Page 73 of Stormhold

He shrugged.

I read the file. There was a bunch of technical jargon that didn’t make much sense to me, but still, I read every word.

It didn’t take long for the bright light and the scrolling screen of tiny letters to get to me. I felt the flash of pain throb in my temples before the sudden sense of nausea curled up my chest.

I pinched my brows together, trying to suppress the urge, but it was too much for me.

“What’s wrong?” Arkane asked, and before I could reply, he had already leaned closer, tilting my chin toward him.

My eyes met his confused gaze that roamed over every inch of my face. “It’s the phone,” I muttered. “It makes me sick.”

In the next second, he switched it off and pulled it away from my hand. “You should’ve told me,” he reprimanded, softly pushing my shoulders back to lean against the couch.

“It’s okay.” I pressed my fist to my chest. “It goes away after a while.”

“Is that why you don’t use a phone?” Arkane tugged my hand away and pulled me to him this time. My head fell on his shoulders, and his arms naturally came around me like somehow, we’d done this a hundred times. And we fit perfectly together.

“Hmm,” I answered, my lips brushing against the material of his soft cotton shirt. My stiff bones slowly melted into him. Arkane Stormhold was holding me in his arms like a lover. Even if I couldn’t have him all to myself, this, right here, seemed enough for now. Only I wondered—how would it be if I had this for the rest of my life?

He sat patiently, holding me, not saying a word, while he rubbed slow circles on my back as I listened to the beat of his heart in the quiet.

“I’m fine now,” I muttered after a while, when there was only a soft thud in my temples, and I pulled away from his arms. Because the more time I spent there, the more dangerous the craving could become.

“Are you sure?” Arkane still had a heavy frown fixed between his brows as his eyes swept over me.

“Yes,” I said, sitting upright with a small smile.

“Don’t look at a phone ever again,” he said, and if I were to read between the lines, I would say he sounded concerned.

I didn’t know why the thought of Arkane being concerned for me had my smile widening. “Says the guy who called me weird for not having a phone.”

He tapped my cheek with his thumb. “Still weird,” he said, leaning back against the couch with a sigh. “Go rest now.”

I frowned. “But you said…”

He held a finger to my lips. “First, you sleep. I’ll explain everything tomorrow,” he said, firmly pointing to the closed door beyond the makeshift gym. “There’s a room inside, a shower if you need one, and you can borrow my shirt.”

“I think next you’re going to give me the password to all your bank accounts,” I joked.

“AJS2306,” he said without blinking an eye.

Shaking my head, I did what he said. Sleep did sound good right about now.

The sun was seeping through the clouds by the time I woke up from my fragmented sleep, plagued by visions of my dying family. Seeing Heath Glen after all these years had evoked the memories of my past, and I had to relive it all over again last night.

It was his eyes that plagued me the most. Evil eyes. I finally had a name for him. And it took me only thirteen years. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

There was an insistent need in me to put an end to him.

A man like him shouldn’t exist in this world. The kind of man who took a monstrous sense of pleasure in killing.

I sighed deeper into the sheets wrapped around me. They smelled like Arkane, and I wanted to linger longer, but I reminded myself why I was here and that this wasn’t a vacation.

I stretched out of bed. My dress and jacket were still damp to the touch, so I let them air-dry on the lone chair and slipped out of the room, just wearing one of Arkane’s plain black shirts. It wasn’t like it was the first time I had borrowed his shirt.

As soon as I walked out, Buddy was at my feet. “Morning, Buddy,” I whispered, and my eyes lifted to a cruel sight.

A terribly gorgeous, shirtless Arkane in a low-slung drawstring pant, with a precious frown fixed on his brows, looking at the papers in his hand with the utmost concentration.