I walked right past shelter and didn’t even realize it? She watched in stupefied fascination as he dropped to his knees and crawled inside. Fuck.

  There was a pause, broken only by soft rustles.

  I could run, she realized, staring at his backpack, which he’d left. Take it and run.

  Her legs refused to move, though, and another blast of frigid air kept her rooted to the spot. And then he was back in front of her, on his knees with dust powdering his hair and clothes, and her opportunity was gone. She looked at him, her jaw tight.

  “Get inside.”

  “In th-there?”

  If he killed me in there, they’ll never find my body.

  “Unless you prefer the frost to my company.”

  Val braced against another onslaught and went into the hole.

  It was an animal’s den, she realized, detecting the faint smell of musk and old urine. What were they called? Burrows. It went fairly deep, with just enough room for two people to lie down or crouch in very close quarters and seemed to be unused for years.

  The light disappeared as Gavin crawled in behind her, making the small space feel even more cramped. “Take off the jacket,” he said, and she did, reluctantly, watching as he covered the entrance with it and staked it in place with the knives.

  “Won’t it c-collapse?” she asked, watching a few dirt clods crumble.

  “No.” He glanced at her. “The rest, as well. Strip.”

  Val flushed and took off her boots with some difficulty. Her fingers had gone completely numb. The boots were sloshing with water and some spilled out to darken the earthen floor as she tossed them moodily against the furthest corner.

  She glanced at Gavin, busy with his pack, before peeling off her tights. The dress was harder to maneuver, but she managed to work the zipper and drag it over her head. Beneath it, Anna Maria’s silk dress was plastered to her body like a second skin. Val let out a breath and took that off too, hugging herself. “I-I’m done.”

  He held up a blanket, a big, soft-looking one taken from the pack.

  “Come here.”

  She started to move, but hesitated. She was naked, he was not; and she was going to have to crawl to him.

  “Don’t be skittish.”

  She went; she crawled. The blanket was fleece. She let out a small gasp at its warmth and didn’t protest when he wrapped his arms around her blanketed form.

  “Skin to skin works most effectively,” he said, “but the idea is the same.”

  Warm. She tried not to shake but the sensations were too much. She stared at the brown walls, aware of every point of contact between him and her, and of how much he filled the space. The smells of sandalwood, roses, and oiled leather were so strong, she thought she might suffocate on it, as if the scent of him were toxic fumes.

  His gloved fingers moved idly over her chilled, throbbing ones. The leather was cool, unpleasant. Val swallowed hard, and said, hoarsely, “My hands hurt.”

  Gavin paused, and then reached around her to tug off the gloves. She felt them slip against her body, before falling to the ground. And then his hands were on hers, rubbing gently. The feel of his hot, bare skin was curiously vulgar, even though he was touching more than her fingers. Yet, she thought. She could feel the press of him against her.

  “Your hands,” he said, holding them in his, “are like ice.”

  I am ice, she thought.

  “What happens now?” she asked tiredly. “What do we do?”

  “I believe the idea is that you survive the night.”

  “I mean after.” She cleared her throat. “A-after this.”

  “I haven’t decided.” His chest rumbled against her back as he spoke. “That hinges largely on you, my dear.” His palms swept up her arms, raising goosebumps. “You must have made quite the impression. My siblings weren’t so confident of killing you that they didn’t plan death from exposure as a failsafe instead. You should be flattered.”

  “So f-f-flattered.” Bastard. “They can go to h-hell.”

  She couldn’t seem to stop trembling and she knew he could feel it and assume it was because of him and his presence. And partially, humiliatingly, that was true. She knotted her fingers into the blanket, keeping it flush against her body.

  “You shouldn’t have gone into the water.”

  “I didn’t exactly have a choice. Your brother and sister would have k-killed me.”

  “Mm, yes.” He shifted indecently against her. “I suppose that’s true.”

