Page 15 of Incoronate
Because we all knew he meant it.
5. TIED UP IN KNOTS
My bedroom felt smaller than it had hours ago, the walls seemingly pressing in with a pressure that had nothing to do with the fog still clinging to the windows outside. I stood near the foot of the bed with arms wrapped around myself again, trying to hold everything together even though I could feel the cracks splintering with every passing second.
My body hadn’t stopped trembling since we left the kitchen, though at least out there it had been on the outside where I could see it.
I told myself it was the adrenaline. The aftershock of having watched Famine pin Trace to the ground and lift that blade above his chest like it was nothing more than another notch on his belt. I tried to calm my nerves, tried to make my mind stop replaying it on a loop, but nothing seemed to work.
Every time I blinked, all I saw were Trace and Dominic’s frozen faces. The way their eyes had darted back and forth, furious and helpless, while their bodies stayed locked in place because I had the audacity to decide they were an inconvenience. That they were in my way.
Shoving away from the bed, I walked to my dresser and peeled off my jacket, hoping the monotonous task would help distract me. Instead, I found another vein had turned black, this one tracing up the inside of my forearm and branching off from the first one like roots spreading through soil. It looked horribly wrong. Darker than the one before. Less like a bruise and more like poison threading its way through my system without bothering to ask for my permission.
God, not now. Not another fucking thing.
I rubbed at it frantically, trying to erase the lines as if it were dirt spackled across my skin, and when that didn’t work, I threw on an oversized, long-sleeved t-shirt and decided not to look at it again for the rest of the night. Because what the fuck else was I supposed to do? I didn’t have enough spoons to deal with that right now. Not with everything else I had on my plate. Thankfully, it helped me forget, at least for a little while, but it did nothing to stop the shaking.
My bedroom door opened as Dominic walked in carrying the chains.
The metal gleamed faintly in the dim light as the links clinked softly with every step he took. His expression was unreadable as he crossed my room, but his onyx eyes were dark and charged with a heat that made my pulse stutter and my breath catch in my throat despite everything that had happened tonight. Despite the fact that I had no business thinking about anything other than the impossible task of keeping myself chained to the bed and out of trouble.
Trace filed in behind him, his movements more wary, like he was already losing a war against his own instincts. His pupils were fully dilated again, the black nearly erasing the blue of his iris’ entirely, and when his gaze landed on me, it stayed there, fixed and unblinking, the way a predator’s did when it caught sight of its prey and the rest of the world simply ceased to exist.
Gabriel had made sure that Trace fed before he returned to his post in the basement, so I knew it wasn’t blood he was hungry for. I wasn’t sure if that made it worse or better, but it made my pulse hitch in a way that felt obscene given the circumstances.
Dominic carefully set the chains down on the bed and then turned to face me fully. The intensity of his attention wasalmost physical, pinning me in place without him having to move any closer.
“Get on the bed, angel,” he ordered, his voice low and velvety. “Make yourself comfortable.”
The command moved over me like liquid heat, flushing me from head to toe despite the fact that I was about to be chained to my own bed because I couldn’t be trusted to make good decisions on my own anymore.
My mind betrayed me immediately, flooding with images I had no business thinking about right now. The weight of him over me. The way his hands felt when they weren’t being careful. The sound of his voice when it dropped into that register that made my thighs clench.
I tried to push the thoughts away, but they clung stubbornly, refusing to be swept aside.
Biting down on my lip, I moved toward the bed, my legs unsteady beneath me. Trace tracked every step and I swore I could feel his eyes burning into me. His jaw was locked tight, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans, and when I finally climbed onto the mattress, his breathing changed, turning rougher and shallower.
I knew what he was thinking about. I could see it written across his face as clearly as if he’d said it out loud. The three of us tangled together in this bed, hands and heat and the kind of pleasure that had left me boneless and gasping between them. The way they’d touched me. The way I’d touched them. The way it had felt inevitable and perfect and completely overwhelming all at once.
I was thinking about it too. Remembering everything we had done, the way my body had responded like it had been made to be consumed by them. The memories rose unbidden, vivid and intoxicating as I stretched out on the bed, heatcrawling up my neck as I tried desperately to look anywhere but in their eyes.
Dominic climbed onto the mattress with an ease that shouldn’t have made my heart stutter the way it did. He moved over me slowly, every inch of him intentional and unhurried, caging me in with his body without quite touching me. His dark eyes locked onto mine, holding me captive in a way that had nothing to do with the chains he was carrying.
“Hands,” he ordered smoothly.
I lifted them, my pulse racing so loudly I was certain he could hear it. Certain theybothcould.
He gripped both my wrists in his hands and guided them up over my head. The motion stretched my body out beneath him, arching my back enough that I saw the hunger in his expression darken into something bordering on dangerous.
The handcuffs closed around my wrists with a soft click, his eyes never leaving mine. He threaded the chains through them next, holding the cold metal against my overheated skin for a moment longer than necessary. His fingers pressed into my wrists like a claim, and I could do nothing to stop the shiver that ran through my body in response.
He was in full control. Complete and absolute. And every traitorous part of me rose to meet it with a ferocity that should have terrified me. Only it didn’t.
I told myself it was probably the spell. But I couldn’t hold onto that thought long enough to make it matter because he was still touching me, still looking at me with those dark, unreadable eyes, and I was burning from the inside out. The memory of mouths and hands and heat and the way the world had narrowed until it had been nothing but sensation pressed up against the present moment until I could no longer tell one from the other.
I hated how alive it had made me feel.
Hated how much I wanted to feel that way again.
