“What did you have in mind?” I asked, watching the numbers flash as we continued upward. My stomach knotted a little more with every floor we passed, nausea rising in my throat. Was I really about to do this?
Claim her.
Fuck off, Chad.
Tonight wasn’t about claiming, it was about scaring Avianna to her fucking senses. I just had to be male enough to do it.
“I honestly wasn’t sure.” She shifted her weight on her tiny designer heels. She’d foregone her usual, traditional gown, and was slowly killing me in a pair of tight leather pants and an off-the-shoulder blouse. Her hands were still covered, though. Neither of us wanted that little secret getting out. It wasn’t even the leather that had me straining against my pants, though. I’d gone hard the second she’d put on my coat outside the building. “And I honestly didn’t care where we were going as long as I was with you.”
“We’ll see about that,” I murmured as the elevator dinged with our arrival.
“Penthouse, hmm?” She stepped into the hallway. “You know, I think there’s a few aristocrats in this building.”
“There are,” I agreed. They were floors beneath us, and with the soundproofing I’d had installed over a decade ago, there was no chance they’d ever heard me…or my guests. Owning the penthouse wasn’t about status, it was about quiet.
“Are we visiting someone?” She shot me a curious look as I led her down the dimly lit hallway, and her eyebrows rose when I lifted my hand to the biometric lock.
“No.” The door unlocked, and I pushed it open, taking a last, long look at Avianna. Her gaze was so open. So trusting. It was going to hurt like hell when she ran out of here in a panic, but it was for the best. It would keep her alive.
“Whose place is this?”
“Mine.” I took her hand and led her inside, switching on the lights and closing the door in one motion.
Avianna’s jaw slackened as she slowly swept her gaze across the expansive penthouse.
I hadn’t been here in over a year, not since Avianna had returned to Edgemont, but at least the housekeeper kept it clean. It was the only duty I allowed my talem to fulfill, and since it shamed them to be turned aside by assassins, that worked out for both of us.
I tried to put myself in Avianna’s shoes, to take it in with fresh eyes. It was an open concept because I’d knocked down every wall. The kitchen was the only “normal” area in the loft.
There was a king-sized bed off to one side, the posts thick and heavy. I’d had it bolted to the ground—no one liked squeaky furniture. The fact that it was the only recognizable piece of furniture in the room had me grinding my teeth.
Every other space was consumed with…equipment. The walls were crimson, as was the marble floor, and I’d installed the lighting along the walls, casting the rest of the room into shadows with the exception of the places I’d deliberately highlighted, like the bed and the cross.
“This is…yours?” Avianna asked, her voice a little breathless. She dropped her purse on the kitchen counter, then shrugged out of my jacket, barely giving it a glance as she continued on her path.
“It is.” I readied myself for every possible reaction.
She took it all in, her lips slightly parted as she reached the cross that filled the center of the room. Her fingers traced the cuffs that dangled from both sides of the X. “This is where you bring your females.”
I only had one female right now, and that was her, but saying anything like that was detrimental to the goal, so I kept my head in the fucking game. “Yes. It’s not like I can parade them in and out of the residence, is it?”
Her spine straightened.
“After all, they’d be a security threat to your brother. To you.”
She turned slowly, looking at me like we were meeting for the first time. “And how many have you brought here, Hawke?”
“Why would you assume I keep count?” I fucked whatever females wanted me to fuck them—whatever females I felt like fucking, and over the decades, word had gotten around. Willing participants weren’t exactly lacking around our immortal spheres.
She swallowed. “This is where you let go.”
I laughed, almost wrecking my entire plan. “Oh, your beautiful, naive wonder.” I let the backs of my fingers drift down her cheek. “I never let go, especially not in here. This is where you let go.”
“Me?” She glanced toward the cross and back to me, her eyes locking with mine.
“This is what you’ve been begging me for, isn’t it, Princess? Every time you accuse me of holding back? Every time you say I should treat you like I do other females?”
“I…” She turned, trying to keep me in her sights as I circled her like prey. “I didn’t exactly picture this.”