  She began to feel the quiet nip of panic. “W-why is it so cold, anyway?” she blurted, desperate to fill the silence, to draw attention from the snapping electricity she could feel filling the spaces between their bodies. “It’s not even snowing.”

  “Snow insulates,” he said. “It makes things warmer.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Snow traps radiated heat, Valerian. Like this blanket.” He ran his hand up her shoulder, his voice level with her ear; spoken in a whisper, the roughness of his damaged throat wasn’t quite so noticeable. “Hmm. Your skin is still quite cold.”

  But he didn’t move his hand. Her breathing picked up.

  No, she thought, unable to relax. Her skin prickled.

  Gavin shifted again, in a series of odd movements that pushed down her spine in a strangely rhythmic way. What is he doing? She turned, intending to ask, and the words died on her tongue when she saw him stripping off his shirt, his sweatshirt already gone.

  “W-what are you doing?” she gasped and he must have found her breathiness particularly pleasing, because he gave her the smile of a wolf about to bite.

  “Warming you up.” He removed the undershirt, exposing his lean, hirsute chest, and then before her brain could fully process that, the press of his naked torso was against her back, and his arm was draped around her waist. “Isn’t this better?”

  No, she wanted to say. No, it isn’t.

  The rough hair on his chest tickled where it rasped against her spine, but his body was hard and firm and, yes, very warm. As his arm shifted, brushing the side of her breast, the skin around her nipples tightened in a way that had nothing to do with cold.

  She lurched forward, letting out a protest when his arms tightened.

  “No,” she said, filled with sluggish panic. “Wait—”

  “I’m not going to ravish you,” he said, flicking his fingers against her stomach. “As tempting as you are—and you are tempting—I prefer you when you’re considerably hotter under the collar.” He threw one of his legs over her own, and his pelvis pushed against her backside. “But if you keep struggling like that, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  Val fell still, her ear still burning from his breath. “You’re enjoying this.”

  His hand feathered teasingly down her ribs. “Maybe a little.”

  Luca never held her. It had been safer with him, with Ilya, too; she knew where she stood with them. With Gavin, it was never clear whether he wanted to save her from the edge or push her over it himself. The threat of him going too far always lingered.

  “You’ve stopped shaking,” he said.

  “I’m still cold,” she whispered. Like your eyes. Her own were slipping closed, lulled by the false sense of safety. “I’m always cold.” Inside and out. “Even in the sun.”

  His hand skated down her hip, glancing harmlessly off her thigh. “Is that so?”

  Val sighed. “Your eyes…” she said. “They’re all wrong, you know.”

  “Oh?” She thought he might be smiling. “What’s wrong with my eyes?”

  “There’s nothing in them.” His hand was stroking back up her side. She had never been this forward with him, but this whole situation had a dreamlike quality that sent reality flying out the window. Boldly, she said, “It’s the one thing you can’t get right. Your face, your voice—you manage those just fine. But not your eyes. Especially when you smile. Your smiles never reach your eyes.”

  “Such a detective,” he murmured. “You’re babbling.”

  “No.” Val shivered at the warning beneath that silky veneer. “You’re doing it now. You’re a sociopath. This is what you do. You manipulate. You control.”

  There was a silence. She sensed that she had surprised him in some way—not because of what she knew, but because she’d dared voice it. Val was as acutely aware of his study as if it were a pin being thrust through her heart.

  When she hazarded a look at him, he was watching her.

  “You’re very perceptive.”

  “Deny it,” she hissed, and he laughed.

  The laughter seemed to decide something, because the direction of his touch became lighter, more deliberate. The hard pressure of his hips discomfited her, but not as much as his silent observation of how he was affecting her body.

  “Your pulse is racing.” His hand smoothed up to cover one of her aching breasts. Val made a sound as he began to lightly thumb her nipple. His breathing was slow, like the touch of his hand. Moisture trickled between her legs and she squeezed her thighs together. She found herself moving, angling herself towards him unconsciously, and was rewarded with the brush of his mouth on her throat. “Are you frightened?”

