Page 13 of His Bride

I love…no.Don’t even think it.

In the living room, I grab the cashmere throw and start folding it to give myself something to do.

Isaia walks past, his gaze sliding to me. There’s a moment, a split second, that I’m reminded of the night I spent with him and Caelian, but it’s not weird or awkward. Just something…familiar.

I try to smile from deep within, but he turns, someone speaking to him just out of my sight, and then he’s gone.

Carefully, I put the deep rose throw over the arm of the sofa. I hesitate and try the back. Finally, I just roll it up and put it in the white wicker basket near a sleek rack for magazines.

Even when I first arrived here months ago, I didn't feel as out of place as I do now. It’s like there’s this constant chill wrapping its fingers around my bones, the prickle of awareness permanently skittering along the back of my neck.

Rubbing my arms, unsure if I’m a ghost or just leftovers, I know I need to leave the house. Just for a little while so I can breathe. Maybe lick all those self-inflicted wounds no one sees.

Eyes on the polished floorboards, I cross to the door right as the temperature changes and my heart rate goes through the roof.

The doorway suddenly shrinks, and all the air vanishes. Only one person can do that when I’m in the same room with him.

I look up and into his eyes. Caelian’s facial hair has crossed from scruff to beard-like, and he looks tired. Stressed. It radiates in waves, and the cigarette smoke that clings to him tells me he’s been smoking way more than usual.

The scent isn’t one I like. Normally. On him, there’s something brokenly decadent, dark, and depraved about it.

Up in my room, I hide one of his shirts, which he wore. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when the longing startsscreaming in the dark, I’d lift the shirt to my face and breathe in the scent of him. Saffron, leather, and smoke that teases and clings like pheromones.

Again, not something I normally like. But Caelian? He seems to break all the rules.

Our gazes lock, and my heart stutters. I can’t read his expression; it’s dark and distant, and distracted. But as the moment stretches, the distraction shifts to piercing, to unerring focus, and it’s almost an unholy experience. Something I feel in my soul.

He shifts closer, and my pulse races. It’s a slight movement that sets my blood on fire, and my breath gets caught in my throat.

My nerves flit as he drops his gaze to my mouth, and I tilt my face up like he’s the sun after a long and frozen winter. Everything becomes charged and hot. It's a secret signal, our silent conversation.

His eyes, a scorching gold amber, slide up to mine again, igniting desire, fear, and confusion.

He bends close.

My stomach coils.

My lips anticipating.

When it comes, his voice is a low tempest, a storm hushed to a whisper. “Giana.”

I shudder, his breath a warm slide on my skin.

The sound of my name in that tone, so fraught and smoky and intimate, sends a shockwave careening through my veins. The world condenses into this single moment of infinite possibility.

“I need you to give me your phone.”

Ice spreads, swallowing the morsel of hope. His request is so mundane it's jarring, and my pulse stammers in confusion.

I swallow the hurt and summon the fight. “I don’t expect words of tenderness from you, Caelian,” I say, “but I also don’t expect to be treated like some kind of…of…chattels.”

“Hardly chattels.” His eyes slip to my mouth once more, and my blood warms again, even as I don’t want it to. “Do I look like a man who lets chattels have things like phones, autonomy, a pretty wardrobe?” He pauses. “Isn’t the wardrobe full of chattels? Maybe more slave-wife? It’s like a sister-wife but less problematic. Or is that more?”

I wait until he’s done. “You’re not having my phone.”

His nostrils flare, and the sun of him turns into ice and he moves, as do I, away from him until I hit the doorjamb.

Caelian crowds me. “Give me your fucking phone.”

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