Page 64 of Rejected Hollow

My skin felt oversensitive. The roses smelled too strong, and every breath brought me more cedar and snow.

“Hale,” he said.

It sounded like a warning.

“I know,” I whispered, although I had very little idea what I was saying.

He moved closer, and I moved back until the cold glass pressed against me.

There was no shove and no sudden force. He simply closed the distance one step at a time until I had nowhere left to go. Rain struck the panes behind my head while he braced one arm against the iron frame above me. His other hand still held mine against the glass beside my face.

He was close enough that I could feel the heat of his body through my wet clothes.

His eyes were still gold.

His breathing was uneven.

Then he lowered his head and pressed his face to the side of my throat.

Not his mouth.

His jaw.

He moved slowly along my neck, from beneath my ear toward my collarbone, letting the roughness of his stubble drag against my skin before tracing the same path back again. Then he did it on the other side.

It took me a second to understand what he was doing.

He was marking me with his scent so that anyone who came near me would know he had been there, and I knew I should have stopped him.

He had told the entire school he did not want me, yet some bruised, hungry part of me wanted proof that his body disagreed with him. Instead of pushing him away, I tipped my head back against the glass and gave him easier access to my throat.

A low sound came from him as his hand tightened around mine. His lips brushed the skin beneath my ear, barely touching me, and my free hand closed around the front of his wet shirt.

I pulled him closer, and he came without hesitation.

The movement was small, but it brought the entire length of his body against mine. His chest pressed into my breasts through the wet layers of our clothes, and one of his thighs settled between mine. A second later, I felt the unmistakable hardness of his erection against my lower stomach.

We both froze.

Heat rushed through me so quickly that my fingers tightened in his shirt before I could stop them. Whatever Kaelen had said in front of the school, whatever distance he had tried to force between us since then, his body was telling me something very different.

He lifted his head slowly. His mouth stayed close to mine, and his eyes dropped to my lips and remained there.

“Kaelen,” I whispered.

It was the first time I had ever said his name.

He pulled away immediately.

He tore himself back from me so violently that his shoulder struck the iron pillar behind him, shaking loose a spill of rainwater from the broken pane overhead. He ended up several feet away, breathing hard, his hands clenched at his sides. His eyes shifted from gold to gray and back again so rapidly that I could almost see the struggle taking place behind them.

“I rejected you,” he said through clenched teeth, “to keep you alive.”

For a moment, neither of us moved.

“What does that mean?” My voice shook as badly as the rest of me. “Alive from what?”

He did not answer. Instead, he grabbed his jacket from the hook and dragged it over his wet shirt with sharp, angry movements. I watched his expression close down again until every trace of the man who had knelt beside a rose and carefully worked a thorn from its stem had disappeared. By the time he looked at me again, the heir of Fenhall had returned.