  “No,” she said, unsure if it was to his touch, his words, or her own niggling self-doubts. Are you frightened? he had asked her, but she had been frightened for so long, it was almost as if he had asked her if she could remember how to breathe. Afraid, and not; she was in Schrodinger’s box, existing in two states.

  “No,” he repeated. “And yet, you’re so unwilling to look in my eyes.”

  There was another silence, as sticky as syrup.

  People could drown in silences like that.

  “It’s painful for you to give in to me, isn’t it, Valerian?” He kissed her neck again, biting softly. She moaned. “That’s why I love it when you finally do. Submission comes so naturally to you. You try to paint it as defiance, but I see it for what it really is. A desire for control.”

  Darkness clouded her tongue. Or maybe that was just the lethal effect his presence had on her morals. Val sank back against him, so warm beneath the fleece. He could sheathe his cruelty in kidskin gloves and she would melt under that touch. She was melting now. The caress of danger could be pleasantly seductive, right up to the moment that it wrapped around her throat and squeezed.

  “So tell me.” Teeth grazed her earlobe. “Why is your heart racing?”

  “Please,” Val said. “I’m so tired.”

  I’m tired of running.

  I’m tired of fighting.

  “You know how this ends.”

  She did. He’d made the options clear, just like a fork; it was up to her to forge the cage she now found herself trapped in. You can’t save all the pieces, he’d told her once.

  She couldn’t even save herself.

  She often wondered if her parents would still love her if they knew the dark side of her heart. As much as her mother condemned Gavin out of love, each harsh word chipped away pieces of Val’s very soul, because it felt like her mother was condemning her, too.

  Because while Gavin wasn’t safe, she felt like she could be while imprisoned in his arms. That was what he was offering: an illusion. A seductive one, but an illusion, nonetheless. And he was the only one who knew her for what she really was and wanted her anyway.

  I love him, she thought, tears weeping from her eyes. The words were thorns buried so deeply inside her heart that the wounds that they had left were festered sores encased in layers of bilious rot. Each beat of her heart brought the painful throb of truth that for years she had tried desperately hard to ignore. Oh God.

  He was still touching her, stroking her, setting her body ablaze. Val turned towards him, the blanket slipping from her shoulders to her lap and his eyes lowered to track the movement before flickering back to her face. The fire in that glance made her swallow hard. “Well, well,” he said softly, the words sticking like burrs. “What is it, Val?”

  “I—I want you,” she said, looking away.

  “Look at me.”

  The demand was harsh and so, when she looked at him, were his eyes. He had risen to his knees, with the sleekness of a panther in the shadows.

  “Say it again.”

  “I want you,” she whispered.

  She wasn’t sure whether she had initiated it, or whether he had, but in the next instant, his mouth was over hers and she could feel him against her belly, hard beneath his jeans. He rolled over, trapping her partially beneath him, the smell of earth rising as they disturbed the topsoil, as he kissed her with the kind of destructive force that sank entire ships.

  Val grabbed onto his broad shoulders, feeling like she was drowning.

  Feeling like she wanted to drown.

  “Mmm.” His mouth was flame against her skin. “So eager.”

  She let her nails bite into the unblemished expanse of pale skin and he lifted her hands from her shoulders, pressing them at her sides. His body was long and lean over hers, his broad chest lightly furred. Something twisted in her gut as he looked down at her with feral hunger, his face all angles in the fading light. He pressed on her wrists.

  “Don’t move.”

  Unable to speak, Val bobbed her head.

  When he leaned back, it was to tug off his pants. His erection slipped free, corded with blue veins. The head was flushed a deep rose, glistening at the tip. She felt it brush against her belly when he pushed her back, crawling over her with the blanket draped over them like a shroud. Her heart throbbed like an open wound.

  Her body seemed to dance with pins and needles, bursts of static-like shock erupting where his skin pressed and slid against her own. His cock was rubbing along her cleft. Clumsily, she moved her legs for him, forgetting his edict. He growled at her softly.

