He’d always done this since we’d been children. It was strangely comforting when he did it, and enticingly erotic when Ryder did it. I threaded my fingers through his and held his hand. I tried to think of a way to tell him how I felt about Ryder. I couldn’t come right out and say I thought I was falling in love with him, and I couldn’t lie. “Adam,” I started out, and tilted my head up a little further to look at him.
I wasn’t prepared for his mouth when it landed on mine, or the door opening and Ryder’s deep angry growl as I tried to push Adam off of me. It ended up with a clumsy attempt, at best, to push him away from me. I felt nothing, and then, as he tried to deepen the kiss, he growled angrily.
“You’re branded still,” he half whispered, half snarled.
“Don’t do that again!” I shouted, pushing at his chest, angry that he tried to force the kiss on me. I got that he was trying to show me we could do this, but it felt wrong in so many ways that it was hard to list them all.
“Wasting no time, I see. I guess I should remove the mark soon so you can play,” Ryder growled from the threshold of the door where he’d stopped cold in his tracks.
I felt red heat rush over my face with his words. I wanted to slap them both—hard. “Get out, both of you!” I barked back, tired of dealing with everything that they expected of me.
“Syn,” Adam said, unfolding himself from the bed to stand at his full height.
“I told you what I wanted first, Adam.” I met his emerald and lime green eyes, and showed him I wasn’t giving in until I got what I wanted. I’d started this quest at five, and continued it every day after, searching every face in every crowd for those responsible for my parents’ deaths.
“She wants the one who killed her parents,” he said to Ryder, without turning to look at him.
Ryder hadn’t moved. The only sign of his anger was the muscle in his jaw that hammered wildly, and his hands were once again clenching at his sides, as if he wanted to strangle us both. “So she does.”
“You have yet to remove your mark from her.”
Ryder said nothing. He just stared at me as if I’d betrayed him in some major way. He’d been pushing me toward this, and I hadn’t even kissed Adam back! Anger flared inside of me as his eyes damned me. “Get out, Adam. Go talk to your father about the deal we made,” I said softly, never taking my eyes from Ryder’s violent, angry golden stare.
Adam walked out of the room with his shoulders squared, and his head high, unaffected by the tension stirring between myself and Ryder. He stopped and turned back to Ryder. “Remove the mark. She can draw him out by tapping a line. We can kill him, and I’ll take her home—tonight.”
Ryder continued to say nothing. His eyes were hard and angry and continued to scorch my skin. I could feel his anger pulsing from the electrical current that sizzled through the room, thick and palpable. When Adam was gone, he still stood there, just looking at me, as if he was afraid to come closer.
I watched him with pain in my heart that I was still trying to bury. He was going to let me go. I could see it in his eyes. I’d fallen for him. I was so stupid! He wasn’t the enemy anymore, and it left me confused and unsure how to feel about him. My heart, on the other hand, I wanted Ryder to fight for me. To show me I was worth something to him. Stupid!
“You will make a good couple,” he said as he exhaled a long shuddering breath.
“No, we won’t. We will end up fighting. I won’t love him as he needs to be loved. You said I wouldn’t belong to anyone else but you. You have to stop this from happening,” I whispered, meeting his golden penetrating stare. Pleading for him to see what was written in my eyes that I couldn’t form into words.
“What would you give me if I could?” he asked as he strolled across the room, getting closer to the bed, where I still sat.
“What would you want?” I asked, afraid it would be more than I could give him.
“You,” he said, falling to his knees in front of me. “I’d want you, Synthia, to do with as I wished for the rest of my life. You would be mine, completely. I’d want you at my mercy, to taste, and touch when I wanted you.”
“Ryder,” I whispered as I brought my hands up to cradle his face between them. He looked exposed on his knees, and I wanted to kiss away my pain, and his.
“You enjoy me between your legs, Pet. You enjoy it when I dominate you, and control your pleasure. Your body trembles beneath mine and you cry my name when you find release. You are already mine. I wish I could keep you safe with me, for all time.”
“You let them sign me away. Why didn’t you stop it?” I asked as his hands parted my thighs, and his long fingers played over the sensitive flesh of my inner thighs.
“Because I can’t do it. I can’t take away the only chance we have of healing my world, for my own pleasure. The only way for me to stop them, would be for me to steal you. Do you want me to? Would you be able to love someone who could walk away and leave an entire world to wither and die?” he asked, and, for the first time since Joseph had cut me open, I saw a sliver of fear in his eyes.