Page 60 of Burned

She looks at my hair, my face, my sweater, my hands. She sees too much.

The flush on my skin. The mark low on my throat that Lucian left upstairs. The way he stands angled toward me, even while she is in front of him.

For the first time, something sharp enters her expression. Not jealousy. Not exactly.

Recognition, maybe. Or resentment.

“You’re young,” she says.

“So I keep hearing.”

“Carlos told me about you,” she tells me.

My skin prickles. “What did he say?”

Lucian’s voice turns lethal. “Isobel.”

The room tightens again, but this time around me. These men would kill for me.

They’ve risked their lives to protect my family and me. And the only reason I have their devotion is his love for me.

And that’s feeling slightly fragile at the moment.

Lucian moves in front of me, telling Isobel, “It doesn’t matter. Leave her out of this.”

Isobel’s gaze flicks to him, a challenge lined with something hard. Pain? Desire?

My hands curl. “What did Carlos tell you?” I ask again.

Isobel studies me for one long moment. Then her mouth curves, barely.

She says, “Carlos said Lucian bought himself a replacement.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

ERIN

No one speaksfor a moment after Isobel says it. Bought. The word needs no translator.

Lucian moves beside me.

I feel him before he touches me, that terrible shift in the air that means violence has found a body to wear. Every man in the room seems to feel it too. Blaze straightens. Rafe’s gaze cuts to Lucian. Bayne’s attention sharpens from lethal amusement into something colder.

Lucian doesn’t reach for Isobel. He reaches for me. His hand closes around the back of my neck, warm and possessive and steady.

I need it. I lean into it before I can stop myself.

Isobel sees that too. Of course she does. I wish she’d stop watching us. I’m glad she is. She needs to know what I am to him. Then, she needs to go home, back to her Ice Palace.

If she’s ice, I’m fire.

Don’t let the shutters hit you on the way out, babe.

“I am going to say this once,” Lucian says. His voice is so calm that the room gets colder. “You will never speak to her that way again,” he threatens. “She’s not a transaction. And she’s no replacement.”

A small part of me thrills. Because the defense comes easily to him. The claim.

The fury. The public warning. It always does. I need to trust that.