Page 39

Sighing, I reach down, gingerly plucking them from his nose. Folding them up, I place the glasses on the leather ottoman, andthen reach for the blanket on the back of the couch, covering him.

He stares up at me, giving a slow, heavy blink, like he’s surprised I’d do something so odd as to take care of him.

It’s the reason I lean down, brushing a kiss to his mouth.

At first, the only movement I feel is the way his arms flex against the binds. The quick sharpness of his inhale. The way his body tenses when I sling a leg over his hip, straddling him.

And then I feel his tongue sweep out against mine.

The kiss is hot and slick, but also infuriatingly measured. I can feel him growing hard beneath me, and when I rock down into it, a gritty sound erupts from his throat.

“Don’t,” he rumbles, jerking his head to the side. There’s a spot of color on his cheeks, mouth pressed into a tight line. “You’ll make it worse.”

“I could make it better.”

He frowns and I give up, my stomach sinking as I rise, my own cheeks feeling ablaze with embarrassment. I’m not sure why, but some part of me had been certain that having Lex here, away from the cameras and security and medical equipment—out of the cell—would make things different.

But that’s the problem.

The pitch of my voice is soft, curious. “Is this all I am to you?” I wonder, cradling the swell of my belly. The question isn’t made bitterly. I never know where I stand with these men. “Am I just a… responsibility?”

His jaw hardens when he glances at me. “Trust me, Princess. Things would be a lot easier for both of us if you were.”

I turn the lights off when I leave, my heart in my throat, and crawl into bed alone. Ashby’s damage runs deep. He broke his sons in ways they’ll never comprehend. Not just with whips and punishments, but the places inside.

Places I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to reach.

I always havethe worst dreams when I’m in West End.

It shouldn’t be the case. This is still home for me, the place where I feel safest. But something has twisted that sense of comfort into a nervous unease. I know these streets. I know the buildings. I know the shape of the clock tower on the horizon. I know the way the cracked asphalt looks in the summer, waves of heat rolling off it. I know the people, the sky, the scent.

But West End doesn’t knowme.

Not anymore.

It’s why I wake with a start, a vague notion of worry gripping my lungs like a fist. I don’t remember the nightmare, only that I felt incomprehensibly alone, adrift in a vast, empty sea, whose waves I can still hear breaking through the fog of sleep.

It takes me a moment to realize I’m not hearing the breaking of waves.

It’s breathing—low and ragged, animalistic.

The dark shape looming in the doorway is familiar, as is the little tinge of terror creeping into the edges of my awareness.

Oddly, there’s also a sense of relief.

“Lex,” I whisper, turning toward him. It doesn’t even occur to me to wonder how he escaped the binds. His hair is loose, a slash of orange streetlight from the window cleaving him across the chest. I meant what I said to Wicker and Pace earlier in the day. Lex would never hurt me, and that’s something I trust all the way down to my gut, even though it twists in anxiety.

So when that first footfall sounds, his heavy eyes and rippling muscles coming toward me, I don’t fight.

He wouldn’t like that.

It shouldn’t surprise me that the first thing he reaches for, clawing with a violence that unnerves me, is the shirt. He plants a knee on the bed and grabs the hem in his big palms, curling them into fists.

The fabric rips like paper.

I gasp, slamming my hands over his fists, but by the time I realize he’s ripped it clear up to the neck, splaying the two sides of the fabric apart, he’s already wedging himself between my thighs. The dark glaze of his eyes is entirely without reason or thought, a man driven only by instinct. His fists dig into the mattress on either side of my shoulders, the fabric of my shirt still clutched within them. I feel like a specimen who’s been peeled open for empty eyes, unable to move under the pressure of his grasp.

“Lex,” I try, straining against the binds of the shirt. “Lex, wait.”