Viktor watched her look away, one gloved hand lifting to toy with the buttons at her throat. She gnawed on her lower lip with a pearly fang. Don’t say no, he silently begged her. Don’t shut me out. Give me a chance.
Her brow puckered and her shoulders firmed. Dread crept in, but Viktor didn’t let it get far. Before she could deny him, he rushed out, “It’ll be outside and I’ll stay downwind. I won’t try to touch you or anything. We’ll just sit and talk.” His voice cracked. “I’m not trying to take your choice from you, Cam. I would rather die than do that.”
As he said it, he recalled their meeting in the corridor: how she danced away from him, always managing to keep the wind at her back. Viktor wanted to give himself a good, hard punch to the head for missing something so obvious.
Clearly he didn’t need his brain in working order since he wasn’t using it.
For a second, he thought she still intended to refuse him. In that moment, her lack of trust in him scored his soul like nothing ever had.
What was an alpha without trust? Just a bossy asshole.
What was mate without trust? Just a stranger.
When he felt his hope tumbling like a house of cards, the gloved fingers at her throat curled into a tight fist. Camille sucked in a deep breath and, with all the wariness of fox in a snare, answered, “Okay.”
Chapter Seventeen
Camille stared at the ceiling of her bedroom and the blue-black shapes of each dangling crystal of the chandelier that swayed, ever-so-slightly above her bed. Light from the busy street below her window spilled through the crack between heavy silk curtains — tangerine orange and sickly magenta and the sweet-toothed teal of neon. The colors sparked on the sharp edges of the crystal droplets, limning them with a vibrant glow for just a moment before the crystal swayed again, catching a new light, a different color.
Despite the perfectly calibrated air flowing through the apartment, the atmosphere in her bedroom was warm and heavily scented with the perfume of her shampoo. Camille breathed slow, measured breaths and felt the slide of her sheets over her bare skin. She listened to the sound of cars moving through the throbbing veins of the Financial District outside her apartment’s walls.
Sleep, like peace, eluded her.
What am I doing?
Why had she indulged him with that call, with her agreement to meet him? It was foolish, dangerous, bound to hurt her in the end. She wanted to blame it all on Theodore, but she was nothing if not honest with herself.
She didn’t speak to him because she truly worried her cousin would pull the plug on her union. She did it because she wanted to talk to Viktor.
But why in the gods’ names did she tell him everything?
Somehow despite her regret, she couldn’t stop the bubbly, fizzy feeling of excitement in her chest. Every nerve in her body hummed with it. Her muscles flexed and relaxed again, as if the beast that lived in her wished to jump out of her skin and run to him, heedless of the tremendous risk it took in doing so.
She’d felt both too exposed and utterly over-sensitized after their call, so she showered and climbed into bed nude, hoping to sleep the tension away. Perhaps if she finally got a good night’s rest, she would wake up in the morning with a clearer head and a stronger will.
But she couldn’t sleep. She could barely even close her eyes.
Whenever she tried it, all she saw was him: high cheekbones, deeply tanned skin, wind-tossed curls of sandy blond hair, eyes of beautiful, clear blue that flickered to wild amber and back again. Even now, his voice rumbled in her ears with a low, hoarse purr. She saw the vulnerability in his eyes when he said, I’m yours.
Gods, if that’s true…
Camille shifted under the blankets, her breath quickening with excitement and dread, desire and trepidation. Longing made her ache as surely as arousal did.
In a perfect world, he would be here with me now, she thought, remembering the way his calloused hands felt on her bare skin.
In a perfect world, she would not have cried on their call, nor would she have had any reason to in the first place. He would make you happy, instinct pressed. He would take the ache and the pain and the loneliness away.
It was not simply because he was her consort. She knew deep down that it was a deeper connection that drew her to him again and again, despite the danger. Viktor held a solid core of fierce goodness that called to her. It always had.
I watched that core shake today.
Camille turned on her side, one hand tucked under her pillow, and stared at her night stand. When I told him the truth, it was like I nearly broke something in him.
She thought it would make her feel good to watch him hurt, to hear the horror in his voice when he realized what she’d been through, but it didn’t. All she felt was hollowed out and lonely, aching for that connection hanging just out of her reach.
It was with an awful, sickening jolt that she realized his hurt was hers, too.
Peering through the soft shadows, her wandering gaze landed on her phone. It sat innocently on its charging pad beside her stained glass Tiffany lamp.
Her fingers twitched under the cool pillowcase.
No, Cam, you can’t. She gritted her fangs together and tried to force herself to flip onto her other side, but it was like her body refused to follow the order. Instead, she lay there, staring at her phone, gutted by how easy it would be to soothe the ache.
Just the press of a button, her traitorous inner voice whispered. It was so easy before, and the risk so minimal. What is a call, anyway? One click and you could hear his voice again.
The temptation of a promised reward was almost too much to bear.
The uncomfortable prickling of her skin would fade. Her heartbeat would slow. Peace could be hers for another stolen, selfish moment.
A blink and her phone was in her hand. Camille squinted at the bright screen, her slit pupils contracting into razor-thin lines as her vision adjusted. “Don’t call him,” she sternly ordered herself, an edge of pure desperation in her voice. The phone shook in her trembling hand. “Don’t do it, Camille.”
If she needed to talk to someone so bad, Camille decided, she could just call her brother. He was worried about her, and she knew he’d be up. Even if he wasn’t, he would take her call.
But calling Cameron would open up more wounds than it would close. Their bond was such that he would know immediately that something was terribly wrong with her. She had no doubt that he’d cut short his vacation with his consort and rush home as soon as the call ended.
Camille couldn’t bear that. Her twin had only just come up for air after spending so long suffering under their mother’s withering disapproval. He deserved his happiness, his peace.
And I know who I really want to talk to.
She chewed her lip, her eyes fixed on that innocuous string of numbers that had sent her the text during her lunch with Margot.
Would he perceive her reaching out to him as weakness? Would it matter if he did? Camille vacillated with not caring either way — he had seen her at her most vulnerable that evening, after all — and shuddering at the idea of him knowing their call had shattered so many of her defenses.
She began to lower the phone, her gut soured by the idea of giving in, but couldn’t quite bring herself to let it drop onto the blankets.
What’s the harm? He already knows everything. Maybe if you’re lucky, he won’t answer.