Page 28
With food in my stomach and the worst of my hunger finally quieting, I allow myself to study him instead of searching for the quickest way to escape. His hair is pitch-black, almost like ink against the warm light from the fireplace, and his eyes are somehow darker still, fixed on me with an intensity that makes it difficult to hold his gaze for long. He’s tall—unusually so—and even under the black turtleneck stretched across his shoulders, there’s no disguising the strength in him. The sleeves pull tightly around his upper arms whenever he moves, and his hands are large enough that I remember exactly how easily one of them closed around my shoulder and tore me away from my father.
Everything about him is dark. His clothing. His features. The castle surrounding us. Whatever exists inside him that allowed him to find a half-frozen old man and decide the most appropriate place for him was a locked cell. He scares me, and there’s no sense pretending otherwise.
But he also kept his word.
My father asked him for mercy, and he gave none, but when I offered myself in exchange, he honored the bargain exactly as he’d agreed. He gave Dad a horse capable of making the journey back to Villeneuve. He brought me somewhere warm instead of locking me in the tower. He fed me food better than anything I’ve eaten in years. None of those things fit with the man who dragged my father into a cell simply for collapsing on his property, and I have no idea what to do with those contradictions.
His eyes remain on me, and a chill moves down my spine when I realize he hasn’t looked away once since entering the room. I lower the fork slightly, suddenly too aware of the fact that I’m sitting here eating while he stands only a few feet away watching every bite I take.
“Are you really going to keep me here?”
He doesn’t answer. For several seconds, he simply watches me, his expression giving away nothing. Then he moves, taking one slow step toward me before another puts him directly in front of my chair.
I stop breathing.
He’s even larger from this distance, forcing me to tilt my head back to look at him. I’m painfully aware of how easily he could overpower me if he chose to. His hand rises. I tense before his fingers close around my chin.
They’re warm, which surprises me.
He tips my face upward until I’m looking directly at him. This close, I can see the faint shadow darkening his jaw, the tiny lines at the corners of eyes that seemed almost black from across the room and the small scar above his right eyebrow. His skin looks unexpectedly smooth where the firelight catches it. Nothing in his expression tells me what he’s thinking, even when his thumb shifts slightly against my jaw.
Neither of us moves.
“You belong to me now.”
The words nearly destroy me.
The food immediately turns sour in my stomach. Whatever fragile comfort the meal had given me disappears, replaced by the fear I’d managed to forget for the few minutes it took me to eat. I stare at him with my lips parted, searching for something to say, some argument that might undo a bargain I made willingly because there had been no other choice I could live with.
Nothing comes, because my father is free. I promised I would stay.
“I want you to eat,” he says. “Then I want you to get out of those wet clothes.”
I don’t know why, but the food sitting in my stomach suddenly feels like a stone. My appetite vanishes so quickly that I set the fork down without thinking. The warmth from the fireplace, the tenderness of the meat, and the brief comfort I’d found in something as simple as a hot meal are all still here, but I can’t enjoy any of them now that I’m looking at the man who believes I belong to him.
I pull my face out of his grasp and immediately push myself to my feet, putting as much distance between us as the room will allow. He doesn’t try to stop me. He simply watches me retreat until the backs of my legs nearly touch one of the upholstered chairs.
“I don’t like repeating myself,” he says. “Do as you’re told, or I’ll take those clothes off myself.”
For a second, I’m convinced I’ve misunderstood him. I stare at him, waiting for something in his expression to tell me I heard wrong, but nothing changes.
“What?”
He takes another step toward me.
“Get out of those wet clothes.”
Fear grips me so completely that I stumble backward. My calves strike the edge of the chair, and I catch myself against it before I lose my balance entirely. The furniture shifts slightly under my hand.
“I’ll change.” The answer comes out before he can move any closer.
He smiles.
The expression doesn’t reassure me. If anything, it makes everything worse. I have no idea what that smile means, and I’m not sure I want to find out.
When his hand rises again, every muscle in my body tightens. I brace myself for a hit, but instead of striking me, his thumb brushes gently across my cheek. The unexpected softness of it leaves me standing completely still, too confused by the touch to pull away immediately.
Only then do I realize I’m crying.
