to my great-grandparents originally, and they’d managed to gradually buy up an entire row of terraced houses and knock them together.
The Thornbers—the actual family and those who swore loyalty to them—had properties in town, too. But the core family’s central home was on the outskirts of Mannith, where the city gave way to the moors. They’d lived there for centuries. At some point in the distant past, they must have taken it from a local gentry family, whether by force, by mesmerism, or in payment for a debt. The bedroom’s canopied bed, heavy window drapes and wall hangings, combined with an open fireplace, made it look like it hadn’t been redecorated in the intervening period.
Once, long ago, the Thornbers had worked for my family as their most trusted and powerful lieutenants. But a couple of generations ago, the head of the Thornber family had rebelled, taking various acolytes, both human and practitioner, with him.
They operated on a smaller scale than us—we controlled the Dome, after all—and though they were powerful enough that my family didn’t simply crush them for their intransigence, it had always been accepted that they were the weaker family. Gabriel’s father, Niall, could never stand against my father in a magical duel, but there’d been whispers for a while that his son and heir was in a different league. The performance we’d just seen seemed to back that up.
I still felt dizzy from both the rapid journey and from the shock of it all. But I’d die before I’d let Gabriel see that. Or let him know how scared I was. Or indeed, how inexperienced I was.
He settled down on the four-poster bed. I deposited myself in an armchair by the fire before my legs gave out. I’d presumably have to move to the bed before too long, but one step at a time.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said, like I sold myself for my family every day. Like I sacrificed my magic on a regular basis. I tried to make eye contact again, but couldn’t quite do it. I settled for looking somewhere in the vicinity of his chest.
Gabriel’s gaze locked on me. I raised my bowed head for a moment, needing to see his expression. I expected him either to be undressing me with his eyes or else simply looking unbearably smug about his victory over my family. Instead, he looked oddly reverent, like he was admiring a prized treasure he’d been hunting all his life. I was hardly unattractive or lacking in self-esteem, but it wasn’t the sort of look I was accustomed to.
I swallowed hard, closed my eyes, then pulled my T-shirt over my head. When I dared to open my eyes again, I saw I was wearing an insanely lacy pink bra. His doing rather than mine. At least the heat of the fire kept me from shivering.
Still perched on the four-poster bed, Gabriel looked at my face rather than my exposed body and laughed. “Put that back on.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Sorry, what?”
“What sort of a monster do you think I am?”
I jumped to my feet, all dizziness and nerves extinguished in a wave of fury and confusion. “The sort of monster who just tortured my brother and kidnapped me.”
Gabriel patted the bed next to him. I drifted over there, then sat as close as I could manage without actually touching him.
“Brendan deserves everything he gets. But I’m not in the mood for dealing with you right now.”
My heart pounded as I dragged my T-shirt back on. I’d steeled myself to go through with it. At the suggestion I might not have to, the adrenaline drained away.
“What the hell? Why am I here then? Is this some sort of joke?”
Gabriel sprawled back on the bed. “We’ll see where the night takes us. But for now, I mostly just want to mentally torture your father and brother. I’m that much of a monster at least.”
My breathing ought to have been stabilising, but it became more frantic by the moment. “What am I supposed to do with myself all night?”
Gabriel stretched out on the fur throw. “Anyone would think youwantto be ravished to save your family. I don’t blame you. I am every girl’s dream man.”
“Before you so rudely intruded, I was doing my reading. Any chance I could find a computer and get it finished?”
Which was literally the most “me” answer I could have come up with. The most beautiful, most powerful, most deadly man I’d ever met was holding me captive, his to give whatever pleasure or pain he desired, and I demanded to finish my homework.
He smiled as though the same thoughts had crossed his mind. “What’s your essay on?”
“The Visconti and the Sforza. They were the rulers of Milan in Renaissance times.”
