If he’s touched what belongs to me, I’ll rip his fucking hands off.

And if he hasn’t?

I’m going to kill him anyway.

A dark laugh slips past my lips, and I pump harder, faster, my balls tightening as the heat builds and builds.

Mine.

Mine.

She’s fucking mine.

My climax hits like a goddamn freight train. My body locks up, muscles seizing as I explode against the tile, Lakynn’s name in my throat, her face the only thing I can see right now.

I keep my hand moving through it, riding out every last second of the high.

When it fades, I let the water scald me. Let it burn away the shame of leaving her in this situation.

The fury.

The guilt.

I need to make things right for her, and that’s exactly what I intend on doing.

LAKYNN

Isit like a statue at the far end of a long white table, my spine straight, shoulders locked, jaw clenched so tight I feel my teeth grinding into dust. This whole thing is like a dream I’m desperate to wake up from, but can’t. Not with all eyes on me. Not with what happened last time.

I ran away, and it took my father’s henchmen less than twenty minutes to capture me. He sees everything and without Riven as a buffer, it’s proving difficult to escape him.

Everyone in this restaurant thinks this is a celebration. My mother smiles so tightly that I think her face might crack and crumble all over the fine linen tablecloth. She thinks they’ve secured something important tonight. An alliance with the St. Clair family that also gets me out of her house. She doesn’t like me, especially now that I’m not a gangly fourteen-year-old. I know that when she looks at me she sees everything she could have been, everything I could still be. I know she’s taking pleasure in my fate. A price paid in blood and pearls and ugly white satin.

No one here sees the coffin they’re building around me, but that’s exactly what this is. I won’t survive if I have to go through with this.

It won’t be as easy as they think.