Page 158 of Onyx Cage: Volume II
My jaw dropped. I blinked away memories of Korhonan’s hands on her wrist, playing with that storms-damned bracelet, how quickly she had gone from enjoying herself at the cabin, playing at friendships with my men, to looking at me like I was her enemy as soon as he was in front of her again.
And yet…
“Then what changed your mind?” I asked.
“You said you were eager to get rid of me,” she said flatly.
Indeed. She must have forgotten what prompted that outburst from me.
“After you called me a child murderer,” I replied in the same arid tone.
A crimson blush crept up her neck and into her cheeks. She glanced away briefly, walking down that same unfortunate part of our memory lane.
“After you said your life would have been easier if I had never come here.” Her tone was softer then, as if this admission carried more weight than the others.
I considered her words, weighing them against her actions—the ones that took center-stage in my mind, and the ones I hadn’t allowed myself to consider for too long back then.
For all of her bluster about her love for Korhonan, was she truly telling me now that she was second-guessing herself? It had been clear that her attachment to him wasn’t the great love story she had pretended it was, but I struggled to make sense of the other side.
The part where she was admitting to wanting to stay with me. Claiming that, despite every part of her that should have wanted to run as far from me as she could, she wanted to stay in Bear.
Wanted to stay withme.
“If that’s true, why were you so upset when we returned?” I asked, still trying to make sense of the way she was steadily rewriting the history I thought I knew of us.
She scoffed, glaring at me as if I was being willfully obtuse.
“Because you said it was a punishment keeping me around,” she fired back. “And then I was here, where I knew you...didn’t want me.”
That had been the farthest thing from the truth. I shouldn’t have wanted her. Storms only knew it would have been better for just about everyone if I hadn’t.
“Anyway—” she continued, clearing the confession from her throat. “The point is that I do trust you. I always have. Today was just…”
“Not entirely your fault,” I cut her off, refusing to let her continue taking the blame for something that I should have taken more precautions against. “I should have prepared you better, especially for that.”
Surprise flashed in her eyes, and her posture eased incrementally.
“Well, in fairness,” she began, a small smirk tugging at the corners of her perfect lips. “You did expect me to have, what was it you said,basic common sense?”
“Another error on my part,” I replied, not bothering to hide my amusement this time. “And Lemmikki?”
She looked at me expectantly, the sound of that word on my lips eliciting the same reaction it always did.
“Make no mistake about it, it was a punishment keeping you around.” She froze and I leaned forward in my chair, reaching up to tuck a curl behind her ear. “It was a punishment when I knew you could never really be mine.”
She swallowed, the movement tugging at her throat.
“Another error on your part,” she said softly, sitting forward so that her hips were on the edge of her chair.
My gaze drifted from her eyes, back down her neck to right where I had bitten her earlier, then lower, to the laces of her corset. More than anything I wanted to rip them apart with my teeth, slowly, methodically, until she was just as desperate for me as I was for her.
Unable to restrain myself any longer, I grabbed her hips and lifted her from her chair until she was straddling my waist.
A small exhale escaped her as she settled on top of me, the sound sending lightning through my veins. One by one, I pulled her laces free with my teeth, my lips, my tongue.
She raked her fingers through my hair, her breath hitching as each new inch of skin was exposed. She shifted in my lap, pressing against me a little more with each movement.
A growl escaped me when her body was completely exposed to me. I traced patterns with my tongue, marking her with my teeth, her breath hitching a little more with each one.