Page 7 of Burn it Down

The thought of her fiancé touching her makes my vision blur.

If he’s so much aslookedat her the wrong way…

I grunt, the sound guttural.

If he’s touched what belongs to me, I’ll rip his fucking hands off.

And if he hasn’t?

I’m going to kill him anyway.

A dark laugh slips past my lips, and I pump harder, faster, my balls tightening as the heat builds and builds.

Mine.

Mine.

She’s fucking mine.

My climax hits like a goddamn freight train. My body locks up, muscles seizing as I explode against the tile, Lakynn’s name in my throat, her face the only thing I can see right now.

I keep my hand moving through it, riding out every last second of the high.

When it fades, I let the water scald me. Let it burn away the shame of leaving her in this situation.

The fury.

The guilt.

I need to make things right for her, and that’s exactly what I intend on doing.

LAKYNN

Isit like a statue at the far end of a long white table, my spine straight, shoulders locked, jaw clenched so tight I feel my teeth grinding into dust. This whole thing is like a dream I’m desperate to wake up from, but can’t. Not with all eyes on me. Not with what happened last time.

I ran away, and it took my father’s henchmen less than twenty minutes to capture me. He sees everything and without Riven as a buffer, it’s proving difficult to escape him.

Everyone in this restaurant thinks this is a celebration. My mother smiles so tightly that I think her face might crack and crumble all over the fine linen tablecloth. She thinks they’ve secured something important tonight. An alliance with the St. Clair family that also gets me out of her house. She doesn’t like me, especially now that I’m not a gangly fourteen-year-old. I know that when she looks at me she sees everything she could have been, everything I could still be. I know she’s taking pleasure in my fate. A price paid in blood and pearls and ugly white satin.

No one here sees the coffin they’re building around me, but that’s exactly what this is. I won’t survive if I have to go through with this.

It won’t be as easy as they think.

Matthew, myfiancé…Ugh, God, I want to claw that word out of my mouth. He uses the word, but we both know that he’s buying me. He’s buying my virginity because that’s the only way he can get the kind of girl he wants. I refuse to look at him or any of his family members in an act of defiance. I want to break down in tears, but there isn’t time for that. It’s clear to me that Riven isn’t going to come back for me, and that was a silly little fairytale dream that has long since sailed away. I’m going to have to save myself, even if that means I don’t make it out of this alive. Because that’s what it comes down to. The man who adopted me made that clear. I either comply this time or he’s going to snap my neck. I feel his hand around my neck, around my wrists, gripping my jaw painfully. My ‘mother’...that word feels absolutely bitter on my tongue, isn’t any better. I sigh when I think about how she covered up the marks her husband left on my skin with makeup.

The asshole who is buying me is sitting too close to me, and he’s enjoying that I hate this. That I hatehim. His thigh brushes mine every time he shifts, and I want to carve that smirk off of his stupid face right here in front of everyone. His hand rests on the table, waiting for mine. Expectant. Disgusting. Every breath he takes feels like an invasion of my literal will to live. Every second he sits beside me feels like a countdown to my burial. I was told that Riven was offered a coveted spot on the Castlebrook University hockey team and he couldn’t turn it down. I don’t believe them. Riven wouldn’t leave me for hockey, and they wouldn’t have sent him away so he could go off and have fun at some fancy school. He’s too valuable here, so wherever he went off to is benefiting our parents I’m sure. That doesn’t mean I’m not pissed at him for not saying goodbye, for not telling me anything. I feel hollow, beaten down. I feel like I’ve got nothing left to look forward to.

Across from me, Lucas swirls his wine like he thinks he looks posh, but he just looks like the pretentious dickwad Riven always said he was. He’s loving every second of this. Lucas is Dimitri and Karina’s biological son. Their golden boy. The son who wore the right mask, but didn’t have the natural ability to be a leader the way Riven did. He keeps catching my eye like this is some kind of inside joke, like we’re both in on the farce of my engagement.

I used to think being adopted meant I was chosen. Wanted.

Now I know better.

It means I was owned.

It means I was always going to be used for something that would benefit these monsters.

I remember my first night at the Kozlov household. Lucas smiled like he already knew how this would end, but I couldn’t even fathom any of it. I remember the look Riven gave me the first time we sat alone on the porch swing that night. The pinky promise he made. The way he whispered, "I won't let anything bad happen to you. Not ever."

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