Page 21 of Break Her Heart
My breath caught. The way he said it made the words feel heavier than they should have. I hated that my mind twisted them into something else. Something that made my stomach flip. “And how do you plan to do that?”
He stepped forward slowly. His hand brushed my arm, then glided up with a possessive kind of patience until he reached my hair, threading his fingers through the loose curls. His other hand found the back of my neck. I could feel the warm press of his palm, the weight of his intention. He leaned down, his breath ghosting over my neck, and I felt my knees weaken.
I didn’t breathe. Couldn’t.
Because if I did, I would smell him—smoke and cedar. His fascination with fires was something I never understood, especially since a stray spark could have killed him. Maybe that was why he was fascinated with me.
He brought his face to mine and rested his forehead against mine, thumb stroking my jaw as his fingers slid deeper into my hair. I kept my eyes locked on his, refusing to flinch, even when he leaned in and kissed me.
Soft. Controlled. Measured.
I ignored the heat it stirred. Ignored the tremble in my hands.
Bronwen. Get a hold of yourself. You hate him.
You hate him! You hate him! You hate him!
He knelt before me, his head nearly resting against my chest, his breath teasing across my skin. I stared down at him, at the way he moved like this was a ceremony, not a game. One hand rested on my bare ribs while the other moved the slit of my dress before gliding slowly, shamelessly, up my thigh. He leaned down, pressing his lips against my hip where he had shifted the fabric aside, his eyes never leaving mine.
I shivered. Not from cold.
He inched closer to my center, but I grabbed him by the hair and yanked him back before he could do what I knew he intended. He stood with an ease that made my heart stumble, adjusting his coat like nothing had happened. Like he hadn’t just branded me with his touch.
“You’re a vampire,” I hissed. “You could’ve used your speed and done all of that before I even realized what you were doing.”
“Yes.” He smirked. “But then I wouldn’t have seen just what I could still do to you, Winnie.”
7
Bronwen
“Dinner? Am I going to sit and watch all of you just feed?” I asked as I followed him down another corridor.
Our footsteps echoed off the stone, each one swallowed quickly by thick walls and heavier silence. The halls twisted and turned like a maze, lit by sconces spaced just far enough apart to keep everything in a half-shadow. The air smelled like wax and stone and something older. Something wrong.
“No. It’s an actual meal prepared by humans. I told you vampires can eat.” August turned down another hall as if he had the entire place memorized. But of course he did. This was the real him. Not the one I had grown so used to.
“But you do not need to eat.”
August let out a breath.
“My sister planned this as soon as she heard of your arrival. To welcome you, or assess you to determine the best way to hurt me. I never know with her. Besides, you need to eat.”
I didn’t argue. I hadn’t eaten since before Adar and I questioned August, and that felt like another lifetime. My stomach tightened, but not just from hunger. The dread was growing stronger the closer we got.
August stopped and turned to me. “Do not provoke them.”
I scrunched my nose. “Why?”
“Because I do not wish to kill them on my first day back,” he said. “It will already be hard enough as it is without you doing something to piss them off.”
I crossed my arms. “So youdocare about them. They were never important enough to tell me about before. No—I guessIwas just never important enough for you to tell me about them.”
He flinched. Barely. But it was there.
“Has it never occurred to you that everything I kept from you, including them, was for your safety?”
“And yet here I am with two dead parents, a brother being hunted, and vampires fighting the urge to kill me around every corner.”
