Page 40 of Grave Curse

“Mm-hm.”

“And then I set the alarm.”

“It’s a good alarm. Best that money can buy.” He reached over to some sort of formless lump on the table that I couldn’t make out in the semidarkness. With the rustling of a plastic bag, he pulled out what I immediately knew was my dinner ina clamshell box, opened it, and inhaled deeply. “Mm, kung pao. My fave. Thanks, baby girl.”

The low screech that escaped me didn’t even sound human. “That’smydinner, not yours. Stop eating it and tell me how you got in.”

Thanks to the city’s ambient light trickling in through large industrial windows, I could see him wave chopsticks in the vague direction of the sliding door. “I walked in through the front door, of course. No big mystery about it. And there’s enough food here for two, you know. You weren’t expecting anyone tonight, were you?” His tone strongly suggested that I absolutely should not be expecting anyone ever again for the rest of my life.

“That’s none of your business, and I happen to like leftover Chinese food for breakfast—leftovers you’re now sucking up for yourself, I might add.”

“Kung pao for breakfast? I always knew you were brave.”

Okay, I was done. “You need to leave.”

“But I haven’t eaten my fill yet, Gingersnap.”

I hopped to my feet, dropping the throw onto the couch. It didn’t matter that he’d obviously draped the throw over me and thoughtfully tucked me in as I slept, I thought as I marched over to him. When it came to men like Tyr, a woman had to stand her ground. “I don’t care that you haven’t eaten your fill yet. Get up, get out, and never break into my house again.”

“I didn’t break in, Snap. In fact, in all the countless times I’ve come over to check on things, I’veneverbroken in. How can a man break into a place that’s already his?”

My breath caught so audibly I swear it echoed. “Wait… God, there’s so much to unpack in that one sentence, it’s making my head swim.”

Again he gestured with the chopsticks. “You probably need to eat. You hungry? Grab a chair and make yourself at home.”

“Iamhome, goddamn it! This ismyhome, not yours. This ismytable you’re sitting at, not yours. That’smydinner you’re eating, not yours.Nothinghere is yours, so get up off your a—”

The scraping of the chair against the hardwood floors was the only warning I got. In the darkness he seemed little more than an indistinct blur of movement, a darker shadow among shadows. But there was nothing indistinct of the hands that gripped me and spun me around, nor was there anything indistinct about the way my feet suddenly lifted from the floor. The next thing I knew, I was lying flat on the table, my back against the polished wood. Tyr was between my knees, leaning over me until we were almost nose-to-nose, his scalding-hot body lying on top of mine. His weight was shocking, inescapable. Having him press down on me like he was desperate to imprint the feel of me onto his skin made my heart run away, half in panic, half in something else my brain refused to label.

“It’s time for you to know the world you’re actually living in, my little Gingersnap. The world you live in? It’smyworld. All of it.” Through the gloom, I looked up into his whiskey-colored eyes and saw with growing alarm that something vital inside his head had slipped its chain and now he was rolling without even a hint of brakes to slow him down. “You live here in this loft,in this building, becauseIwant you to live here. Same thing for your shop. All of it ismine.”

“What?No.” The denial tore from my throat. “No, you told me—”

“I told you what you wanted to hear so you would stay exactly where I needed you to be. That strip mall is mine, just like this building is mine. Blue Horizons, LLC ismine, Ginger. I wanted that talentless tattooist neighbor the fuck away from you, so I evicted him becauseyou’remine. This table, this food, the fucking air you breathe when you’re here or at Vixen’s Den—all mine.Everythingis mine.”

Horror sank through me as his mouth slammed down onto my lips. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, but not because Tyr’s warrior’s body crushed me into submission. I was in shock, the kind that went all the way to the soul, because the world as I knew it was no more. It was as if a tornado had come through to destroy everything I’d built from the time I’d moved out of Tyr’s place.

Because I hadn’t “built” anything. I hadn’t managed to find my feet and stand on my own. Tyr had always been there as an invisible force, constantly propping me up.

My life wasn’t real. It wasn’t evenmylife.

It was Tyr’s.

“Kiss me.” His lips, so hot, lifted from grinding against mine, and he glared down at me as if I were responsible for all the things in the world that made him unhappy. “Goddamn it, kiss me back.”

“No.” He might own every aspect of my life, but he didn’t own me. “I told you, I hate you. I mean that now more than ever.”

“And I told you I’ll never allow that, Snap. Now more than ever.”

A furious hiss escaped me as he pushed deeper between my legs, letting me feel the full, stiff length of his cock. Pure sexual excitement exploded on the landscape of my inner resistance, and as those two aspects went to war with each other, I lashed out, landing a decent punch on the point of his chin. Even in the darkness I could see the shock bloom in his eyes, and for a split second I knew the deepest satisfaction.

But it was only for a split second.

God-tier rage poured into his eyes, turning them molten. Again he moved faster than my eyes could track in the semidarkness, and before I knew it both my hands were twisted above my head, held there with one of his powerful mitts. His other hand struggled to reach something in his back pocketwhile his weight crushed me down into the table. Escape was impossible, made that much more so when I realized the thing he’d fumbled out of his back pocket was, of all things, my discarded bra. He’d tucked it into his pocket for some reason and was now quickly twisting it around my wrists.

“You know better than anyone that I’ve never raised a hand to a woman, so punching me is pretty goddamn unfair of you. I can’t let that go unpunished. It’s the Gravedigger way.”

“The Colgrave way, you mean. Punishment was always your uncle’s answer for everything.” I spat the words out as he angled my body across the table, pulling my hands toward a corner. The material around my wrists tightened a second before he straightened away from me, and in an instant I made to follow him off the damn table, only to find I couldn’t.

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