Page 118 of The Sin Binders Ascent

He pushes another strand of my hair behind my ear. His fingers brush the skin there, slow and careful. I don’t flinch. I don’t pull back. I just watch him watching me, and I realize I don’t hate this. I don’t hate him. He’s still an asshole, still insufferable and smug and sharp-tongued, but there’s something deeper underneath, something patient and wicked and attentive, and it’s beginning to unravel everything I thought I knew about him.

“You’re making this weird,” I whisper.

“You deserve someone who notices.”

And I forget how to breathe. Not because I believe him. But because the way he says it, the weight of it, the absolute certainty in his voice, it sinks into my chest like a nail and lodges there.

He runs his thumb along my cheekbone, a lazy arc that leaves goosebumps in its wake.

“You think I don’t know what this place is doing to you?” he says. “I’ve been there. Cut off. Starved. Forgotten. Andstill, you’re here, with your spine straight, trying to carry the wreckage like it hasn’t crushed you.”

I close my eyes again because looking at him makes it worse. Because the calm in his voice isn’t arrogance anymore. It’s something steady. Something real.

“I didn’t think I’d ever be this alone,” I admit, so softly I almost don’t hear it myself.

“You’re not.”

His eyes fall to my mouth. Not for the first time. But this time, I notice.

It’s not casual, not some lazy flicker of attention. He’s staring like he wants something he knows he shouldn’t want. Like he’s picturing how I’d taste, and trying to decide if he’ll regret it. My lips part, not because I mean to tempt him, but because I can’t quite remember how to keep them shut when someone looks at me like that.

And gods help me, I want him to do it.

I want to know what his mouth feels like. If he kisses like he fights, reckless, consuming, lethal in a way that doesn’t leave room for anything else. If his hands would stay gentle the way they are now, or if they’d tighten in my hair like he’s trying to memorize me through pressure.

The thought alone sends heat curling low in my belly. My body’s exhausted, bruised, still humming from the aftermath of near-death, and somehow that makes it worse. Desire threads itself through the cracks, guilt and want, restraint and longing, all tangled together. It's not simple. Nothing between us ever has been.

I love my guys.

Gods, Ilovethem.

Lucien’s quiet strength. Ambrose’s dark calm. Riven’s fire and fury. Orin’s mind like a storm cloud ready to strike. Elias,Caspian, Silas, all of them etched into me like bloodlines. My family. My soulmates.

But Theo…

Theo is the eighth sin. The one they didn’t plan for. The one that was never meant to be mine, and yet here he is, dragging his way into my chest with every smart remark and sideways glance and impossible act of devotion I didn’t ask for but keep accepting anyway.

I didn’t see it coming.

That’s what guts me.

I thought the cuff was punishment. A joke. A last slap in the face before I was cast into this decaying world to die alone. Chained to the sin of desire, of all things, like a final humiliation. But now the cuff is gone, and he’s still here. Not hovering. Not lingering.Choosing.And the way he’s looking at me right now, like I’m already his, like he’s already decided even if I haven’t, makes something inside me shatter and bloom all at once.

I swallow hard, pulse thudding just under my skin, and I can’t help the question rising like a blade between my ribs.

Was this the point?

Is this what Blackwell wanted?

He didn’t bind me to Theo just to torture me. He could’ve left me alone. Let me rot here with no one. But he didn’t. He gave mehim. The one sin I wasn’t tied to. The one they all feared might do what none of the others could.

Make mechoose.

And the fucked-up part is…I think I understand it now. Because of this, sitting beside him, tasting him in the air, feeling his fingers ghost over my arm like I’m something he’s afraid to crush, this feels inevitable.

Even though I hate it.

Even though I don’t want to.

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