9

I felt him—his form, his shape—there, pressing down on me, the mattress dipping under his presence.

He wasn’t just a whisper in the dark.

He wasn’t just a ghost haunting my mind.

He was real.

Real.

"You belong to me. You know that, don’t you?"

His fingers traced my stomach now, slipping beneath the hem of my nightshirt.

The fabric lifted, inch by inch, exposing the gooseflesh rising across my skin.

I gasped, chest heaving in panic, but my body would not move.

His palm flattened against my stomach, spreading heat that made nausea roll through me.

My pulse slammed against my ribs, my heart a wild, erratic thing, but I was powerless to stop him.

I felt him.

The weight of him, the heat of his body pressing down against me.

"So soft," he murmured, his lips a ghost against my ear.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Wake up, wake up, wake up.

This wasn’t real.

But it was.

His hand skated up my ribs, nails barely scraping against my skin, a warning.

A promise.

My breath came in short, ragged bursts, lungs too tight, vision speckled with pinpricks of black.

His grip tightened.

Pressure—hard, unrelenting—molded me to him.

His fingers sank into my flesh, possessive, bruising.

"You feel me, don’t you?"

A sob shuddered through my body.

I wanted to fight.

I wanted to scream.

But my voice had vanished, swallowed by the thick, suffocating air, trapped in my throat like a thing that had died there.

I tried to move my arms.

They wouldn’t obey.

I tried to twist away.

My body was stone.

"You’re mine, Lena."

His mouth grazed my jaw, his voice curling around me like a snake, winding tighter and tighter.

"You’ve always been mine."

A sound—low and feral—rumbled from him, something darkly satisfied.

And then—pain.

Sharp.

Deep.

Real.

A strangled whimper tore from my lips as something tore into me—fingers, teeth, something unseen but devastating, branding me from the inside out.

My back arched involuntarily, but it wasn’t me controlling my body anymore.

Tears slipped hot and silent down my cheeks.

My heartbeat was too big for my chest, a wild, terrified thing trying to escape, slamming against bone.

"I’ll make you remember."

His hands.

His heat.

His voice in my ear, a whisper, a growl, a promise.

Darkness curled at the edges of my vision, stretching its fingers toward me, pulling me under.

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t stop him.

And then—blackness.

A weight pressed against me.

Warm.

Solid.

Real.

A shudder wracked my body as something—someone—moved in the darkness, a phantom shifting through the air, unseen but devastatingly present.

My breath hitched as fingers traced the line of my jaw, soft at first, almost reverent, before tightening.

"Do you feel that, little dove?"

16

LENA

The voice slithered through me, rich and low, like velvet soaked in sin.

Cassian.

I tried to speak, but my lips parted only for breath, shallow and desperate.

The air between us thickened, charged, humming with something both dangerous and intoxicating.

He was everywhere.

Around me.

Inside me.

My body tensed as warmth ghosted over my lips—a whisper of touch, a silent demand.

Then, pressure.

Firm.

Unyielding.

His mouth claimed mine.

Heat bloomed between us, scorching, suffocating.

His lips were impossibly warm, moving against mine with a slow, deliberate hunger, as if savoring the taste of my resistance.

My fingers curled against the sheets, the room spinning beneath the weight of his touch.

I should have fought.

I should have screamed.

But I shuddered.

His kiss deepened, tongue sweeping past the barrier of my lips, coaxing, taking.

My breath stuttered as sensation crashed over me, drowning me in him—his scent, his heat, the way his fingers slid into my hair, angling my face to fit against his more perfectly.

He kissed me as if he had done it a thousand times before.

As if I belonged to him.

His grip tightened at my nape, and a groan rumbled from his chest—a sound that sent something sharp and unfamiliar unraveling in my stomach. 

I shouldn’t be reacting.

I shouldn’t be melting into the way his lips crushed against mine, shouldn’t be arching toward the heat of his body as it pressed against me, solid and consuming.