Page 108 of Twisted Ties

I lick butter off my fingertips and kneel down by her head. Her face is virtually in my lap but she chose the damn floor, not me.

“Now who’s on their knees,” she whispers.

I can’t help a chuckle.

“Close your eyes, Miss Blackwaters.” She holds my gaze for one long second, then slowly her lids lower.

I hesitate, knowing Azlan’s watching my every move, noting the way her bottom lip quivers as she draws in and out her breath, and her chest rises and dips.

I rest the fingertips of my right hand on her temple and electricity skirts through them.

“What’s that?” she says. “Did you start?”

I don’t answer and I don’t look up at Azlan. My magic rises up through my body, wanting to seek hers out, wanting to make her mine as well.

I force it down, swallowing hard.

“You need to remain quiet and you need to try your best to clear your mind.”

I peek inside hers and am met with a mirror, the image of myself lowering to my knees by her head, the same sensation of electricity when I touched her skin.

How can she not know what it means? Or does she know exactly what it means and she’s choosing to ignore it like me? Ignore it because she doesn’t want it?

I push those thoughts aside. I’m here to help her and, yes, like Azlan said, satisfy my own curiosity too.

“Clear your mind, Rhi.” She fidgets slightly and I sense her straining, trying to force the thoughts from her mindand failing. “Don’t force it. Relax.”

I send calming energy through my fingertips and she sighs, her body going limp. It’s erotic and I have to take another of those damn swallows to clear my own stupid thoughts.

Gradually, the thoughts in her mind fade, dissolving away, and without all the noise it’s easier to search through them all. I hold back the urge to rifle through them, to dig out that memory of the wound, to learn where and what she was doing yesterday. Instead, I focus in on those thoughts, buried deep, deep down at the very depths of her consciousness. Closed, locked. Impregnable. I nudge at them with my power, testing their durability. Nothing gives. I use a little more force, testing for weaknesses in their binding. Still nothing.

I can hear her breath beneath me, feel the warmth of her skin at my fingertips, and sense the fear, the loneliness, the determination that lies right at the very core of her mind. The pillars of her whole personality, running through her like lines in a stick of rock candy.

I try again, with more force this time. But those memories have been locked tight and no amount of prodding or prying will nudge them free. I’m going to have to rip them apart.

I stare down at her face. Tranquil. Peaceful. Damn beautiful.

I don’t want to hurt her. Don’t want to hurt her again.

So I try gently at first, gripping the sides of those memories and pulling them open. My magic digs into the sides, and I feel the strain. She murmurs a little beneath me, her eyelids flickering.

“Phoenix?” Azlan whispers with concern.

I hold my left hand up to him, signaling to him to be silent.

Then I try again. I strain harder this time, gripping with my magic and attempting to prize open those memories. She whimpers, her body flinching.

It’s no fucking use.

I can’t do this,I think, my thoughts sinking into her own mind.

Please, she says in returning.Please. Just do it.

I grimace. And her plea echoes around her mind.

Goddamn it! I force my magic deep into the edges of those memories, locked like a safe. I dip them deep, deep down and she moans beneath me.

“Phoenix!” Azlan says.