Page 56

T HE SILENCE WAS DEAFENING .

Briony swallowed, and she watched his eyes catch on the movement.

He stepped back from her as if fortifying himself. “It’s clear to me that you still don’t fully understand the danger we’re in.”

She lifted her brows mockingly. “Explain it to me, Master Toven.”

His eyes narrowed before he went on.

“I was able to maintain control over the situation at the dinner table last week, but I consider that luck,” he said. “You may think I had a certain level of control over those boys in school, but you must remember that my father is only eighth in line.”

She remembered the way he’d put a stop to things before Lorne could cut her dress off, the way the other men’s hands would wander over every backside that passed them—all but hers.

“It’s not just about what happens within that group of successors,” he said. “I suggested the private party tonight as a way to keep you from attending another week, but Canning invited Carvin and Reighven.”

Briony flinched at his name, then recovered. Toven paused, gaze narrowing, before continuing.

“Canning could see through my suggestion for tonight’s card game, of course,” Toven continued. “He made sure to tell everyone that the golden heartspring will be taking the elixir at Biltmore next week.”

Briony crossed her arms. “So you plan to have sex with Larissa Gains while she wears my skin. In front of the entire Bomardi elite.”

Shaking his head, he said, “I would never have sex in public, and they know that.” Briony glanced at him curiously, but before she could ask, he continued, “If you teach Larissa how to cloak this week and let her go in your place on Friday, then I can give my word that Larissa will go to Biltmore as the president’s daughter for all dates in the future. ”

Briony stared at his expressionless face. She wanted so desperately to get under that mask behind his eyes, to force him to open his mind to her.

“You can’t possibly think that Larissa can learn how to cloak in one week,” she said.

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I will cross that bridge when I come to it.”

“We,” she corrected him. “ We will cross that bridge. All three of us.”

His gaze flickered. Briony shrugged.

“If you are so sure you can avoid penetrative sex, then I’m not sure I understand why you’re adamant that I not attend as myself.”

He seemed to stare at her as if deciding if she was joking or not. He scoffed and brought a hand up to rub his eyes. Briony pressed her lips together in agitation.

“There are … other aspects to sex, Rosewood—”

“Of course there are.”

“—and you are supposedly giving me those aspects regularly,” he said, meeting her eyes again.

“Ah.” She grinned at him. “So you don’t think I’d be any good at using my mouth on you. How embarrassing for Toven Hearst to have such an unaccomplished whore, is that right?”

She paced away from him to lean on the edge of his desk, where she crossed her arms.

“You know,” she said, “that spell to detect my purity told them all that I was a virgin, but you’re assuming I have absolutely no knowledge of those ‘other aspects.’”

She tilted her head at him, feigning confidence.

Toven stood a room’s length away, his body held perfectly still.

“I am,” he agreed stiffly. “Is that not the case?”

“I know how to use my mouth on men, Toven,” she said, voice burning with acid.

She didn’t. The closest experience she’d had with anyone had been letting Didion guide her hand around him last year. He’d enjoyed himself apparently, but Briony wasn’t sure she had much to do with that.

But she was sick of this condescension.

There was something flickering in Toven’s eyes that she couldn’t read.

“Is that so?” he said. “And whose cock have you had in your mouth, Rosewood?”

His vulgarity stirred her, but before she could primly request that he speak like a gentleman to her, he stepped forward, prowling toward her just as his familiar might.

Briony swallowed.

“You want names? I’ll have to think to remember them all,” she said.

His lips twitched as he moved closer, and though he must not believe her, she refused to back down from this.

He came to a stop in front of her. As she leaned on his desk and he stood tall over her, she was forced to tilt her head all the way back.

“I think you’re bluffing. I don’t think you’ve ever parted those lips for anyone.”

She smiled up at him. “Believe what you want. Would you like to put me to the test? Show you exactly how much I learned as the Rosewood princess? I had plenty of guards around me, you know—”

Suddenly he was leaning down, placing his fists on either side of her hips, and bringing his eyes to her level.

“Guards,” he said acidly.

She nodded, her heart racing at his nearness. And she felt the weightlessness of throwing herself off a cliff as she said, “Guards and friends. You remember Didion, of course.”

He smiled at her then, his lips parting to show her his sharp canines. His tongue ran across them.

“Didion Winchester, of course. You were always so close to him,” he whispered, “despite his inability to untie your laces.”

The blood drained from her face. She forced herself not to pull away.

There was no way he could have known how Didion had tried and failed to get under her ties under the willow tree at school.

How they’d laughed a bit before giving up.

How disappointed Briony had been to stop just when she’d started to forget about Didion’s brown eyes and dark hair and imagine gray in their places.

How could he know about that?

“Well, he certainly learned later,” she said shakily.

He pressed his lips together, and the mirth dripped from his expression.

“Show me,” he said softly. And before she could let herself think of what he meant—if he meant for her to go to her knees—if he wanted her to touch him—if she would expire on the spot if he touched her back—he said, “Show me the memory.”

Briony blinked at him. And as she stared into his gray eyes, she felt the pinprick of a mind asking for entrance into her own.

Her lips parted on a silent gasp.

He wanted to use mind magic to see inside her head. He was knocking at the door.

Briony swallowed. There was no way he was advanced enough to read her mind, surely.

“A lady doesn’t kiss and tell, Hearst.”

“Oh but you’re trying to tell me just how unladylike you’ve been, aren’t you?” he whispered, his breath on her cheek. “Pull forward the memory of your lips around Winchester’s cock. I want to see just how good you are with that mouth, Rosewood.”

