Page 42 of A House of Gold
“For the next year, you are.” His hand slides higher, resting on my thigh now. Just resting there, warm and heavy and completely inappropriate. “I own your time. Your service. Your presence. Everything you do for the next twelve months belongs to me.”
“That’s not the same as owning me.”
“Isn’t it?” His thumb moves, a small stroke against my skin. Back and forth. Barely there but impossible to ignore. “I can feel your pulse. It’s racing again.”
“You’re touching me. Again.”
“I am.” He doesn’t move his hand. Doesn’t apologize. “Does it bother you?”
Yes. No. It should, but it doesn’t, and that’s the problem.
“You’re my employer,” I manage. “This is...inappropriate.”
“I’m a fallen angel, Raven. Appropriate isn’t in my nature.” His hand slides higher, fingers spanning my thigh, and I suck in a breath. “I want things. I take things. I possess things. It’s what I am.”
“I’m not a thing.”
“You keep saying that.” His other hand finds my jaw, turns my face toward his. His eyes seem to be focused on my mouth. “And yet you’re the most valuable thing I’ve acquired in centuries. Do you know what that does to me? Having something precious, beautiful, powerful right here within reach?”
His thumb brushes against my lower lip.
“It makes me want to keep you,” he says, voice dropping lower, more intimate. “Makes me want to hoard you. Hide you away where no one else can see you, touch you, have you. Makes me want to mark you so thoroughly that every being in every realm knows exactly who you belong to.”
My heart is trying to beat out of my chest. “You said you can’t compel me.”
“I can’t. Won’t.” His hand on my thigh tightens slightly. Not painful, just...possessive. “But I can want you. Can show you what it would be like to let me have what I want. Can make you want it too.”
“I don’t?—”
“You do.” His thumb traces my lower lip again, and I barely suppress a shudder. “I can smell it on you. Arousal has a scent, remember? Sweet and sharp and impossible to hide. You’ve been aroused since I touched you in your room. Since I put my hands on you and learned the shape of you.” He leans closer, and I can feel his breath against my ear. “You want me to touch you again. Want me to keep touching you. Don’t you?”
I should say no. Should push his hands away, tell him to stop, establish boundaries before this goes any further.
But I’m frozen. Caught between fear and desire and the overwhelming presence of him filling every inch of this small space.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmurs against my ear. “Tell me you don’t want this.”
His hand on my thigh slides another inch higher, and the silk whispers against my skin.
“But if you don’t tell me to stop...” His lips brush against my ear, barely a touch. “Then I’m going to keep touching you, keep learning you. Keep showing you exactly what it means to be coveted by the angel of greed.”
The car turns a corner, city lights flashing through the windows, and I’m acutely aware of the driver just a few feet away, separated by nothing but a thin partition of glass.
“He can’t hear us,” Croesus says, reading my tension. “And he wouldn’t care if he could. He’s seen far more scandalous things in this car.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It’s not meant to be.” His hand moves down, cupping my jaw more fully, tilting my head so those gold eyes are pointed directly at where my eyes are though he can’t see them. “Tell me to stop, or let me continue. Choose.”
I should put distance between us, remember that this is dangerous, that letting him get closer is exactly what he wants, exactly what I should fight against.
But his hand is warm on my skin, and his scent is filling my lungs, and I can feel his want radiating off him like heat shimmering above summer asphalt
He wants me.
The angel of greed, who can have anything, who’s spent three thousand years gaining treasures beyond measure, wants me.
And some traitorous part of me wants to know what it feels like to be wanted like that. To be coveted. To be the thing he can’t stop thinking about possessing.
