Page 130 of Obsession

I melt under her gaze, wilting like a bouquet under the sun. She’s so strong. So sure. I wish that I could understand.

“How are things meant to play out?” I ask quietly.

“You’ll see very soon,” she says, her lips quirking at my frown. “What I will tell you is that my siblings and I want different things, and we have to find different ways to… nudge each other in the right direction. You, Mary, are a beautifully crafted nudge. Be clever, be good. Remember what I told you.”

Sem gives me another smile before disappearing in a burst of stars that blacken my vision.

I’m stumbling back, attempting to right myself as familiar arms catch and lock around me. “Mary,” says Aris anxiously.

I blink the fuzziness from my vision, finding Aris before me, where Sem was moments ago. My headache is abating. “Aris,” I say.

I launch into his arms and replay the encounter in my head so he can hear it. I struggle to recall the exact wording of things, some of the conversation distorted by the thoughts of Sem’s hair and her magnificence, and he holds me tight. When I finally finish, there is a long, weighted pause.

It’s unlike Aris not to instantly talk to me, so I pull back in concern to look at him. Disturbingly, he isn’t looking at me; his gaze is set on the wall, eyes narrowed as he works through everything I said.

“Aris?”

His eyes shoot to me, the fury in them making my heart race—even though it’s not aimed at me.

“How dare she,” he hisses, arms constricting around my ribs like a boa. “She thought that she could disappear and pull the strings. Manipulate Jaegen, manipulate you, manipulate me. She thought—”

“Ow!”

He instantly loosens his grip, maliciousness faltering as his eyes comb over me. Once he sees that I’m fine, he scowls again, almost petulantly. “She made you for me, and that means you’re mine. Not hers.”

“I am yours,” I agree.

He pulls me against him again, grip lighter this time. I have never seen him… like this. His hair is tousled from the hand he continues to run through it, brows pushed together so firmly that it looks like there is one solid line across his forehead.

“What are we going to do?” I ask quietly.

“‘We,’” he murmurs, burying his face in my hair. “I love it when you say ‘we.’”

He doesn’t answer the question.

Chapter thirty-two

The next few days, Aris is strange. We are together constantly, but he keeps his followers around him as well. We don’t have much time alone, and, when we are alone, anger clings to him, weighing him down like wet clothes. He isn’t unpleasant, but his jaw is never not clenched. I don’t understand it.

Today, after he finally dismissed his minions, we retired to our room. I've been trying to coax him to the bed, slowly and suggestively revealing more of my skin and less of my silk covering, but Aris isn’t having it. He’s pacing, wearing a hole in the carpet.

Finally, I sigh. “What will I have to do to have you touch me?” I ask.

His footsteps do not falter; in fact, he walks faster and faster until he suddenly stops right in front of me.

I crane my head to meet his troubled gaze, alarmed. “Aris?”

He pauses for a long time, my anxiety growing with each second. Eventually, he says in a strange voice, "I think you've been thoroughly punished."

“What?”

He moves away from me again, my heart cinching at the distance. Have I done something wrong?

I reach out for him, and he chuckles. To my relief, he accepts the hand I offer, but he doesn’t interlock our fingers. Instead, he trails the tips of his fingers up my arm. “It was never my intention for this to be permanent; I simply wanted you to understand how it felt.”

I don’t like his tone. I have the strange, dizzying feeling of standing on the edge of something. “Understand what?”

His answering smile is a little sad. “You’ll see.”

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