Chapter 4

Maybe that's why I don't move when he reaches up with his free hand and tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear. Or maybe it's just because the bathroom lights are hitting his eyes in a way that makes them look like Arctic ice at midnight.

"Your friend did a nice job with these braids," he murmurs, fingers trailing down one plait. "Shame about the one coming loose."

I blink. "How did you⁠-?"

"Your dress is safety-pinned in the back, which means it doesn't fit, which suggests you borrowed it from someone. The braids are too complex to do yourself, and they're actually even in the back, and I'm fairly certain you don't have eyes in the back of your head. So I took an educated guess."

"I... You... Are you showing off?"

"Maybe." His hand settles at the nape of my neck. I can feel my own pulse hammering against his palm. "Is it working?"

My throat is dry. "That depends on what you're trying to achieve."

The corner of his mouth quirks up, and I realize I've never been more aware of another person's lips in my entire life. "I thought that was obvious," he says.

I laugh deliriously. "There is not one single, solitary thing about you that is obvious."

"No? Then let me be clear."

His face is so close to mine. It's all I can see, all I can possibly bring myself to care about. I'm bathing in his scent as his lips draw closer and closer.

And closer still, and closer still, until⁠-

The bathroom door creaks.

We spring apart like teenagers caught behind the bleachers. My mysterious stranger's face transforms instantly, that almost-softness hardening into marble as he turns toward the door.

He doesn't have to say a word. The newcomer takes one look at us-me with my bandaged hand and flushed cheeks, him with his thundercloud scowl and general aura of Do not fuck with me-and backs right out again.

When the door clicks shut, we both exhale. But the tension doesn't go away. Something lingers in the air between us, electric and unfinished and dangerous as all hell.

"You should go," he warns, though it sounds like it costs him something to say it.

I gulp. "Should I?"

"Yes." He runs a hand through his hair. "Because if you don't leave now, I'm going to kiss you. And once I start, I'm not going to want to stop."

He's right. I should go. I take a half-step toward the door, then pause and turn back. "What if I don't want you to stop?"

His face is half-shadowed. A dark pit where his left eye should be. "You should be very, very careful before you say things like that to a man like me."

I look at him. His head almost brushes the ceiling and his shoulders seem to span from wall to wall. I was spot-on the first time: he's a bad idea made real. Mama would've whispered a scary fairy tale about him. He's a beast, a golem, a dark prince who curses everything he touches.

I look at the door. It's there. I could grab the knob-avoiding cutting my hand on it this time, preferably-and twist. I could open it. I could leave.

But whether it's masochism or recklessness or just plain old stupidity, something compels me to turn back instead. To open my mouth, and to tell this demon...

"Or else what?"

3

ARIEL

In two strides, he's pinning me against the wall. One hand tangles in my hair, ruining what's left of Gina's handiwork. The other hand grips my waist and bunches my dress into a disaster of borrowed silk. His mouth crashes into mine like storm waves breaking on a levee.

I've been kissed before, but not like this. Never like this. He kisses me like I'm air and he's drowning. And God help me, that's exactly how I kiss him back.

When I gasp, he thrusts his tongue past my teeth and claims my mouth. I moan and let him.

"Last chance to run, ptichka," he growls.

In answer, I drag him back down to me. The sink edge digs into my back as he lifts me onto it. My dress rides up my thighs and his hands follow, leaving trails of fire on my skin. When he breaks the kiss to trace a path down my neck with his lips, I have to bite back another moan.

"Someone could walk in," I manage to whisper, even as my fingers work at his shirt buttons.

He reaches past me to lock the door, the movement pressing him even closer. "Let me worry about that."

Then he's kissing me again and it's easy to do exactly that: let him handle the worrying. Some days, it feels like all I do is worry. So for him to pick me up and move me here and move me there and take all that burden off my plate? I feel light. I feel weightless.

I feel like I could fucking fly.

Time melts and skews as he gathers me against him and nips his way down the curve of my throat. I let my head drape backward as I gaze up at the ceiling through half-lidded eyes, fingertips clawing into his thick shoulders for dear life.

He keeps murmuring things against my skin-"ptichka" and "I shouldn't" and "fucking hell, you taste good." Every single one makes my toes curl.

When his fingertip ventures up to find the edge of my panties, I suck in a sharp gasp. "This is a⁠-"

"-bad idea," he agrees. "Tell me something I don't fucking know."

But neither of us stop when that finger slides beneath the lace and strokes through my wetness. I bite down where his neck meets his shoulder so I don't scream. Stuttering half-syllables come pouring through my muffled mouth.

"P-pl-p-pl..." It never quite makes it all the way to a word.

It doesn't have to, though. He knows what I'm pleading for. Like the first aid kit, everything he touches is exactly where it's supposed to be.

When he parts me, I come so fast that my cheeks burn red with embarrassment. Scarcely a dozen pumps of two scarred fingers into me and I'm falling apart and quivering in his arms.

It gets messier from there. Clothes fumble. Belts unlatch. My underwear slides down my thighs and vanishes, heaven only knows where.

But when he lines his hard cock up with my pussy, he stops. His forehead is pressed to mine. Eyes huge and blue. Breath rattling in and out of his lungs. He's just this side of undone, like the humanity in him is thrashing against the steel bars of the cage he uses to keep it stowed away.

I, on the other hand, look absolutely ruined already, if my quick glance into the mirror is anything to go by. The braids are a distant memory. The straps of my dress have fallen down my shoulders to let my boobs peek over the neckline of my dress. My skin is flushed red everywhere he's touched and kissed and bit.

Of all the things about him that have brought me to this moment, though, this line in the sand, this one door closing and another opening, it's that look in his eyes that pushes me over the threshold.