Page 148 of Sweetheart: Part One

I shut my eyes, then turned back to him.

My gaze darted to the couches sprawled along the far end of his living space. My brain did a million calculations. If my perfume began seeping into the space, would he catch it from that distance?

“Don’t make me carry you here.” His voice shredded those desperate thoughts to ribbons.

“Why?” I asked.

I couldn’t figure him out. I was good at reading people, but Ebony was a constant enigma.

“I want a proper night with my Sweetheart,” he said.

“You dragged me into a storm and threw me in the pool.”

“I wanted to see what would happen.” It must be a family thing, as he did what Love was so good at: making insane statements that sounded totally normal.

I felt a flare of anger, mostly because I believed that. “And what did you see?” I asked, voice cold.

He held a hand out to me. “I don’t know yet.”

I stared at his hand in shock. He really expected me to just climb into bed with him?

I took a step away. “You’re sick. I’m sleeping on the couch. I’m protected by the contract.”

He was on his feet in a flash, a curl to his lip. I’d never felt so small as I did right then.“Areyou protected by it?”

My mind was unravelling. This was a threat. He was saying he didn’t give a shit about the contract I’d signed, and I didn’t put that past him at all. Except, the way he spoke those words, it’s like he meant something else entirely.

In a completely insane moment, I wondered if he knew.

The thought stuck, and everything else slammed into perfect clarity.

Fuck.

Ebony knew I was an omega.

That was why he’d done what he’d done.

It hadn’t been cruelty for the sake of cruelty. He knew what was going through my mind. He’d planned it all.

He was manipulating every step of this night. It was both a shock and, in a strange way, a relief.

It was over.

I didn’t know what was going to happen in the morning, but this was all by design, and somehow, that made it safer.

He’d won already, he didn’t need to do anything else.

And maybe—justmaybe—if there had been a reason, then my mate wasn’t as much of a monster as he had seemed tonight.

I stepped toward him, a leap of faith that this was until we found what the morning brought.

He took my hand and drew me to the bed, watching me carefully as I climbed in and pulled the blankets around me.

Then he followed and to my shock, he wrapped his arms around my waist, drawing me close.

I frowned, tensing.

“You usually smell like cherry blossom,” he murmured.

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