Page 90 of Bite Me

“I can handle it,” I whisper against her cheek.

I kiss her jaw. Her neck. Every new inhale brings elation, tingling in my limbs. Our lips tangle in a rushed heat of ragged breaths. I lick her teeth, her tongue. This might be the last time. The only time.

Emma pulls tightly at the hair on my neck, connecting our mouths again after every draw for air. I drag her into me, and the sharp prickle of thorns stings my back. Digging my fingers into her thigh, I pull it around my waist.

It’s a desperate, punishing pain when she bites my lip, and I keep going back for more. If I press, she presses harder. It hurts all over. I can’t have her. We can’t do this.

“Emma, wait.”

“Stop talking.”

Her wet lips overtake mine as her tongue slips into my mouth.

She’s in danger. In danger of being seen kissing me, and worse, in danger of me stripping her right here in the garden. My fingers graze her thigh as she presses me further into the hedges, and my mind goes wild with the possibility of slipping her underwear off. I’m addicted to her. I want to taste her. To be inside her.

She stops, and I follow her lead.

“I’m going to bed. Don’t follow,” she huffs. She walks away down the lighted path, undoing her bun and letting her hair fall as she disappears into the night.

I attempt to rebutton my shirt, but there are two missing buttons that we popped in our frenzy. For a minute, I gather myself and think about chasing her. Actually chasing her. Till it’s just her and me in a room together, and I can take all that anger from her and make it useful.

The light from my grandfather’s office flips on and beckons me from the top floor. I have business to attend to first.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Dacre

“Why did you do it?” I ask, stepping into the library to talk alone with my grandfather.

I’ve always hated this room. We spent a lot of summers in this house, and this is the only room with a full family portrait on the wall. My mother and father stare back at me just above my grandfather’s head with miserable, vacant stares. My mom rests her hands on the shoulders of my older brothers. Florence is sitting next to my feet on the ground, and I’m on the far left, a little out of place. Our clothes and hair are muddied by brushstrokes.

I barely remember that day, but the sinking in my gut every time I gaze at it makes me think my body remembers it as a bad day.

My grandfather motions for me to sit, but I keep my feet firmly planted by the door.

“I’ve been in talks with the Esteria family for months now. You’re aware that arranged marriages are common in our family. I know you chose not to attend John’s, but you must have known it was always a possibility.”

“I thought you would have told me. Since when do you keep secrets from me?”

This is another test he wants me to figure out. He didn’t tell me, because he wanted to see how I would react. He eyes the fire in the fireplace with careful patience.

“You know Liam came to visit me, don’t you?” I ask.

“I hoped it would be effective. He suspected there was something you had hidden, and I didn’t believe it at first till he showed me these.”

From his coat pocket, he throws pictures onto his desk.

I approach to examine them. “Is this . . . my search history?”

There, in black and white, is a list of everything I’ve searched on my phone or computer in the last few months, and highlighted on every page is the phrase “scent-match.”

“You have a rare gift.”

“I did what you asked. Your assignment was about Emma. I never let it interfere with my work.”

“The assignment . . . was about loyalty. I’ve suspected your feelings for the girl for some time. Your aversion to wanting her in the culinary club. Your lies about not knowing her.”

“It doesn’t matter. I passed.”