Page 78 of The Cruel Heir
I was still sobbing when he kissed me again, lifting my hips to meet the slow, thick stretch of him. And when he pressed inside, it wasn’t possession. It was mourning. A funeral for every version of us that never got to exist.
We movedlike dusk bleeding into night, slow, dark, inevitable. My hands gripped his back, nails scoring the skin he didn’t flinch to offer. He buried his face in my neck. I buried mine in his shoulder. We didn’t speak. There was nothing to say that the rhythm of our bodies hadn’t already screamed.
And when I broke again, when his name tore from my throat like thunder, he followed, whispering, “I love you,” like it was his last breath.
Maybe it was.
We stayed like that, tangled and trembling, until the rain softened, and the world remembered how to breathe.
Then I pulled away.
Not because I wanted to.
Because I had to.
“That was the last time,” I said.
“I know,” he murmured. “But you’ll dream of it.”
I already knew I would.
I lay against him, breath hiccuping, his hands stroking patterns along my spine.
He didn’t try to speak again. Just kissed the top of my head once.
And then, too soon, I felt the shift.
He slipped from our makeshift bed in silence, gathering his shirt from the floor. I didn’t turn. Couldn’t. I just watched him discreetly out of the corner of my eye.
He broke the silence eventually.
“I don’t deserve your forgiveness yet.” He rose, every inch the heir who governed boardrooms and assassins alike, but the power leaked from his posture, leaving something weary, almost mortal. “The guest wing is empty. No staff will disturb you tonight.”
I stood, wobbling, barefoot on Persian silk. “Leave the card on the desk.”
He hesitated. A pulse beat in his throat, as if he wanted to argue, but he placed the card precisely where I indicated, and stepped back. Distance stretched, charged. The study smelled of old paper and storm-wet cedar, and the sound of the clock threaded between our heartbeats.
“Thank you,” I managed.
For a man who worshiped control, gratitude seemed to knife him deeper than any insult. His eyes flared, then shuttered, and he inclined his head once, a monarch accepting a gift he hadn’t earned, and moved to the door. His hand on the brass knob stilled.
“Zara.” Soft, but my name thrummed like cello string. I waited. “Whatever decision you make tomorrow, remember you were always capable.” He left without looking back.
The click of the latch sealed the quiet. I pressed a palm to my sternum, felt the ragged gallop beneath. Solvent. Independent. Terrified.
I gathered the folio, the black card gleaming like a shard of night, and padded into the corridor. Lamps were dimmed to an amber glow, and rain-light strobed between window frames. Somewhere, on the other side of the mansion, the staff mourned their own, clinking dishes, whispering gossip about the heiress who didn’t cry at her parents’ funeral.
I followed memory-wide hallways, marble runners, oil portraits, the faint echo of children’s laughter fossilized in the plaster, and slipped into the guest suite. It smelled of lavendersachets and linen starch. I set the folio on the bedside table, but the card I kept in my fist, its weight warmed to skin temperature, as though the metal remembered the last hand that held it.
Moonlight splashed the coverlet. I curled under it and listened to rain tattoo the balcony rail. Midnight drew nearer, invisible yet seismic, an hour that could reset my life, like cracked bone.
I could vanish. Take a private jet to anywhere, burn a slice of Sterling’s empire, with every swipe of the card. I could stay, use the money to rebuild my independence, brick by brick, inside the gilded cage, until the cage bent around me, instead of the other way around.
Or I could do neither. I could walk into the annual Kingsley Art Gala in a dress I chose, under lights Sterling didn’t aim, and announce, by posture alone, that I loved him, in spite of every reason not to. The scandal reporters would salivate, the board would swallow their tongues, and Sterling…
My pulse fluttered at the thought of his face, when he realized I’d stepped into the ballroom without his leash.
A laugh, wrecked, hopeful, escaped me. I pressed my knuckles to my lips, quieting it. Too soon for decisions. Too soon for forgiveness. But not too soon for possibility.
