"Mission accomplished."
"Good," Jokull said. "Clear everything."
Aine had showered and was standing in her towel with her hair still dripping when she heard the front door open below.
She stopped.
It had been a few days since she had seen him and something shifted in her chest at the sound, something she immediately tried to flatten and reclassify before it could become anything she had to deal with.
I have missed him. Why have I missed him. He is just— She stopped herself. Is that even the right word for what he is.
"Ravi?" she called toward the door. "Is that you?"
No answer.
She crossed to the door and tried the handle. Locked.
She stood in the middle of the room and listened to the quality of the silence around her. It was the wrong kind of quiet. Too deliberate. Too arranged.
The lights began to flicker. On. Off. On.
"Ravi." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "If this is some kind of joke you know I do not like the dark. Stop it."
Something moved in her peripheral vision.
She spun around.
Nothing.
"Who is in this room?" Her voice dropped low and flat. "Show yourself."
An arm closed around her throat from behind. She had not heard him cross the room. She had not felt him at all until he was already there, his grip firm and practiced, his mouth close to her ear.
"It is your one and only Jokull."
Something cold and metallic pressed against the side of her neck.
Everything went dark.
Ravi was in the middle of the road when it hit him.
Not a thought. Something physical. A sharp and specific sting in his chest that arrived without warning and refused to leave. He reached for his phone immediately.
It rang out.
He tried again. And again. Each unanswered call pulling the feeling tighter.
He tried Hayland.
Nothing.
He sat in the car for exactly one second.
"I should not have left," he said.
He reversed hard and turned back toward the house.
"Hayland." He was out of the car before it had fully stopped, moving across the grounds with long purposeful strides. "Hayland, where are you?"
He found the phone first. Cracked screen, dark, a small dark stain beside it on the ground that he processed and moved past without stopping.
He went inside.
Aine's door was open.
He took the stairs quickly and pushed into her room. The bed had been stripped, the sheets pulled and left where they fell. Her towel lay tossed on the floor exactly where she had been standing when whatever happened, happened.
He crouched down beside the bed.
The syringe was small and used and sitting in plain sight. He picked it up and turned it slowly until the engraving caught the light.
Two initials pressed into the barrel with clean deliberate precision.
J.K.
He stayed crouched on the floor of her empty room with the syringe in his hand and the towel on the floor beside him and the stripped bed above him and said nothing at all for a long moment.
Then he stood.
Aine's eyes fluttered open to the soft, flickering glow of candlelight. Her body felt heavy, flushed, and exquisitely sore in the most intimate places. A lingering heat still pulsed between her thighs. Someone was watching her with dark, possessive hunger. Panic surged through her as he approached.
Jokull leaned over her, his eyes smoldering with satisfaction and lingering desire.
"Good morning, my darling," he murmured, his voice deep and velvety. "How was your sleep?"
Aine's voice was barely a whisper. "I… I couldn't remember anything after the shower…"
Jokull's lips curved into a slow, wicked smile. "Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. You look so delightfully surprised, my love." He trailed his fingers lightly down her neck and over the curve of her breast, savoring how she trembled beneath his touch. "Your eyes were wide open the entire time, burning with raw hunger. You didn't resist me at all. On the contrary… you surrendered so beautifully."
He leaned closer, his breath warm against her ear as his voice dropped into a rich, sensual whisper. "At the dining table, you kissed me with such desperate passion — your tongue dancing with mine, your hands clutching my shoulders as if you needed me to breathe. I slowly peeled the sheet from your exquisite body, revealing every inch of your soft, flushed skin. I laid you across that table and worshipped you with my mouth. I spread your thighs wide and devoured your sweet, dripping core licking, sucking, and plunging my tongue deep inside you until your moans filled the room and your body shook with pleasure."
His eyes darkened with memory. "Then I took you completely. I slid into your tight, welcoming heat in one powerful thrust, burying myself to the hilt. You gasped so beautifully as I began to move long, deep, rhythmic strokes that grew harder and more demanding. Your walls clenched around me like velvet fire, pulling me deeper with every thrust. You arched beneath me, nails digging into my back, legs wrapped tightly around my waist as I claimed you again and again. The sound of our bodies colliding, your breathless moans, and the slick wetness between us was intoxicating. I rode you with unrestrained passion until I spilled myself deep inside you flooding your womb with pulse after pulse of my hot seed. And still, I wasn't done. I took you once more, slower this time, savoring every sensation until we were both lost in ecstasy."
Jokull brushed his thumb across her lower lip, his gaze intense. "You were magnificent… so incredibly responsive, so exquisitely passionate. I never knew you could feel this good. Ravi may have had you first, but you are here with me now and I will make sure you never forget it."
"I do not remember anything," she said quietly. "After the shower. I do not remember a single thing."
"The syringe has that effect." He smiled. "But you are here now. That is what matters."
She looked at him across the room and when she spoke her voice was completely flat. "You drugged me and kidnapped me. Again."
"Because I love you. That man was keeping you against your will and I am the rightful person to be in your life. Not him."
"You violated me," she said. The words came out without heat, without performance, just the plain and terrible fact of them. "And you think that makes you the rightful person."
Something flickered in his face. "As long as I have planted my claim in you—"
"My husband has done the same," she said, cutting straight through whatever he was building toward. "More than once. The likelihood of me carrying his child is considerably higher than anything you imagine you have done tonight." She held his gaze. "So whatever claim you think you have just made, you should recalculate it."
"Stop calling him your husband." His voice hardened. "He is a murderer."
"And what are you an angel?" She looked at him without flinching. "You do the same things he does. The difference is he has never pretended otherwise."
"Shut up."
"If he is as dangerous as you claim then I should not be sitting here talking to you," he continued. "
He crossed the room and closed his hand around her throat.
She did not scream.