Page 67 of The Sin Binder’s Chains (The Seven Sins Academy #2)

Not on purpose. Not with intention. It’s instinctive. Like reaching for a door handle and yanking the whole damn building down instead.

Elias yelps, not a manly, noble sound, no. It’s a startled, undignified yelp, and he goes flying. He stumbles off the couch, arms flailing, knees buckling, and then crashes into me like a human wrecking ball.

We slam into the wall together.

Hard.

I grunt, wind knocked from my lungs, and blink at the mess of limbs tangled with mine.

Elias groans dramatically. “If this is how you’re going to call me to bed every time, at least let me take my pants off first.”

“Oh my god,” I mutter, shoving at his chest, but he doesn’t budge. Too comfortable, the smug bastard.

“Well shit,” I say aloud this time, mostly to myself. “That’s new.”

“I knew I was irresistible,” Elias mumbles against my neck.

“Get off.”

“Say please.”

I jab an elbow into his ribs. He wheezes.

“You two are fucking insufferable,” Riven snaps from somewhere in the room, his voice sharp, his anger immediately sparking on the edge of mine. I feel his bond tug in protest, territorial, volatile, always ready to escalate.

“Wasn’t me this time!” Elias calls over my shoulder, still splayed across me like a satisfied cat.

“You tackled her,” Lucien deadpans, still pacing like his nerves have nowhere else to go. “In the middle of a strategy meeting.”

“To be fair,” Silas says, raising a hand, “there was no actual strategy happening. You were monologuing. She was smirking. Riven was brooding. I was bored.”

“And I was practicing stillness,” Orin adds, without looking up from the ancient tome he’s flipping through. “Until Elias decided to go airborne.”

“I didn’t decide,” Elias protests. “She summoned me like some cursed siren, and I, ” He pauses, then eyes me with a slow, delighted grin. “Wait. You pulled me, didn’t you?”

“Shut up.”

“Oh, this is good.”

“I said shut up.”

“Admit it. You missed me.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“That's how I know it's love.”

I finally push him off with a groan and stagger to my feet, brushing myself off like it’ll somehow clear the static in my chest. The bond is still there, bright and ridiculous, buzzing under my skin.

It shouldn’t be that easy to tug on someone like that, but it is.

Because it’s Elias. Because I let him in.

And now I can’t shut the door again.

Silas claps once. “Well. That was the most entertainment I’ve had all morning.”

“Good,” I snap. “Glad you’re all having fun. Meanwhile, two of our people are still missing, and the first sin binder is walking around like this is a second chance at world domination.”

That silences the room. Just like that, the laughter dies. But only on the surface.

Because beneath the sarcasm, beneath the chaos and bickering, something darker is blooming. We all feel it. Every bond I’ve formed tugs at me in different directions, shaping me, warping me, demanding things I’m not sure I can give.

And I wonder, not for the first time, if the chaos isn't just seeping into me, but coming from me now.

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.

He knows. The bond isn’t one-way, and he’s feeding it, pouring more into it, not just memories, but images. Suggestions. He’s lounging like he’s bored, like he’s detached, but there’s a lazy fire in the way he looks at me from beneath his lashes. Like he’s daring me to fall apart.

I almost do when his magic brushes mine. Soft at first. Then firmer. A caress just under the surface, the kind that no one else in the room can feel. Like he’s running his fingers down the inside of my thigh.

My jaw tightens.

And then, he thinks at me. Not words. Worse.

A visual.

His mouth on my stomach. His tongue tracing up. Teeth scraping gently beneath my breast.

I dig my fingernails into my thigh under the table and exhale through my nose like that will do anything to fix this.

He shifts slightly and my eyes, traitorous, betraying me with zero remorse, track the movement of his hand. It drags up his stomach like he’s scratching lazily at his skin, and I see it again. The shirt. The abs. That line of ink. The way he looked at me last night like I was his last meal.

Gods, I should leave. I should scream at him. I should do something.

But instead I clear my throat and shift in my chair, biting the inside of my cheek as Elias catches my eye and winks.

The bastard winks.

Lucien stops mid-sentence and looks at me like I’ve grown another head. “Is there something you’d like to add, Luna?”

Elias doesn’t even flinch.

I force my voice to work. “No. Sorry. Just… tired.”

He smirks. Liar, he mouths.

And now, all I can do is pray no one notices that I’m blushing like a virgin and burning from the inside out while Elias Dain invades my brain with soft porn.