  “Don’t move.”

  He was pressing against her opening, her skin just beginning to stretch for him. But he paused, not quite breaching. “This time,” he said, a hitch entering his own voice, as his breathing finally changed, “there will be no walking away, Val.”

  “I—I know.” Val averted her eyes. “I’ll do anything you say.”

  She made a sound as he pushed partially inside her. His arms were on either side of her shoulders, his face suspended over hers. Gasping, she arched, in an unconscious attempt to take him deeper, and he with uncommon gentleness, he pushed her back down, sliding a fraction deeper as he did. “Please,” she said, shuddering.

  “End it,” he said. “Bring our little game to a close.”

  She stared at him, not knowing what he wanted her to say—

  Until, with a feeling of aching despair, she did.

  “I concede,” she told him.

  He thrust, then, hard.

  And the earthen ceiling seemed to shatter like brittle glass.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Aquamarine

  The smell of earth confused Val and for a moment, looking around at the dark space and its brown walls, she was filled with overwhelming, claustrophobic terror. Buried alive, she thought wildly, flashing back to the sea cave that still plagued her nightmares.

  But there was soil beneath her feet, warmed by her body, and not the icy Pacific. And it was the sour tang of minerals and decayed plant matter that filled her nose, not saltwater. Where am I? she wondered, opening her eyes. And then she saw him.

  Gavin.

  He was watching her. Not with desire, exactly, but something else that was no less intense and yet oddly familiar. He looked at me that way when I barely knew him, she realized, with a sense of unease that verged on fear. She had fainted after eating nothing all day, and when she had regained consciousness, she had found him staring at her with a flat look of clinical curiosity before he’d noticed she was awake and masked it.

  It had been a fast shift. Fourteen-year-old Val had wondered if she had, perhaps, imagined it. Twenty-one-year-old Val knew she hadn’t.

  “Bad dreams?”

  She tensed when he reached towards her, but his fingers closed over his undershirt and not her knee. She watched him pull it on before letting her eyes dance away. “Every night.” Because of you. “Do you actually care?”

  “Of course,” he said smoothly.

  I gave myself to him, thought Val. I’m his.

  Looking inward, she expected to feel regret or panic. Instead, she felt… drained. Yes, drained. She had fought him for so long, fighting was all she had.

  She had no idea what came next.

  She gave a startled cry when the blanket snapped off her body. He rolled the fabric up with an amused smile. “Get dressed,” he said, another one of those smiles flickering at the corners of his mouth when she folded her arms to hide herself. “Your clothes should be dry. I let you sleep in a bit. You seemed… rather worn out.”

  Val nearly dropped the silk dress, now hopelessly stained with water spots. Her cheeks stung with irritating heat, as if she’d been slapped. She felt like she had been. Fuck you, she nearly said, biting her tongue at the last possible instant. She knew what he’d say to that particular epithet. Why, Val. So eager to have me back on top of you.

  She waited for dread, or anger, but there was nothing. Only a hollow void that fear had chiseled out and left barren when the last remnants of self-preservation fled. Last night, her body had been on fire; but now that all the flames had burned away, she was nothing but cool ash and desolation.

  What was it going to be like, being his? She hadn’t thought that through. Was he going to control everything she did? She had felt such a chill when he’d brought that old-fashioned dress for her to wear for him. Not just because he’d known what size to bring, but because it was such an imposition of will.

  Val thought he probably would, and there was something sinisterly archaic about that: a patriarch from a bygone era who was not above using force.

  She buttoned herself back into her dress. He held the sweatshirt out and she let him slide it over her arms, huddling in it as he pulled on the rest of his clothes. At first, she averted her eyes out of habit, but then she realized it didn’t matter. She had conceded; any resistance was vestigial now, a lingering remnant of morality that had since grown withered or corrupt. She could look or not look, and it would make no difference.

 

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