She came to a stop behind him. Close. Too close.
“Tell me what I’ve done? What may I do to put things right between us?”
She could stop torturing him in that fucking dress, for one. She could cease smelling like lilac water and springtime. She could cease being the voice in his head, encouraging his repressed humanity to take root.
“You can leave,” Dorian clipped. “Go to your father’s in Hampshire. Reclaim your birthright.”
“Won’t you—come with me?” she ventured.
“I’d rather not.”
Her sharp intake of breath pricked a hole in his own lungs.
“I know that being locked up yesterday must have been rather awful for you.” She changed tactics. “I am sorry that you had to go through that because of something I asked you to do. I want to thank you for saving my friend and I hope that, in time, you’ll forgive me the pain it caused you.”
He didn’t look at her. Couldn’t look at her. Not now. Let her think what she would. If he ignored her for long enough she’d give up and leave.
“If you think about it,” she continued, forcing brightness into her tone. “It all ended rather well as Gemma was able to help us expose Lucy Boggs for who she really is and so—that was helpful—at least.”
Dorian continued staring, the jutting iron latch of the window his focal point. Maybe if he became cold enough. Hard enough. The ice he’d formed would turn him to stone. The vibrating that seemed to begin in his soul and ripple through his veins would freeze and still. He would have some fucking peace. The thoughts that tortured him. The emotions that heated him. The urges that tempted him. They would be encased behind an impenetrable fortress of his own making. He was a stone. He was a glacier. He was—
“Dorian. Please!” Farah seized his arm, tugging at it in an attempt to turn him toward her.
Before he was fully aware of his actions, he spun and seized her wrist, brandishing it between their bodies. “How many times do I have to tell you not to reach for me?”
Farah was staring at where his hand gripped her most delicate wrist with something like awe. Dorian glanced at it, too.
He wasn’t wearing gloves. The first time he’d actually touched her, and it had been in violence.
Fuck.
“I know,” she acknowledged with only a little regret. “I’m sorry. I can’t seem to help myself. It’s like you call to me, like you need me to reach out.” She uncurled her fingers, stretching them toward him.
The anger Dorian had been fighting since his most recent arrest flared anew. “Did you reach out to Morley?” he growled, tossing her wrist away from him.
Her brow furrowed as she rubbed at the skin he’d just released. “What?”
Dorian advanced, fury tightening his chest and lungs, deepening his voice to a snarl. “I know you were alone with him.”
“How do you know that?” she hedged.
His fear flared to all-out suspicion. “How do you think? I have informants everywhere.” But not inside that office. Not behind that closed door. The possibilities had been driving him mad. “Did he put his hands on you? Did you kiss him again?” What had she had to do with Morley to get the chief inspector to release them so quickly? What promises had she made? What demands had she fulfilled?
“No!” Her eyes widened, filled with uncomfortable doubt. “I mean—I hugged him good-bye. I touched his face.”
The picture of even that made him crazed. He searched for a lie in her liquid-silver eyes. “Did you tell him you regretted marrying me? That you wished you’d said yes to him? That you belonged to him?” Dorian felt like a monster. The ice wasn’t there anymore. It hadn’t just melted, a foreign inferno had disintegrated it with alarming swiftness and intensity. Now he was flooded with liquid fire. Boiling with jealousy. Where was his chill? Where was his armor of ice and calm? Why couldn’t he control this tempestuous firestorm of possession and fear and anger and despair?
She should not have reached for him.
“I—I…” Farah stared at him as though he’d become a foreign creature. A monster of darkness and rage and loss.
And lust. He was so fucking hard.
Dorian reached behind him and ripped the golden-tasseled silk rope that held the drape back from the window.
Farah retreated a step, but he seized her before she could turn and run. “You’ll never belong to another, Farah.” He growled, looping the thick cords around each of her thin wrists as she struggled.
“Dorian—”
He jerked her toward him, cutting off her protest with his lips. Letting her feel the true strength of his hands for the first time as they shackled her arms. He could break her. So easily. Her bones were so small, like a bird’s, her skin so soft and translucent. The tiny webs of blue veins on her wrists and throat so delicate in contrast to the thicker ones pulsing beneath his skin.
How could someone so damned fragile hold the power to destroy a monster like him?
“You’re mine!” he snarled against her surrendering mouth. “Only mine.”
He might have been able to stop if she hadn’t kissed him back.
Even while grappling with this new beast of fire she’d provoked, she didn’t know the danger she toyed with. Didn’t know the consequences of her actions.
Dorian fought with the strength of a drowning man, but in the end, the beast won out. He’d always known it would.