Page 81 of Sweetheart: Part One

I looked between those warm chestnut eyes that matched his caramel scent. One that smothered me right now, edged with smug victory.

“And it stays that way so long as you behave for me, right?” he asked.

My panicked brain finally caught up to reality.

To the stupidly obvious thing I’d missed in my fear.

He wanted me acting like his fucking Sweetheart puppet just like he had the other night.

That’s what this was—allit was.

I was safe from Alastor.

The contract was still intact.

“Why?” I asked numbly. He’d gone to a lawyer. That was so much further than I’d imagined him going. He wanted to crush me, totally and completely after what I’d done, I could see it in his eyes.

“I like seeing you dance for me,” he said. “And you’ll be dancing for a long time before you’ve paid those debts you racked up.”

I swallowed. “What do you want?”

I knew, but I needed to hear him say it, so I could avoid fucking this up and risking him destroying the contract. I believed he would. He’d proven it today.

He was pissed, and he wanted revenge.

“It’s easy, Baby Girl,” he tugged me closer. “If I say jump, you say how high. If I want my room cleaned top to bottom three times over, you clean it. If I tell you I don’t like your outfit, you change it. If I want you on my lap while the others are around, you climb onto my lap and you look fucking delighted about it.”

I grit my teeth, swallowing every furious instinct trying to claw its way up my throat.“Okay.”My fingers still bit down on the grip he had on my waist. “But I’m not sitting on your lap. I don’t want you touching me.”

He snorted, and I fought him as he dragged me down onto his lap with ease.

I snarled, chest heaving as I tried to shove backward, but he ignored me, closing his fist tight in my hair and holding me close. “You’re mine, little Sweetheart,” he murmured. “I can do whatever I want with my stuff.”

I couldn’t deal with this right now, not when I could still feel Alastor’s touch on me.

“I’ll do what you ask, but I’m not doing anything that involves—”

He clamped a hand over my mouth with a snort. “Don’t debase yourself, Vex. I already told you I don’t need blackmail for that. I could still have you begging for me if I wanted it.”

Fuck him.

He released my mouth and my venom spilled out before I could catch it. “I wouldn’t fuck you if you were the last alpha on the planet.” Mate or not, right now that was the absolute truth.

Rook was grinning as he leaned close, breath tickling my ear. “Dance good enough for me, and one day—ifyou’re really lucky—we’ll see if you’re a liar.”

Then—like the fucking idiot that he was—he nipped my ear after he said it. And of course, that was when my weary omega brain decided it was a good moment to light up like a fucking Christmas tree.

I’d never been around alphas, not since before I’d perfumed. Not until Alastor, who treated me like an animal. Even when he forced me to sit with him, he was cold and clinical—almost to the point of discomfort for me—and I despised him more than I hated Rook.

I hadn’t known how deep I’d buried my omega instincts. How touched-starved I really was. And never in living memory, had I had an alpha’s teeth on me aside from the day that I’d been dark bonded. Never gently. Never affectionately. And that was how my body read Rook right then.

It was all I could do to stifle my whine, as I wrapped my arms around myself instinctively, sinking against him. His grip loosened on my hair, letting me.

So then I was left curled up against the chest of a man I’d just decided I fucking hated, my blood warm with a sense of safety it had absolutely no right to.

Neither side of me wanted to move. Not the dumbass half that wanted that fucking bite again, and not the proud half that didn’t want to have to look up and see his expression.

I hadn’t whined.

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