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“Reginald filled me in on parts of what happened,” I murmured, my voice muffled by the fabric of his shirt. “But I need to hear it from you. It’s the only way I’ll believe you’re actually okay.”
Frederick’s arms tightened around me. He sighed, letting his head droop forward until it rested on my shoulder.
“It’s just as Reggie said,” he murmured. “Esmeralda’s family didn’t take my ending the engagement well.” He stepped backand held up his wrists, which bore angry red marks I hadn’t noticed earlier. “In my absence I became very well acquainted with their dungeon.”
My breath caught. “They hurt you.”
“A little,” he admitted. “Not much. We’re immortal, but because our hearts don’t beat, our blood doesn’t flow the way yours does. Which, in turn, means it takes an irritatingly long time for wounds to heal.” He gifted me with a wry half smile. God, how I missed his smiles. “My wrists were only tightly bound for part of one day. I promise this injury looks a lot worse than it is.”
He moved forward and wrapped me in his arms again. I closed my eyes, burying my face in his shoulder, breathing him in.
Somehow, I found the courage to ask the question I most badly needed answered. “So the engagement is definitely over now?”
“Yes.” His deep voice was as forceful as I’d ever heard it. “I ended the engagement definitively. Ironically enough, Esmeralda helped with that. She wasn’t very keen on marrying someone who would rather rot in a suburban dungeon than be her husband. She intervened on my behalf with her parents at the same time you concocted your brilliant TikTok strategy.” He drew back and tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “She’s a reasonable woman, at least insofar as any of the Jamesons are reasonable people. She’s just not the right woman for me.”
The heat in his gaze was unmistakable. I blushed at the obvious implication of what he was saying and looked at the floor.
“I missed you,” I admitted. It felt foolish to miss someone I’d only known for a few weeks as much as this. But it was the truth.
“I missed you, too.” He paused, then added, “I wrote you.” His words were a deep rumble beneath my ear. He actuallywroteme while he was kept prisoner? I burrowed more closely into him, myheart so full it felt fit to burst. “I gave the letters to my guards and asked them to send them to you. Who knows what the Jamesons did with them, though. Did you receive any of my letters?”
My chest went tight at the hopefulness I heard in his voice.
“No,” I admitted. “I didn’t get anything from you.” I briefly considered letting him know how I’d interpreted his radio silence at first—the irrational worries I’d harbored. But then he sighed, resting his chin on top of my head, and my concerns felt too silly and faraway to justify with words.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“What did the letters say?”
He pulled away slightly, his eyes dark and inviting, his lashes wet with something that, if I hadn’t known better, I would have assumed were the beginnings of tears. He gazed into my own eyes like he was as transfixed by what he saw in mine as I was by what I saw in his.
Then he nodded, as if coming to a decision.
“They said this,” he murmured, a moment before pressing a gentle kiss to my lips.
The rational part of my mind was telling me that we shouldn’t do this now. The circles he still had under his eyes belied his claim that he was fine, and I wasn’t certain he was telling me the truth about those angry red marks on his wrists.
We also needed to talk about what we would be to each other now that there was no fiancée anymore, and nothing standing between us but my own mortality.
But Frederick was kissing me with so much urgency—his hands cradling my face, tangling in my hair; the evidence of how badly he wanted me already pressing hot and urgent against my hip—that I decided these conversations could wait for later.
“I thought about you endlessly while I was away,” he murmured, kissing the words into my cheeks. “Your passion for what you do, your gentle spirit. Your beauty. Your kindness.” His hands were growing restless, roving up and down my back as his lips found the underside of my jaw, when they latched onto the sweet, sensitive spot where neck met shoulder. I threw my own arms around him, pulling him closer, not even realizing he was backing me up against the wall until I felt it, firm and solid, behind me.
“I thought about you, too,” I confessed, relishing in the way he was lavishing my body with attention. We were still fully clothed, but the touch of his hands at either side of my waist seared through my shirt as though I were wearing nothing at all. “I thought about you the whole time.”
“Please tell me that you will stay with me.” His words were barely above a whisper, breathed into my shoulder as he kissed me there. “With your convictions and your talents, it is only a matter of time before your financial situation improves and you no longer need to partake of our original arrangement. But—”
His mentioning what led me to move in with him in the first place broke me out of the moment, reminding me I hadn’t told him about my interview with Harmony yet. Suddenly, it was important to me that he know.
“You may be right about my financial situation improving.”
Frederick paused, right in the middle of doing something absolutely delicious with my earlobe.
“Hm?”
“While you were gone, I interviewed with that school.” I couldn’t keep the smile out of my voice. “I think it went well. Nothing’s settled yet, of course. But I’m hopeful.”
He buried his face in the crook of my neck and pulled mecloser. “Of course it went well. Darling Cassie—I never doubted that you would charm them utterly. The way you charm everyone.” He paused. “The way you’ve charmed me.”
