Page 81 of Hunted
His gaze tracks every shift in my face with that maddening, exact attention, and I hate him for how calm he looks, how composed, how effortless this is.
Valentin has decided I’m staying still. And the universe agrees.
My heart slams.
He can do anything he wants to me like this.
Including bite me. But he said he wouldn’t. And he can’t lie.
So this isn’t a trick. If he says he won’t feed, he won’t feed. Right?
Why the fuck am I clinging to that like comfort when I’m immobilised in my own home?
My eyes flick to his mouth, then away again, then back, because my brain is spiralling and my body is doing that traitorous thing where fear and heat share the same wiring.
He watches the cycle, the panic, the calculation, the ugly little hope that creeps in even when I try to stomp it out, and I get the sense he’s reading my question in my eyes the way he read me in that other room when the world went quiet and he leaned in like my mind was a book he was entitled to open.
His voice is softer when he speaks, which somehow makes it worse.
‘I told you last time that when we meet again,’ he says, each word lodged in bone, ‘I would enlighten you just how much I detest being interrupted mid-speech.’
A shiver goes through me that isn’t fear alone.
His eyes drop to my throat, then lift again. ‘I am not here to feed,’ he says, as if correcting the thought he sees on my face.
I try to swallow. The motion is clumsy because my muscles don’t fully belong to me. I manage a sound anyway, some strangled attempt at defiance.
‘Then what are you doing?’ I wheeze out.
His gaze lingers on my mouth with a frankness that should make me angry and instead makes me feel exposed. ‘I want to look at you.’
My breath catches.
‘Before I kiss you.’
My stomach flips hard enough to make my mind blank, then flood. A kiss is not nothing. Not with him. Not with whatever is threaded between us, tightening even when I run.
The air shifts. Then my arms lift.
They rise above my head as if invisible hands have seized my wrists and drawn them up, pinning them there.
Fuck.
My legs part next, slowly and inexorably.
Humiliation hits first. Then anger. Fear, sharp as broken glass, follows close behind.
He still hasn’t touched me.
That’s the worst part. My body is positioned like an offering while his hands remain at his sides, proving how little effort it takes to dominate me.
His gaze moves down the line of me, unhurried. I want to spit at him. Kick him. Do anything that reminds him I’m not his.
But my muscles stay locked in the posture he’s given me.
The belt of my robe loosens.
Then stops.
