Page 57 of Break Her Heart
I felt Winnie’s heart rate spike.
For a moment, no one spoke. The silence echoed off the walls like a warning.
Halston bowed, stiff and reluctant. “As you wish, Your Grace.”
But as he bent forward, his eyes shifted to the guards standing at the entrance. He wasn’t bowing in deference. He was checking. Calculating. Gauging whether any of them might stand with him if he made a move.
He was testing the boundaries. Testing me.
So I crossed the distance between us in the blink of an eye and my hand closed around his throat, lifting him an inch off the ground. The guards tensed, but didn’t move.
“Are you looking for a fight, Halston?” I hissed through clenched teeth. “Is that what you want? You think they’ll side with you?”
His eyes bulged slightly as he clawed at my wrist. I leaned in, close enough that he could see the red bleeding into my gaze. “They’re not stupid enough to forget what I can do.”
I let go abruptly, and he crumpled forward, coughing, humiliated.
“Now,” I said, voice like ice, “let’s try that again.”
He looked up at me, confusion flickering across his face.
I tilted my head, smiling coldly. “As you wish, Your Grace,” I mocked, every syllable dripping with venom.
He stood, slower this time, one hand still rubbing his throat. He didn’t meet my eyes. He bowed, deep and stiff, gaze locked on the ground. “As you wish, Your Grace.”
He turned and disappeared into the crowd, but I felt no satisfaction in watching him go.
Because Carrow would return if we didn’t find a way to stop him.
We sat on the dais. Winnie kept her gaze fixed firmly on the dance floor, but I couldn’t look anywhere else. My eyes stayed on her, tracing every subtle movement.
She wore black tonight. Not just any black—something sheer and glimmering, a shadow stitched from sin and silk. It clung to her waist and dipped low along her back, the fabric whispering against her thighs with every step she took like it was just as desperate to touch her as I was. Slits ran up both legs, high enough to make my breath catch, and the sleeves—if they could be called that—were little more than threads of beaded lace hanging off her arms.
It was dangerous letting her wear it now. Dangerous to let her sit beside me like that, eyes glinting with amusement, knowing exactly what she did to me.
And gods, her smell was stronger now than ever.
The scent curled around me. It was enough to make my restraint falter. I could hear her pulse in my skull, feel it echo through my limbs.
I curled my fingers around the throne’s armrest hard enough to crack it.
I closed my eyes, trying to breathe through it. To remember who I was and what she was and how dangerously close those two things had become.
But when I opened them again—I was no longer in my seat.
I was kneeling in front of her.
I didn’t remember moving.
I was so close I could see the flutter of her pulse beneath her skin. My mouth hovered just inches from her thigh, parted and hungry, drawn to the warmth of her blood like it wasthe only thing left that mattered. My body leaned toward hers instinctively, helplessly, every muscle coiled with the need to taste. The scent of her, the heat of her, it overwhelmed every rational part of me.
And still, I didn’t move. Not yet.
Her skin glowed in the candlelight, flawless and tempting, and I imagined how it would look marred by my teeth. How she would sound if I sank them in. Pleasure or pain—did it matter?
It was the sound of her voice that snapped me back.
“Don’t you dare.”
