Page 16 of Bound

Every bit of warmth leaves my body.

Erin’s eyes lock with mine. “Now means bad.”

I withdraw from Erin carefully, hating the cold that takes her place.

“I’m coming with you.” She sits up, reaching for the sheet. “No more rooms without me.”

I hate the idea of her in that room. I love the idea of having her beside me.

I nod once. “No more rooms without you.”

I dress her myself because I can’t keep her safe enough. She lets me, though she rolls her eyes when I insist on putting on her shoes, one pretty little foot at a time.

“You know I can dress myself,” she says.

“I am aware.”

She gives a happy sigh. “And yet?”

“And yet.”

When we open the door, Rafe stands in the hall, expression grim. Blaze is behind him, leaning against the wall with his usual smile gone.

It’s bad.

Her fingers slip into mine. Not behind me. Beside me.

Rafe looks at her, then at me.

I wait for him to challenge her presence. He doesn’t. If anything, he looks as if he expected this, like he saw it coming.

Even when I couldn’t. She has that way with me. Making me grow into a newer, better version of myself.

One side of me she’ll never change.

She wouldn’t want to.

CHAPTER THREE

Isobel

The Iceland house is too quiet.

My greatest fear…

Not Mack standing outside my room like a tattooed wall with a heartbeat. Not Lucian’s refusal to look at me unless I say something to make him. Which always makes her hate me more.

Not Erin’s blue eyes, which watch me watching everyone. Then, watch Lucian like a guard dog.

The quiet. Carlos kept my rooms as silent as he kept me. Soundproof.

I didn’t realize it at first.

It took a few days. Then, at dinner one night, I heard it. Silverware clinking on plates. Footsteps. Men laughing. Phones ringing. Music from another room. Voices through walls, through doors.

Talking.

He understood silence too well to waste it. Silence isolates a woman. Makes her take whatever conversation is offered to her.