Page 25 of Taken
But feel it I do—electric, hungry, and more than a little frightened by how willing my skin is to answer him.
“Mate?” I echo, part challenge, part dare—because if I’m going to be captive, I’ll at least make him earn the rest of my outrage.
“Like a friend?” I add, because apparently my reflex is sarcasm when terrified.
“No, Telya. Much more than a friend,” he murmurs, and the way he says it makes the word heavy, like a promise or a prophecy.
“How much more?” I ask stupidly, because my mouth always thinks faster than my brain.
“You will enjoy being my viyella. I promise you that.”
Something in me flips. My body answers on autopilot—heat crawling up my neck, a bloom behind my ribs like someone lit a private lantern there—but my brain slaps on the brakes.
This is ridiculous, Phoebe.
You were dragged through a whirlpool by a horned man who smells like sea-salt and old storms.
You are not on a romantic holiday.
You are probably the subject of an incident the aquarium will report as a missing person.
Yeah. Priorities.
My palm finds the hollow of his throat, exactly where those pale runes pulse like little moons.
I press there—not hard, just enough to say hello, to remind the universe that I am not entirely a passive thing.
He watches my hand with a gentleness that would be terrifying if it weren’t so absurdly, embarrassingly tender.
He smiles then, small and sheepish, like the sea itself is blushing.
“You will not force me,” I tell him.
I mean it.
I need that to be true like I need the tide to come in.
“No, Telya. I will not force you. I won’t have to,” he says, voice low and sure, dark as deep water and almost hypnotic in the way it curls around vowels.
Those words should be mercy. They should be a balm.
Instead, they are the opening move in a dangerous negotiation neither of us fully understands.
He speaks like a man who believes the world can be rearranged with a look and a command, but the way his gaze slides over me—not possessive so much as reverent—makes me dizzy in a not-entirely-unpleasant way.
I stare at him, the storm in his eyes reflecting some private constellatory map I don’t have access to, and something fragile and foolish stirs in my chest.
Fear is still a steady drum—loud and sensible—but threaded through it is a brittle, electric hope.
Maybe he chose me because his prophecy needed a conduit.
Maybe he chose me because the tides whispered my name.
Or maybe—terrifying thought—he chose me because he couldn’t help himself.
That thought is as dangerous as the whirlpool that stole me, and I know better than to let it bloom without watching closely.
But my skin remembers his hand, my lungs remember the way his kiss gave me air, and my mind, traitor that it is, keeps inventing ways I might stay—not because I’m noble or brave, but because the idea of saying no to him now feels impossibly heavy.
