Delilah’s Pov

My hand was still burning, stinging from the slap, and his face was inches away like a dark moon I’d never expected to orbit.

I’d meant the slap to hurt—meant it to puncture that arrogance, to make him taste what it felt like to be refused, but when he grabbed me by the hair I watched the mockery in his eyes fold into something colder, harder. For the first time in days the delicious defiance that had kept me alive shrank inside me, small and brittle.

“Never…ever…lay your hands on me,” he hissed, his voice like ice under leather.

There it was: the Verret I’d only caught glimpses...