Page 92 of Sage Haven

But I didn’t flinch.

I exhaled, slow. Controlled.

“See? That’s where you’re wrong.” I responded.

She scoffed, shaking her head, but I saw the crack in her armor, “You don’t get to decide what’s best for me.”

But I did. When I took her under my roof. When I decided to make her my problem.

I pressed closer, forcing her back into the chair, into me. “No,” I murmured, breath hot against her skin. “But it doesn’t seem like you knew what was best for you in the first place…”

Her laugh was bitter. Defiant.

I let my lips graze the curve of her jaw, not quite a kiss, but close enough to steal her breath.

“Taking foreign drinks from strangers…trespassing onto someone else’s property daily…” I smirked “I bet you didn’t even know that there was someone trailing you at the House of Music.”

There was silence.

But not the kind I was used to from her.

Her next words were soft.

Hurt.

“Then why… why did you push me away…?”

For a moment, just a breath, I considered telling her the truth.

But truths were dangerous.

Instead, I gripped the back of her hair, tilting her head back until her mouth parted on instinct.

“Tell me why you are the one pushing me away now?” I asked, voice low, curling around her like smoke.

She stilled.

Said nothing.

Just let herself breathe me in.

And I smirked, before giving her praise, “Good girl.”

The words dripped between us, heavy and hot.

She shivered and I felt it.

I tilted her chin higher with two fingers, the touch deceptively gentle, belying the steel beneath it. Her skin was soft, trembling faintly beneath the press of my hand. She resisted for a breath—pride warring with curiosity—until her gaze finally met mine.

Those eyes. Fierce, defiant, and burning with something that thrilled me far more than fear ever could.

“Someday,” I said, voice low and slow, laced with a promise I had every intention of keeping, “you’ll beg to belong to me.”

A flicker crossed her face—anger, confusion, something too foreign to name. But she didn’t pull away.

I leaned in, close enough that my breath skimmed her lips. I brushed my mouth over hers in the lightest ghost of a kiss—more sensation than contact. A whisper of heat. A warning.

A threat.