Page 69

Itisa tree. The house is built right up against it, one with nature.

He smacks the door, and the sound claps into the black around me. And as if to keep me from feeling alone, those fingers, those cold, probing fingers find the nape of my neck and every bone of my spine. They spread out, following my ribs, mapping their way around me, hugging and holding me, and I don’t shiver. I don’t shudder. I relax into them, my head against the tree.

I move my hands to my sides and press them to the bark. And I try. For me, for him—I don’t know, but I really try. I lay out a blank canvas in my mind, like the start of a new map, and search for new paths, connections, a surge of life—anything between the tree and me.

I can almost feel them, stretching and searching, splitting and splicing anew. The comfort of my forest back home reaches for me, the pine on the wind, the snapping of branches, but walls stand between us—walls constructed with bricks of betrayal, layered with rejection, coated in pain and dusted with shame—and I can’t get through. I can’t make light in the dark, can’t pullmagic past my walls. I stab my fingers into the tree. I try over and over.

Nothing. Not a glimmer of light.

I push myself away from the tree and into the door, the side of my head flush with the wood. “I can’t do it. Let me out.”

The vibrations of his deep voice roll through my ear pressed to the door. “We have all night. Try again.”

My blood heats and hurtles through me. “I’m done!” I scream and punch the door. Pain cleaves through my knuckles. “I’m not trying again. You’re getting nothing from me. You push and you push, and you give me nothing. You tell me nothing. I have no reason to do anything for you.”Give me a fucking reason because maybe—just maybe—I might want to help.

A growl grazes my cheek through the wood. “And what about your friend?”

How dare he?

“Let him die,” I bluff and spin my rings, letting him think he’s lost the only control over me. “There isn’t a chance anyway. They’ll kill us both.” And that part feels real. Too real.

The door moans under the force of his body slamming into it. “You arenotdone trying. Friend or not, you’ll do what I say.”

“Youdon’t decide. You can rip me open, take my blood and pump me with fear, and I still don’t have to do what you say.” I can hardly hear myself screaming over the crashing beat in my ears. Darkness tramples me from all directions. I throw myself into the door. “You control where I am, who I see, my food, the damn fabric that covers my ass”—I lower my scream to a whisper—“but you don’t controlme, Elivander.”

The door flings open. Eli stands before me, basking in the moonbeams, so bright compared to the pitch-black closet.

I don’t know which one of us attacks first. Our bodies collide and spill to the crimson carpet, his back flat to the floor and mybody stretched over him, legs between his. I scowl down and ram my hands into his chest, my elbows locked. “You.”

My fingers curl, nails digging into his shirt. I put all my strength into it, and as though I’m no more than a slight nuisance, he moves his hands to my wrists and slowly lifts them away from his rolling chest before I draw blood. Fuck. Iwanthim to bleed, to be vulnerable to my touch. I want to do to him what he claims no one can, exposing that hidden piece of him and taking it for myself.

“You,” he says, holding me suspended over him. Despite his labored breathing, his expression is tight, controlled. Every feature of mine, raging with emotion, is locked in place on his face, but he doesn’t have to show his fury—I can feel it. In the solid muscles beneath me, in the way he pinches my wrists, the squeeze of his legs on mine.

“Fuck, Never, I’m trying,” he forces out. “But it’s pointless. You can’t see…you never will. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to you, how to do this. I only—”

He stops mid-sentence with a heaving breath, and I’m not sure if those vulnerable words are about triggers…or something else. My arms wobble with fatigue, and I crumple down onto him, panting, my cheek pressed against the cool white shirt on his chest. He releases my wrists upon impact, and my hands fall loose at his shoulders. Defeated. Wrecked by rage. And so fucking confused. My body rises and falls with the air he breathes in a comforting rhythm I can’t explain.

“It’sEver,” I seethe through the hair on my face, trying to hold on to my anger.

He’s still for the longest time, or maybe only seconds. Maybe time stopped. Then his hands are at my sides, cold and broad, encompassing so much of me. In a single effortless roll, I’m flipped on my back and he’s on top of me, arms locked, hands above my shoulders.

Our hip bones kiss.

He looks down at me with those soul-stealing eyes, taking me in, hair strewn across my face. His lips squinch into a rosy ring, and a breeze travels over my heated features, taking the hair away with it—a real breeze. He’s too bloody gentle, the caress of air too soothing to escape.

“I only know I need you,” he says, low and breathy. His hips slide higher, and with the movement comes pressure, right between my legs, his hard length dragging against me.

My full body reacts, betraying me, flooded with sensation—hot and racing—and I focus all my effort on not pushing my hips up into his. But I can’t stop my legs from parting, my thighs moving to either side of him as his body drops between them.

He folds himself over me and slides my arms straight above my head, pinning them down, pressing until my muscles rearrange against the bones. He has my body accommodating for him, needing him, craving his harsh touch. His chest mounts and crashes like a wave, shoving all the air out of me and giving me his.I’m mad at this man, I remind myself, but it does nothing to prevent my back from arching, pressing me into him.

His face is an inch away, eyes overflowing with desire. A small smirk, surrounded by stubble, finds its way to his mouth before he tucks his head next to mine.

“Are you going to stop me?” he rasps into my ear, using my words against me.

My lips part, but my voice fails to surface.

“I didn’t think so.” He rolls his hips into me, his cock smashing between my lower lips and sending me into a fit of unchecked rapture.