I pushed arms around his waist, and he hugged me close.
He breathed into my hair. “I can’t have you getting hurt.”
“Can you?” I asked. “Is it possible… whatever this is, you might get hurt?”
He pulled away, pushing my hair back with a nod.
I wet my lips. “Then I’m all in. I need to know the truth, everything, and if something might happen to you too because of all this, I definitely need to know. What’s going on?”
He embraced me with his long arms, muscled body and hard biceps wrapped around me. “I don’t deserve you. And you didn’t deserve this. You or Paige.”
I swallowed, closing my eyes.
“This is going to get fucking de
ep, Em,” he said. “It’s gonna get worse, and that’s not just a speculation. That’s a promise. What the guys and I have unleashed is hell. We’re at fucking Dante’s gates, and who knows how worse that fire’s going to get as we go deeper. It’s bad. It’s fucking sick.”
I choked down a swallow again, and though I was scared also, terrified of the unknown and what he could possibly be talking about, I’d stay brave. If he was going to go through the gates of hell, I would too. I’d do it for my sister.
I’d do it for him too.
His hand came down my neck, smoothing before resting between my breasts. He held a firm hand there, my heart racing against him.
“Where’s Mallick’s token?” he asked, returning his hand to my neck. “The necklace he gave you?”
I’d lied so well, hadn’t I? A part of my own darkness. I took his hand. “All of that is over now. It was never real.”
He put distance between us a little, looking at me and touching anywhere he could find skin. He couldn’t seem to stop, doing that all night. “What do you mean?”
I chewed my lip. “Ramses speculated what was going on with you, the guys, and Paige at Route 80 before Christmas. That’s how I found out. After, we had a plan for him to get into Court so we could figure out the truth and expose what happened to Paige. The relationship between us was a lie for that. Never real.”
It was never… this, his hands on me, the feel of us together. It was so much more real than that and anything I’d ever felt with anyone else. This guy’s touch brought me to life, and his darkness I found myself wanting to do anything but leave from. I wanted to balance him, put it out. He was a good person. He just needed that balance, and I fully believed that.
Fingers came up to my lips, his thumb parting them. “You’re not his? Never was?”
“No…” I sighed, closing my eyes as he kissed me again. He sucked me into his heat, his body so close to mine. Eventually, I felt his hand go between us and to his own neck.
He unclasped it, removing a silver chain he wore. He had it on last night, and when he raised his hand between us, he slipped off his king ring.
He slid it on that chain, the chrome sinking right to the center with its weight. He looked at me after, lifting the chain and motioning toward my neck.
I moved my hair.
He put the chain around me, the metal warm on my skin.
“This doesn’t mean you belong to me,” he said, clasping the necklace before bringing the ring forward. He lifted the ring. “It means you’re a part of me, a part of all this. I don’t own you because you can’t be owned.”
Understanding, I closed my eyes, kissing him again. He pushed his weight on me, and I opened my legs for him. I didn’t own him either.
We were a part of whatever we were about to embark on together.
Twenty-Seven
December
Arriving at school was different that day. Everything was different. Royal and I were somewhere else now, and since we’d arrived to that place, we weren’t going back. Wherever we were headed, we were doing so together, unable to be parted. Not this time.
He kept his arm around me the whole journey to school, only leaving in the moments we stopped at my house so I could change and check in with my dad. Dad had actually been pretty lax about the whole, “not coming home” thing like he had before and didn’t even question where I’d been. So much had changed, and I recalled Ramses’ voice in my head.