Page 28 of Escaping Hallow Hill Academy
Color me all too surprised by everything about him tonight.
“If you need a minute, just say it,” he whispers, his head tilting low to really look into my eyes.
“Stop.” My smile is tight, and my words are to the fucking point. “Stop with the weird emotion play today. Just do the fucking task so we can be dismissed.”
“Emotion play?”
“Rueren Ivance DeVoure, do you pledge your eternal life and damned soul to me?” I say over his question, repeating the words I’ve read in chapter one of the Soul Searching textbook.
I never realized how much his name sounds like Ruin until I just said it like a praising prayer.
And that’s exactly what he’s going to do to me if I let his soul bind to mine: he’ll ruin me.
I know his full name because I spied his neat scripture on a test once. At the time, I wasn’t sure what surprised me more. The fact that his handwriting was prettier than mine could ever hope to be, or how beautiful his name was. It’s beautifully dark.
I don’t know why I think those things. They’re dangerous fucking thoughts.
His full lips part with a slow breath, but he doesn’t reply with the statement I need to move forward to the next step. With impatience, a heavy sigh pushes from my lungs, and that seems to be all he needs to kick his ass into gear.
“I pledge my ever-silent soul, my eternal life, and all that I have to you, My Beautifully Enchanting Sekar,” he recites with a sultry smile tilting his lips.
Wow, paraphrasing much?
Doesn’t matter.
“Emmera Lee Lucero, do you pledge your mortal life and your dark-kissed soul to me?”
I can’t explain the shiver I feel rattling my soul. A sensation strokes delicately against my heartbeat, touching. Feeling. Caressing.
It’s salacious, in a way. Beautiful and alluring.
Completely fucking terrifying.
“Trust me, pretty Sekar,” DeVoure says on a hushed, rumbling tone. I know what he’s asking in that one sentence. I know what the fuck he’s implying without words, without anyone else looking at us suspiciously.
Trust.
Trust him to spy with me around the Academy and find answers on Dr. Hyde and the hybrid monsters I’ve been killing every night.
Trust him. Ha! That’s laughable. I can’t even trust him to look at me without saying something disgustingly obtuse.
And yet . . . my soul does.
It opens up. I feel it grow against the touch of his bindings intertwining with mine. Our magic, our beings, our every breath strum in sync without even trying.
“I give myself to you, Emmera Lee Lucero,” Rueren says in such a breathless way, it feels erotic.
Every single part of this feels erotic.
So much so that moans and low heady gasps fill the room.
Including my own.
The moment the reckless breath of pent-up pleasure slips from my lips, his eyes dilate. His fangs extend. His hold on me tightens to a dominating feel of need.
“I—I give myself to you, Rueren Ivance DeVoure,” I recite, trying so damn hard to keep a steady tone.
And failing.
