Page 219

It’s like trying to hold water in a sieve.
I keep my posture straight, my face composed, my gaze locked on nothing in particular as the others bicker in the living room, Lucien sharp with control, Silas loud with nonsense, Orin silent and watching, always watching, but it doesn’t matter. None of it gets through.
Because he is inside me.
Not literally, thank the gods, because I don’t think I could survive it again right now, but emotionally, mentally, spiritually… whatever part of the bond has been irrevocably tangled between us, it’s loud today.
And Elias doesn’t even have the decency to be quiet about it.
I press my thumb into the center of my palm, sharp and grounding, trying to focus on the wood grain of the table instead of the steady flood of heat rolling off him from the other side of the room. He’s not looking at me. He doesn’t have to. That lazy, golden affection oozes through the bond like melted sugar, slow, warm, thick.
And filthy.
His emotions are a mess of affection and smugness, tangled with memory. Sensory. Too clear. Too vivid. Too much.
He’s not thinking about last night.
He’s feeling it.
The scrape of my nails down his back. The way I said his name when I came. The sound he made when I bit his throat. It rushes into me unfiltered, raw, wrapped in a blanket of mine, mine, mine, and worse, hers, hers, hers.
Gods.
My thighs clench before I can stop them, and my face goes carefully still. Neutral. I try to push it back, send him silence, send him nothing, but Elias, the bastard, likes this. He likes the attention. The reaction. He likes knowing I’m squirming under the surface.
He’s practically purring through the bond, relaxed and sprawling and smug as hell.
I flick my gaze toward him once, only once, and catch the faintest twitch of his mouth. He knows. He fucking knows.
I want to kill him.
Or fuck him again.
Or maybe both.
And then I hear Silas say something stupid about how if we cut Lucien’s hair short enough, it might make him less of a dictator, and Lucien’s answering snarl snaps me back to the room. The others are still arguing, none of them noticing the private war happening inside my body.
Elias stretches on the couch like a cat, his arm behind his head, his shirt riding up just enough to show the edge of inked skin across his abdomen. He does that on purpose. He’s not even pretending.
And the worst part? He’s not hiding anything. Not his want. Not his contentment. Not the way he likes being mine.
Silas fought it. Riven resents it. But Elias? Elias sinks into it like a warm bath. And now I can’t scrub him off.
I shoot him a look that says stop, sharp and silent, because this part of me is mine and I won’t let him make me unravel in front of the others.
He meets my gaze.
Smiles slowly
And pushes harder.
I keep my face neutral, calm, and composed. But inside?
Inside, I’m watching him roll his shirt up over his head in my mind, slow and careless, his skin gold-dusted and marked with dark ink that wraps across his chest, down his ribs, curling toward places I shouldn’t be thinking about in front of everyone else.
I blink. Hard.
The image doesn’t go away.