Page 79 of The Fake Divination Offense
I pinch my eyes shut tighter, breaths coming in rough pulls that sound like growls; how is he not afraid? My shoulders are rising and my hands are in fists and I’m one trigger away fromsnapping, can’t he see that? Why isn’t he running?
Because he has no choice now. Because hecan’trun. He’s trapped.
He’s trapped.
He can’t be taken from me.
Gods, I’m sick. I’m so fucked up.
And so gods-damned turnedon.
Bel tugs on my neck until I lean down enough for him to brush his lips across mine, the barest hint, before he leans his forehead against my jaw. He’s trembling, whether from holding himself up or the stress of this morning coming to a head.
But when he speaks again, his voice is vulnerable in a way that’s my final undoing.
“Can I be yours, Orok?” he asks. “Tell me you’ll keep me.”
I palm the back of his head, fingers snagging in his curls, and my eyes rip open to his breathless expression, but I’m too far past gone to stop.
When I kiss him now, it’s unabashed and starving, brutal and beastly. I hook my thumb around his chin to lower his jaw so I can plunge my tongue inside his mouth, tasting, tasting what’smine. He lets me, going pliant in a deluge of little whimpers and needy shivers as he cradles his body to me, drawing closer even though he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t want this.
“Last chance,” I tell him. It’s a lie. There are no more chances. “Last chance for this to be simple.”
But he’s shaking his head before I even finish talking, clawing at my shoulders, those whimpers never stopping. “No,no, please, Orok—please, I’m yours. Let me be yours, please.”
I devour his mouth again and he croons in restless relief before I’m scooping him up and carrying him through the bedroom and into the huge bathroom.
Tem didn’t actually touch him earlier, but I have the sudden need to scrub off their interaction.
I set Bel down next to the double vanity. The shower has a glass door that covers half the massive marble stall, and I reach in to get the water warming up. He hasn’t moved, staying right where I put him, and I tug at the hem of his silk tank top, my throat pulsating in a growl.
Pretty sure I’ll always be making some kind of sound like this around him.
Pretty sure I should be more worried about that.
He lifts his arms obediently, eyes heavy-lidded, andfuck, there’s that growl again.
“So good,” I purr. “So good for me, aren’t you?”
His eyes shut with a whimper that looks like it pains him.
“Open those eyes, sweetheart. I want you looking at me.”
A beat passes, and then he does, blinking as the room fills with steam and humidity.
I lift the shirt over his head, drop it to the floor, and—
The growl rips out of me this time, comes barreling past my lips, raw and grating against the hum of the shower.
Bel’s chest flutters in anxious breaths, making his skin shine—and making his body chain glint and glisten in the bathroom lights.
I hadn’t noticed he was wearing it again.
One of my fingers drifts down the center chain. It dangles off his neck with pieces that swoop around his shoulders, his ribs; delicate, impossibly thin strands of gold links. The center one continues down, down, vanishing below the edge of his pants.
“You put it back on,” I state the obvious.
He lowers his hands. “I thought… thought I’d be leaving.”
