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“Don’t you see?” I cried. “That this iswrong. Our parents are married. You’re my stepbrother. It’s—shameful.”

“There is no shame in loving you, Gracie,” he said sternly.

“You don’t love me! You just want to control me.”

“It’s the same thing,” Saul said.

His hands lay on both his massive thighs, and he seemed to suck all the oxygen up out of the limo, to make my throat constricted and my breathing shallow and panicky.

“It is not!” I cried, clenching my fists together. “I am going to fight you every step of the way!”

“You are going to drain every drop of that,” he ordered, pointing at the water bottle with that lascivious obscene rumble that his voice made.

“Now that we’re married, things are going to change. You are going to drink every drop of every glass of water I give you. Period.”

“No, I won’t!” I said in a petty voice, trying to edge away from him. My thighs still felt damp after the Wetting of the Boot, sweet and sticky liquid running down my leg.

Had I done it wrong? Was it supposed to feel that good?

I knew it wasn’t, surely it wasn’tright, that it had made me feel like that.

“Now hold my hand.” Saul said, turning his left palm up to me.

I felt my whole body freeze in horror.

Because he was left-handed and I was right-handed, he had always loved the family tradition of holding hands as we said our thanks to the Great Eye.

He claimed he needed the contact tocurb his temptations.

But now I knew it was the exact opposite.

He wasn’t trying to curb anything.

“Not this—not this again,” I whispered. “It doesn’t—it doesn’t do anything.”

“I can’t be responsible for what I do if you fucking don’t,” Saul said.

My whole body trembled, my fingers seeming to shrink away. But he was looking so fiercely at me, those dark brows drawn together angrily.

For as long as I could remember, Saul had insisted contact with me was the only thing that could control him.

I’d done it more times than I could count, placing my much smaller hand over his beating heart, letting him cradle my hand in his, thread our fingers together.

When we were in high school I used to think it was my duty to do it. That Nimhe would want me too. That the Eye would be watching and expecting me to.

But then I noticed the way his mouth twisted up, the mocking glint in his eyes.

And I began to truly fear my tall stepbrother who towered over me.

Because the prickly, uncertain feeling down my spine when he touched me didn’t feel brotherly at all.

Tremulously, I put my hand out and he closed his big fingers over mine, but the moment he did I started to panic, scoot away from him on the big sleek seats of the limo.

But I couldn’t get very far.

“There’s no getting away from me now. You belong to me, wife.”

Saul was dragging me along the seat now, slowly and inexorably closer to him,