Page 48 of Irrevocably

“He kissed you,” Lucien interrupts, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.

I’m momentarily taken off-balance. “What?”

“He fucking kissed you.” Lucien’s cold voice has become a deep, rough growl.

Oh, right. Wolf and the kiss I really don’t want to think about or talk about and especially not with Lucien Frost.

“So?” I stare angrily at Lucien’s hard profile. “He’s my best friend. He didn’t mean anything by it.”

Lucien lets out a short, mirthless laugh. “Don’t be naïve. You don’t kiss your friends on the mouth.”

For a second, I wonder why he’s so hung up on a kiss, and then it hits me.

He’s jealous. Lucien Frost, cold-hearted killer, is jealous of Wolf.

My gut clenches as my brain processes what that means. If he’s jealous of Wolf then he must feel something for me, surely? Because if he didn’t care, he wouldn’t be jealous.

I lean back in my seat, staring at his taut profile. “What’s it to you?” I ask. “You’re not my boyfriend, remember?” That’s what he told me the night we had sex, and I can’t resist using it against him now.

He’s silent for a long moment, staring straight ahead, his expression unreadable, and I think he’s not going to answer yet again. Then he says, “I’m not your boyfriend, no. But you’re mine all the same.”

His? What? Shock ripples through me. “What do you mean?” I ask blankly.

Another flash of burning blue as he glances at me. “I mean, you’re mine, Astrid. You’re my target. My source. Your body is mine and so is your pain. All of you is mine.”

The shock tightens its grip, even as a small, lost part of me aches. He has seen the deepest part of me, the dark part of me that I’m too afraid to show anyone, and he didn’t turn away. No, he’s claimed it for himself instead.

I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing at all, my heart aching painfully in my chest. That dark part of me loves the idea of being his, it loves the idea of being claimed, but the rest of me knows it’s impossible. How can I be his? He’s a criminal, and I’m just a college student, and I have plans. I have dreams. And what does being his even mean?

Silence falls, weighted as a lead curtain.

It gets too much for me, so eventually I say, “What are you going to do with Wolf?”

A muscle flicks in Lucien’s jaw. “I have a place I can hide him.”

“If the club finds out he’s gone, they’ll try and find him.”

“I know. I’ve had dealings with outlaw clubs before.”

I want to ask when and where and how, but I shove my curiosity down. It’s not the time. “Then you’ll know they’ll hunt you down,” I tell him.

“They can try. But first they’ll have to know that I’m the one who took him, which will be difficult when they don’t know of my existence.”

“So, what about me?” I almost don’t want to know the answer to that question, but I have to ask it. I have to know. “I mean, I presume you’re not dropping me home, right?”

“No.” He glances back at the road ahead of us. “Not yet.”

“So where are you taking me?”

He doesn’t say anything for a long moment. “Turn your phone off.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want us being tracked.”

Cold prickles over me as the heat of my anger dissipates. “By who?”

“By anyone.”