His kiss wasn't an offer; it was a declaration of war, and my body surrendered without my consent.
The gala was a symphony of false notes and glittering lies, and the echo of his words — "you are mine to ruin" — was the only melody I could hear. It thrummed in my blood, a dark, discordant rhythm that set my teeth on edge and my skin on fire. The ride back to the penthouse was a silent, pressurized chamber. He didn't touch me, didn't speak, but his presence filled the sleek, dark interior of the car, a storm contained in a tailored suit.
I stared out the tinted window at the blur of city lights, each one a pinprick of a world that was not this suffocating intimacy. I could still feel the phantom weight of his hand on the small of my back, the possessive heat of his gaze as he'd carved a space for us amidst the crowd. He had dressed me in a weapon of silk and diamonds, and then wielded me as such. I was his to ruin. The words were a brand, and they burned.
The car glided to a halt in the underground vault of his building. The driver opened his door, and Lysander exited without a backward glance, expecting me to follow. I did, because what else was there? The cage he'd built was gilded, but it was a cage nonetheless, and every clause of the contract I'd signed was a bar I could feel closing in around me.
We stepped into the private elevator, the doors sighing shut, sealing us in. The air crackled, thick with everything unsaid. I leaned against the cool metal wall, my body thrumming with a dangerous cocktail of fury, humiliation, and a treacherous, unwelcome thrill.
"Was your point made?" My voice was rough, scraping from a throat tight with emotion.
He turned his head, his profile a sharp cut against the elevator's muted lighting. "What point would that be, Elara?"
"That you own me. That you can parade me, display me, and make sure every other man knows I'm your… your spoils." The word tasted vile, but it was the only one that fit.
A slow, dark smile touched his lips. It wasn't a pleasant sight. "Spoils imply a concluded war. Ours has only just begun."
The elevator doors opened directly into the stark, expansive silence of his penthouse. He shrugged off his jacket, tossing it over the back of a minimalist sofa, a gesture of casual ownership that set my nerves alight. I stayed by the elevator, my arms wrapped around myself, a futile gesture of defense.
"I am not a battlefield, Lysander."
"Aren't you?" He turned to face me fully, his eyes roaming over me with a dispassionate, analytical heat that was more intimate than any touch. "Every emotion that crosses your face is a skirmish. Every piece of art you create is a volley. You declared war on my family the day your father destroyed it. You just didn't know you were enlisted."
Rage, hot and clean, finally overrode my fear. "My father is a sick, broken man! He couldn't destroy a teacup, let alone an empire!"
"And yet, here we are." He took a step toward me, then another, closing the distance with the predatory grace that was as much a part of him as his own shadow. "His debt is your inheritance. And I am here to collect."
He was close now, so close I could smell the faint, expensive scent of his cologne, could see the flecks of silver in his storm-grey eyes. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird beating itself to death against its cage. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to scream. I wanted…
His hand came up, not to strike, but to cradle my jaw. His thumb stroked the line of my cheekbone, a mockery of a caress. The touch was electric, a jolt that went straight to my core, liquefying my bones and my resolve simultaneously.
"Stop," I whispered, but it was a breath, a plea without conviction.
"Why?" His voice was a low murmur, a velvet-wrapped threat. "You want this as much as I do. This… tension. This fire. It's the only honest thing between us."
He was right, and the truth of it was the most ruinous thing of all. The hatred and the attraction were a twisted double helix, inseparable and strengthening each other. My body was traitorously, overwhelmingly aware of his — the sheer masculine power of him, the heat radiating from his skin, the intensity of his focus that felt like a physical weight.
"I hate you," I breathed, the words a final, desperate fortification.
His smile was a blade. "Then hate me."
His mouth crashed down on mine.
It was not a kiss of seduction. It was a conquest. It was a clash of teeth and clashing wills and searing, undeniable heat. It was punishment and promise, violence and vulnerability, all fused into one devastating contact. His arms banded around me, crushing me against the unyielding wall of his chest, erasing any last pretense of space between us.
I should have fought. I should have bitten and scratched and kicked. But my body surrendered without my consent, without my permission. A low moan escaped me, swallowed by his hungry mouth. My hands, which had been pushing against his chest, curled into the fine fabric of his shirt, clinging to him as if he were the only solid thing in a spinning world.
This was the ruin he promised. Not in poverty or obscurity, but in this—in the utter annihilation of my self-control, in the way he could make my hatred feel indistinguishable from a need so profound it was terrifying.
He walked me backward until my shoulders hit the cool glass of the floor-to-ceiling window, the entire glittering city sprawling beneath us, a silent witness to my undoing. His lips left mine to trail a path of fire down my jaw, to my neck, where he nipped at the sensitive skin, making me gasp.
"This is what you are," he growled against my throat, his hands sliding down my back, molding me to him. "This fire. This chaos. Not that docile, pretty artist you pretend to be for the world. This is the truth I paid for."
And God help me, it was. In his arms, with his mouth on my skin, every pretense fell away. There was no past, no future, no revenge plot, no dead fathers or broken legacies. There was only this raw, primal need, a furious, desperate connection that felt more real than anything I had ever known.
When his mouth found mine again, I kissed him back with equal fury. I met the thrust of his tongue with my own, my hands tangling in his dark hair, pulling him closer. I was as much a part of this battle as he was. I was ruining him, too, in my own way—scrambling the cold, calculated lines of his revenge with the sheer, untamable force of my response.
He tore his mouth from mine, both of us breathing in ragged, harsh gasps. His forehead rested against mine, his eyes closed, his body trembling with the same desperate tension that racked mine. The air was thick with the scent of us, of passion and anger and shattered resolve.
In the heavy, breathless silence that followed, the world began to seep back in. The reality of who we were, what we were doing, the chasm of lies and pain that separated us. The heat began to recede, leaving a cold, sharp clarity in its wake.
I was shaking, my legs barely able to hold me. The memory of my father's face, pale and confused in his care home, flashed behind my eyes. A wave of guilt, cold and nauseating, washed over me.
In the dark, intimate confines of the car that had brought us here, the words tumbled out, a broken whisper from a shattered soul. "He keeps talking about the 'Aethelred deal.'" I felt Lysander go rigid beside me. I pressed on, my voice trembling. "He says your father forced him…"
Lysander went utterly still. "The Aethelred deal was my father's. It was clean." Elara looks at him, terrified. "Then why does my father scream that it was a blood pact?"