She felt the tapping inside her head again. The asking of permission to enter.

Her confidence was shaken, but she didn’t dare admit defeat here.

“I’d hate for you to be embarrassed,” she said to him. “What with the size of him. It’s terribly hard to compare.”

His lips curled at the corners. “That’s kind of you, but I’d love to see your prowess for myself.” He leaned closer, and she wondered if their skin would brush. “Open,” he said.

His mind knocked at the entrance to hers again.

She stared back into his eyes. “You open,” she said. He blinked once. “You clearly think I have a thing or two to learn. Why don’t you show me?”

His eyes slipped to her lips before coming back to hers, poking at the doorway to her mind again.

“You want me to show you how to suck me off, Rosewood?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

She pushed forward with her own mind, spread her fingers on the desk to cast, and knocked at his walls.

There was a door made of mirrors lined in brass.

She saw herself staring at her own reflection as she knocked, and for the first time she got a sense of the barricades that she suspected he worked so hard to maintain.

It was impenetrable.

His mind nudged her backward, sinking back into her own like he was pressing her down on a mattress of feathers.

“Why don’t you get us started,” he whispered against her mouth. “And I’ll correct your form.”

And then he was inside her.

Briony gasped and grabbed onto the thread of him, guiding him away from things she didn’t want him to see.

The bookshelves in her mind trembled. He sailed smoothly across her lake with still waters, letting his fingers drift across the surface and make ripples.

She wasn’t sure if he found the memory of Didion under the willow tree or if she provided it since it had just been at the forefront of her mind, but suddenly her back was against the bark, and lips were on her neck, and hands were sculpting her skin.

Inside her own memory, she opened her eyes and found Toven Hearst standing at the lake’s edge, watching as a young man clumsily kissed her collarbones and began tugging at her laces.

“I want to kiss you here,” the young man said, and the shadow of him clarified into Didion. Briony tore her eyes from the Toven inside her mind and smiled at Didion as he fumbled with the ties.

“We’ll have to do that in private, don’t you think?” she asked shakily.

A shadow fell over her shoulder, and she looked up to find Toven crouching down next to her. “Show me your mouth on his cock, Rosewood. Show me you on your knees for your brother’s soldiers.”

She glared into his black eyes even as Didion began kissing her neck again, curving his hands over her breasts.

She wanted to craft it. To show her twisting to push Didion onto his back. To show her unbuttoning his trousers.

She wanted to call Toven’s bluff as much as he was calling hers.

Inside Toven Hearst’s bedroom at Hearst Hall, he was leaned over her, his fists on the desk and his eyes locked on hers.

Briony unfolded her arms even as the version of herself in her mind’s eye threaded her fingers through Didion’s hair—and in the present, she reached up and took Toven’s jaw between her hands.

She pressed against his mind, cast to penetrate, and whispered, “Open.”

She was in his bedroom, inside his mind and outside it. The curtains blew a summer breeze across her skin as she knelt on his bed, kissing down his bare chest.

Briony’s body sang as she touched her lips to his skin. One of his arms was thrown over his face, and the other one held his cock, stroking softly.

In the present, against his desk, she felt the puff of his surprise across her face.

Briony grabbed hold tightly of the thread and watched as she kissed her way lower and lower, finally replacing his hand with her own.

The Toven lying naked on his bed uncovered his face and finally looked down at her.

She was naked, too, she realized. Her hair was unbound and free, her breasts were rosy, and her hips were perfectly curved into her waistline.

Her hand moved confidently yet gently on his cock, and he watched her intently.

She leaned down, and her lips slowly parted. The tip of him was pink and dripping as it disappeared inside her mouth. She could almost taste him.

His head stretched backward as his eyes fluttered closed, and she let her mouth slip down, down, down until his cock was fully inside her, impossibly inside her. She watched her cheeks hollow and her eyes stay on Toven’s face as he groaned.

Her mouth slipped upward, and he reached down to curve his fingers around her head, pushing her back down softly.

His eyes opened and watched her as she took him again—the same eyes that were connected to her now, at his desk, blown black with lust—and Briony’s head bobbed.

Her hands moved across his hips, his stomach, his thighs. And Toven watched her as she licked at him, sucking and kissing.

Her body was on fire with that power. The slow measure of her movements on him, and his soft grasp of her hair.

His stomach muscles tightened. And she watched herself take his cock again, her lips slipping down and her cheeks sucking.

He threw his head back, and his mouth parted. “Briony …”

And suddenly he was alone in his bed, naked, his hand around his cock, his hips starting to jerk—

The room went cold. The summer breeze was gone.

And Toven Hearst was standing across the room, facing away from her, his shoulders high and his body strung tightly.

Her mind felt the rip from his consciousness then—as if the thread had been snipped.

She was in the present, not in the memory—or the illusion, it seemed.

She took a gulp of air as if she hadn’t breathed in days.

Her body was still against his desk, but her eyes strayed to the bed she’d just been in, naked and magnificent.

He’d crafted something for her? He’d shown her what to do? It had seemed awfully slow and languid for what would be expected at the dinner parties.

Toven reached a hand out and leaned on the wall, as if gathering himself.

Briony’s body felt tight. She ached with the emptiness, wishing she could live in that fabrication a little bit longer.

“Well, that was instructive,” her voice rasped. “Is that what you’ll expect next week?”

Without looking at her, Toven wrenched open the door and flew through it, slamming it behind him and leaving her alone in his bedroom.