Page 83 of Break Her Heart
August stared at him for a long moment, chest still rising fast from what we’d been doing. Then he pushed off the bed, the air shifting around him as he stood. In a few quick steps, he crossed the room and crouched by the woman.
“What’s the problem?”
She shot a fearful glance at Simon, then turned to August. A shriek ripped from her when she saw his eyes. “Vampires,” she whispered as she scrabbled backward across the floor. “They’re everywhere.”
“You know you’re only allowed to feed underground,” August growled without looking up at Simon.
“I did—just forgot to clean up before I came back,” Simon said with a careless shrug. His gaze slid between August and where my hand covered my neck. “So, what exactly would you call what you two were doing?”
“Simon,” August warned.
“Fix her and I’ll be out of your way.”
August went to the woman who had backed herself against the wall and cupped her face gently, turning his head to glance at me. “Winnie. I need you to not freak out with what I’m about to do, okay? Can you do that?”
I nodded stiffly, unsettled by Simon’s attention. He had never really bothered me before, but with the blood under my hand and the blanket wrapped around me, his eyes barely left me.
August turned back to the girl and locked eyes with her. “Calm down.”
Instantly, her shoulders dropped and the panic melted off her face.
“Forget the vampires. Forget what you saw. Clean yourself up and get back to work.”
She blinked, wiped her cheeks, stood, bowed… and walked calmly out of the room.
“Absolutely amazing as always, brother,” Simon said, grinning.
“Get out.”
Simon lifted a hand in lazy farewell and shut the door behind him. August stood and stared at me.
“What the fuck just happened?”
“I said not to freak out,” August reminded.
“You just told that woman to calm down and she did. Like—completely.”
“It wasn’t the words,” he said, climbing back onto the bed with me. “It was the look.”
I backed away as he crawled closer. “You can make people do whatever you want… just by looking at them?”
He shrugged.
“Stop being so nonchalant about it! How do I know you’ve never done that to me before? How do I know that anything I’ve done around you—for you—was of my own free will?“
His gaze darkened—deepened—like a storm rolling in behind his eyes. The edges of the room fell away; candlelight guttered, sound thinned, and all the air seemed to funnel toward him. Heat rose off his skin in a faint glow. My heartbeat climbed to meet his, too loud, too eager. He was ruin and refuge in the same breath—something holy wearing something wicked—and I couldn’t look anywhere else.
I wanted him.Neededhim. The kind of need that emptied out reason and filled it with fire. I would have given him my throat, my pulse, the last of my stubborn pride. I would have lied, knelt, burned a kingdom to ash if he asked and thenthanked him for the order. Let the world keep spinning; let it fall—I didn’t care. There was only him.
A smile—slow, knowing—curved his lips. “You’d know,” he said.
The words wrapped around my brain, silky and sharp, and then he blinked and the world snapped back into place. I gasped, stumbling as I pushed myself from the bed.
“What. The fuck. Wasthat?!”
“Compulsion,” he said. “Like I said, I didn’t use it on you. I would never use it on you.”
“You could have stopped me from killing Carrow.”
