Page 16 of The Truth Between

I froze. The double entendre was not lost on me, and I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks even though I wished I wasn’t having that reaction. Soren smirked, his eyes darkening even more than they normally were. If this was the game he wanted to play, then by all means, I was going to play it.

I matched Soren’s smirk with a sly smile of my own. I did my best to match his confidence, even though I was definitely lacking there, given what had happened. “Was I supposed to come crawling to you, begging you to let me go? That still hasn’t happened, has it?”

I watched as Soren’s jaw clenched before he leaned forward, his eyes locked onto mine. “Oh, I think you’ll beg eventually. We all have our breaking point, petal. And I intend to find yours.”

I refused to let him get the upper hand. “You seem awfully confident in that, Soren. But I’m not so easily broken, as you can see.”

Soren chuckled and I hated how it made me feel. “We’ll see, Iris. We’ll see.” He raised his glass to me and said, “You know, this really all could have been avoided.”

“Avoided? You are the one that brought me here and then locked me in the fucking basement! Hell, all of this is because of you. A little bit hard to forget that detail,” I spat back.

“You chose to dive into things you had no business getting into. I merely reacted.” The coldness in his voice sent shivers down my spine.

“I’m looking for the truth, Soren. That’s it.”

He leaned toward me, and I instinctively moved back. “Some truths, Iris, are better left buried.”

The weight of his stare shook me, and I tried to maintain my composure. I failed. He’d pissed me off to the point of no return. “Or perhaps the truth will come out anyway. Like revealing what happened to Eden, right?”

I regretted the words as soon as I said them. Bringing up his dead wife was the cruelest thing I could think of, and I just said it.

I had crossed a line.

Soren’s face shifted into something I’d never seen before. It morphed from cold anger to something far more terrifying. He looked like I had slapped him, and to be honest, it felt like I’d slapped him too.

Everything changed in an instant. There was a storm brewing in Soren’s eyes. The tension in the room snapped, crossing over into a place of no return. His gaze was pinned on me, but he was silent. It felt as though he was trying to decipher my every thought. There was nothing to be said.

But then he wasn’t.

Before I could respond, he reacted, choosing to knock all the china in his vicinity off the table with one swipe of his arm. I gasped as dishware flew off the table and shattered onto the wood floor. The sound was deafening, each plate turning into shiny shards that reflected in the light. The action was so unexpected that I flinched hard, and it made me stumble out of my chair.

My heart hammered in my chest as adrenaline pumped through my veins. I almost wished for the silence that we had shared before versus the chaos that had now erupted. I glanced at the door before looking back at Soren. The urge to run out of this house was more prevalent than ever, but he was too quick. He stormed toward me. I backed away from him, stumbling over my now fallen chair until my back hit the wall.

There was nowhere to go.

Nowhere to hide.

Cornered, with no means of escape, I looked up at him and put my hands out in front of me in hopes of providing a small barrier between him and me. I was confronted by every ounce of his rage, which had now contorted his usually handsome features. Even if I hated the man, I was willing to admit he was still so fucking attractive.

“Never speak of her again.”

The threat hung between us, but there was something else in his eyes. I saw something beneath the surface, a subtle shift in the hardened exterior he liked to portray. I noticed a glimmer of something raw and vulnerable. Pain.

It was as if, for a brief moment, the walls he’d built around himself had crumbled just a little, revealing something he’d made sure to keep hidden. It was surprising, unsettling even. I was too afraid to move because of what I’d seen and what he might be planning to do. Not that it mattered because he sprung first.

Soren’s hand was around my throat before I had the chance to react. He squeezed, not enough to cut off my air supply but enough to make me gasp for breath. Adrenaline continued to churn through my veins, but it was now joined by fear. My hands flew to his in an effort to break free from his hold. His grip only tightened, his fingers digging into my skin.

“You have no idea what you’re playing with,” he growled, his face only inches from mine. My vision blurred as salty tears ran down my cheeks and my breath caught in my throat. Each inhalation was a battle against the growing lump in my chest. Then the unthinkable happened.

Soren’s lips crashed onto mine. His hands moved from my throat to my hips and pulled me flush against him. This time, his touch was more firm than punishing. I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do other than to let him kiss me. As much as my brain told me to pull away, my body refused because the sensations that I was feeling drowned out rational thought.

He bit down on my lower lip, causing me to gasp just before he deepened the kiss. His tongue pushed its way into my mouth, and I moaned. I was ashamed to admit it, but I was enjoying this. I was enjoying being kissed like this, being wanted like this.

Was it my fear or my excitement filling my brain? I couldn’t be sure because both had melded together. I found myself sliding my arms around Soren’s neck and leaned into our kiss.

However, that seemed to shift the dynamic. The kiss abruptly ended, leaving me breathless and wanting more. Soren pulled away from me, his eyes still dark with desire.

“Franklin,” he called out. “Get her out of my sight.”

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