Page 97 of Unholy Bonds

The man laughed, and Ryden’s body tensed as soon as he heard that laugh. It was not a good laugh. My eyes searched the crowded room until it fell on a tall man in a cream suit.

“You know him,” I said, and Ryden nodded, his brows knitted together in disdain. An invisible storm cloud settled over him, and I knew that Ryden wanted nothing but to kill this man. His desire was so apparent; knowing that should have put me off, but it didn’t.

“We want to redefine the boundaries of traditional art by using new techniques and concepts that challenge the viewers to feel the art. It is more than just… looking. We want you to feel every piece deep in your soul,” the woman continued, but I could see the look of apparent disinterest on the man’s face. He was here…but not for art.

From the way he dressed, it was clear that he was rich, and it was evident that he was the type of person who took pride in flaunting his affluence.

“She’s barking up the wrong tree. Thatcher Perry knows nothing about art.”

“How do you know him?”

“I work with him, and he is as artlessly ugly as they come,” Ryden muttered, his words dripping with contempt, guiding me away from the man, as if he didn’t want Thatcher’s eyes on me.

Tracing a soothing path along Ryden’s corded muscles, I smiled and felt him relaxing under my touch as we walked away from Thatcher.

“I’m sorry. Tonight is not about him,” Ryden apologized, turning his full attention to me, an earnest look in his eyes. When those gray eyes were on me, sometimes, it was so hard to think, to talk. “It’s about you. Let’s enjoy this, shall we?”

“Ryden Sinclair, is that you?” Thatcher Perry said in a high-pitched voice.

“Fuck,” Ryden hissed when Thatcher walked toward us, his steps confident, his smile sleazy. He had roaming eyes—eyes that were made to make a woman uncomfortable, but I had mastered the art of never allowing a man’s gaze to impact me.

“Why didn’t you say hi?” he said, giving me another unsettling smile. “Who’s the pretty woman in your arms?”

“No one you should be interested in,” Ryden said, his voice clipped, his eyes direct as his arm came around my waist, pulling me snugly against him. He was marking his territory—he would gladly piss around me if he could.

I bit back a smile.

Thatcher let out a small huff. “That’s rude. The lady can talk, can’t she?”

“The lady can talk very well, but she’d rather not right now. The only one I want to talk with is this man next to me. Excuse us, Mr. Perry.”

Thatcher’s face soured, but Ryden’s lips widened in a smile. I walked forward, pulling Ryden along with me.

“I would have broken that smug nose of his if he had looked at you a moment longer.” His fingers dug into my hip, pulling me closer to his body, his voice a possessive warning.

We finally stopped in front of a painting of a horned man standing over a woman, sucking her soul out of her. Her eyes were half closed, and there was a smile on her lips as if she was enjoying whatever it was, he was doing to her. She looked half alive, half dead.

“She looks happy,” Ryden said, his brows furrowed.

“She looks more than just happy,” I said with a chuckle. “It almost looks like the woman is in the throes of an orgasm. I wouldn’t mind him doing things to me.”

Ryden grunted something under his breath and shook his head. “Yara West, who in the hell are you? The prim and proper ME I met the first day or this woman who wouldn’t mind being fucked by a horned man?”

“Can’t I be both?”

“Oh, you can be everything you want to be, anything you want to be,” Ryden said. “But… the only one who is going to fuck you is me.” The way he said it in a whisper made me shudder. “And when I fuck you again, you’ll forget all about him.”

“Are you… comparing dicks with a creature in a picture, Ryden?” I chuckled, and he leaned closer and pressed his lips to my shoulder.

“Yes, and I want you to only think about my dick because your pussy is mine until this thing between us ends.”

My head spun from the rush of what he said and how he said it.

“You get it, don’t you, Little Killer?”

“I get it,” I whispered breathlessly, my lungs suddenly forgetting something they had been doing for years now. How to fucking breathe.

We walked to the next sculpture, which was titled Birth of Power.

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