Page 31 of Shattered & Returned

“Now isn’t the time to be shy, Miss Aurelius.” That smirk. Those damnable green eyes glinting with knowing amusement. He remembered exactly how I’d gripped his hair, how my thighs had trembled against his temples yesterday?—

Heat flushed up my neck and entire face.

Defiance warred with self-preservation. Refusing him was dangerous; this man thrived on unpredictability. With reluctant surrender, I offered my hands.

His fingers curved around my wrists. The slow circles his thumbs drew against my pulse points sent electric currents straight to my core. Every suppressed gasp, every withheldmoan, only amplified the ache spreading through me. My body sang for him, a live wire humming under his touch.

Shit, shit.I locked every muscle, fighting to keep my face blank.

“How interesting.” His voice was honey and smoke. “Your pulse is…quite rapid.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. He was toying with me, reveling in every hitch of my breath. My face burned crimson, and not from the class’s stares.

“Maybe whoever brought me here made a mistake,” I said, quick to accuse others and defend myself.

His thumb pressed against my racing pulse. “You’re exactly where you belong.” That low, private timbre. Then, sharper: “Close your eyes.”

I obeyed. Better than drowning in that bottomless gaze.

He began to chant, all hard consonants, flowing vowels, and harsh commands that mortals weren’t meant to speak. Worse, his voice took on a cadence that coiled low in my belly, molten and relentless.

I clenched my thighs.Shit, I’ll come just from his voice.

A small comfort: the entire class sat equally entranced. But soon even their presence faded. There were only his hands anchoring me, his breath mingling with mine, his voice weaving a spell I never wanted broken.

Something primal uncoiled in the hollow place where my deepest pain lived—a shadowed beast shaking off centuries of slumber.

Memories that weren’t mine tore through my mind like shrapnel:

Mulled wine bitter with cinder.

His laughter against my bare shoulder.

An elegant hand sliding possessively up my ribs, cupping my breast.

The scent of burning roses.

A kiss that tasted like devotion and damnation.

Then pain.

The noose’s bite. The stool kicking away. Falling, falling?—

Impact. Bones snapping on jagged rocks.

Drowning in black water, crimson hair swirling like red smoke.

I wrenched free with a gasp, nearly toppling from my seat. My eyes flashed open. Ravencrux’s arms locked around me as I trembled, not from the classroom’s sudden frost, but from thewrongnessof those memories. My lungs burned, yet…no asthma attack. As if the visions had scorched the weakness from me.

The lecture hall had gone arctic. Frost crackled across desks.

And his eyes?—

Dark fury stared back at me, the kind that erased kingdoms.

This wasn’t magic awakening. This was somethingunearthed.

Forbidden,my mind supplied.

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